Music History

Key to the Course List

Music History I

MHS 101–102; 3 s.h./term

The history of Western music from its origins in Ancient Greece to the beginning of the twentieth century, covering the political, social, and religious trends that influence and shape music from one era to the next. Examines the development of musical styles, genres, compositional procedures, historical performance issues and practices, and their relevance to other eras. A general survey of major composers, the lives of important historical figures, and some of the great works in Western music history.

Music History II

MHS 201–202; 2 s.h./term

An examination of the trends and ideas that shaped music from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Students will explore this development through a chronological study of the composers, as well as through the creation of their own works employing different compositional techniques of the era.

Music History Seminars

MHS 301–302; 2 s.h./term

Bachelor of Music candidates are required to take at least two seminars over the course of their third and fourth years. Enrollment is limited to twelve students per seminar class, and students are encouraged to fulfill this requirement beginning in their third year. Please see course descriptions below for further information.

Berlioz: A Shakespearian Life (Fall)

In conjunction with Curtis’s Romeo and Juliet theme, there is no more fitting subject than Hector Berlioz. Not only did he write the great “dramatic symphony” based on that play, his entire adult life, personal and artistic, was influenced by his contact with the works of the English Bard. Berlioz regarded Shakespeare as the precursor of Romanticism, and in some ways as Romanticism’s greatest exponent, despite the fact that Shakespeare had lived more than two centuries before the period that we label as “Romantic.” The grandeur and poetry that Berlioz sought to achieve in music was closely connected with his interpretation of Shakespeare’s expressive capacities in literature. Ample use will be made of recordings of music not only by Berlioz but also by those among his contemporaries who were in one way or another influenced by Shakespeare.

Toscanini & Co.: The Age of the Great Conductor (Fall)

The notion of the conductor as a dominating force in musical interpretation came of age in the twentieth century; as luck would have it, the capacity to record music decently also came of age in the twentieth century. In the public imagination, no one embodied the Great Conductor more than Arturo Toscanini, who, although he was born in the same decade as Mahler and Debussy, lived long enough to record a substantial segment of his vast repertoire. But other outstanding conductors of Toscanini’s generation and the next one also left considerable recorded legacies. They included Felix Weingartner, Willem Mengelberg, Serge Koussevitzky, Pierre Monteux, Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, Ernest Ansermet, Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Fritz Reiner, Erich Kleiber, Fritz Busch, Dimitri Mitropoulos, George Szell and several others – all of them born before 1900. Through recordings, films, and documents, this course will provide an investigation of the origins and development of the art of conducting.

World Music (Fall)

Music of the World is a non-technical introduction to ethnomusicology. It is an exploration of the musical traditions of indigenous peoples from around the world. Selected cultures which serve as an overview of the world’s musical traditions will be studied. Students will be required to do extensive listening, will write about music, and familiarize themselves with the broad outlines of the history and geography of each area. This course is designed to enable students to understand the aesthetics of these indigenous cultures, as well as the history and geography of various regions of the world.

History of Opera For Non-Majors (Spring)

Opera is probably the most extravagant and complicated of all the performing arts. It combines vocal and instrumental music, verbal texts (poetry or prose), stage action, often dance, and design (sets, costumes, lighting, and – today – electronic media). When, where, and why was opera invented? Who were its first creators and its first audiences? What were the social conditions that led to its becoming a popular art form in the nineteenth century? In what ways has it changed and in what ways has it remained fundamentally the same over the four centuries of its existence? What did audiences expect to see and hear in the opera house at various times in opera history, and what do today’s audiences expect to see and hear? We will discuss how are operas financed, contracted, written, and produced, and how, ideally, the singers, orchestra, conductor, stage director, choreographer, and technical crew interact.

In keeping with Curtis’s 2012-13 all-school project, Romeo and Juliet, part of the course will focus on the broad theme of star-crossed lovers in opera – couples who seem destined for each other but whose love leads to tragedy. Examples: Verdi – Il Trovatore, Wagner – Tristan und Isolde, Gounod – Roméo et Juliette, Tchaikovsky – Eugene Onegin, and Puccini – Manon Lescaut. With the aid of audio and video recordings, this course will take students through the history of a great art form and demonstrate why it is still as alive as ever.

Late Beethoven (Spring)

Beethoven’s incredibly prolific “middle period” (roughly 1802-13) was followed by seven less productive years during which he was marshaling his internal forces and preparing for something completely different. In the works of his last years (1820-27), he delved ever more deeply into his subconscious while affirming ever more strenuously the artist’s obligation to use self-revelation as a means toward the achievement of worldwide human harmony. His Missa Solemnis, Ninth Symphony, last three piano sonatas, “Diabelli” Variations for piano, and last five string quartets are above all a search for transcendence. The question of whether we ought to read artists’ lives into their works ceases to matter in Beethoven’s last years: his late works were his life. This seminar will first provide a background to Beethoven’s “late period” and then deal with the individual works mentioned above – listening to them, thinking about what others have said about them, and producing our own thoughts about and mental images of them.

Beethoven’s Sonatas (Spring)

Beethoven composed 32 solo piano sonatas, 10 violin and piano sonatas, and five cello sonatas span the creative life of this most celebrated composer in Western music. Readings from biographies by Thayer, Sullivan, Solomon, Kinderman, and Cooper, as well as contemporary accounts of the composer by Breuning, Ries, Schindler, and Wegeler, will add to the understanding of the different sonatas in light of the composer’s career, as well as provide a bibliography of Beethoven resources. Several key works will be examined in terms of formal design and tonal structure, demonstrating Beethoven’s influence in the development of the Classical sonata principle. Analytical readings on selected works will be drawn from the writings by Donald Francis Tovey, Charles Rosen, and Lewis Lockwood. In addition, students will survey the vast recorded legacy by the major performers of the early 20th century (including pianists Schnabel, Kempff, Backhaus, Fischer, and Serkin; violinists Kresiler, Heifetz, Francescatti, Grumiaux, and Szeryng; and cellists Casals, Feuermann, and Fournier) to discuss issues of performance styles.