Graduate Course Descriptions, Fall 2026

JUMP TO COURSE NUMBER: MUS 502–Betson, MUS504-Fenn, MUS507-Sheehy, MUS524-Barnson, MUS536-Tausig, MUS536-Adams, MUS537-Holt, MUS553-Minor

MUS 502: Proseminar in Tonal Analysis – Tonal forms of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Instructor: Nicholas Betson | Tuesday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

In this seminar we will review basic building blocks of 18th- and 19th-century tonal music such as figured bass, cadences, harmonic function, and dance meters, rhythms, and forms. We will then consider their deployment in such genres as Baroque fugues, concertos, suites, opera buffa ensembles, Classical and Romantic symphonies and string quartets, Lieder, and character pieces. In discussion of weekly readings, we will assess the claims of a number of theories, including: Laurence’s Dreyfus’s reconstruction of Bach’s “patterns of invention”; Robert Gjerdingen’s archeology of “Galant schemata”; Wye Allenbrook’s mapping of “rhythmic gesture” in Le Nozze di Figaro; the narratives of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s “Sonata Theory”; Dinuta Mirka’s tracing of metric and hypermetric manipulations in Haydn’s string quartets; and the attempts of “Neo-Riemannian theory” to resituate the isolated elements of tonal harmony (triads, seventh chords) beyond their traditional context in cadence-oriented progressions.

Coursework will consist of weekly assignments (readings and musical analysis), class presentations, and two medium-length papers. As with other seminars, expect about six hours of work outside of class each week.

This course is suitable for all graduate students. For MM and DMA students, this fulfills the Elective Group 2 requirement. Students in the MA in Composition and the MA in Critical Music Studies tracks must take either MUS 502 or MUS 504 in the first year, unless exempted via the relevant examination (Composition) or advisory assessment (Critical Music Studies).

3 credits

MUS 504: Analysis of Music in the 20th and 21st Centuries – Analysis of Modern Music

Instructor: Nirmali Fenn | Monday, 2pm – 4:40pm

There is no single “mainstream” in contemporary music. Each work is its own ecosystem, resistant to labels and open to multiple ways of hearing.

This course treats analysis as interpretation, not description. We move beyond “what happens” to ask what drives how continuity is perceived. Through weekly presentations, you will engage with analytical papers as arguments, not answers. We interrogate analysts’ assumptions, trace their strategies, and use them as models to refine our own thinking.

Working across 20th and 21st century repertoire, you will learn to zoom in on fine musical detail and zoom out to shape large scale meaning. Drawing on a range of influential analysts, the course shows how approaches shift from piece to piece and how you can adapt them with precision. The goal is to forge your analytic voice into one that is clear, focused, and imaginative. Your main assessment is an analytical paper that presents a distinctive interpretation of continuity in a work of your choice.

3 credits

MUS 507: Studies in Music History – Histories of Music Theory

Instructor: August Sheehy | Tuesday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

The concepts we use to understand Western music are historical. Staff notation was developed in eleventh century Europe. Time signatures evolved into their present form in the seventeenth century. Roman numeral harmonic analysis was invented in the late eighteenth century. Such ideas are not neutral or inert; they are contingent technologies used to understand past practices and to build new futures in which they too will be superseded.

At the same time, our approaches to the past are always evolving. In this course, we will examine recent approaches to music theory’s histories. Though our focus will be on European music theories and their intellectual descendants, we will also broaden our theoretical perspectives to include some non-Western musical thought, the better to understand the circumstances and historical trajectories that make us the musicians we are.

This course is primarily intended for MM and DMA students, for whom it fulfills the Elective Group 1 requirement. MA students in the Composition track must take either MUS 503 or MUS 507 in the first year.

3 credits

MUS 524, Topics in Composition – Introduction to Composing for Performers

Instructor: Matthew Barnson | Thursday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

Composition for/as Performers: This seminar invites performers and performing scholars to compose. Performing (and studying) Western classical music often means a devotion to the score (and those who produce them.) Beyond artistic expression, this course posits that performers and performing scholars can learn a great deal about performance, scholarship, and analysis by composing themselves.

Students will undertake a number of composition exercises, analyze model works, and produce two short works: the first, a solo work for their instrument to play themselves; and second, an ensemble work, to be performed by the members of the class. The course will culminate in a concert showcasing new student works at the end of the term.

Students will learn the fundamentals of notation, form, and instrumentation. This course is open to all graduate students, including those that have never composed, or composed only a little but have always wanted to try. The goal is not to write “academic” concert music. Any style or musical language is welcome.

This course is intended for Masters or Doctoral Students in Performance or Critical Music Studies. For DMA students, this course only fulfills the Free Elective.

3 credits

MUS 536, Area Studies in Ethnomusicology – Music, Sound, and Tourism

Instructor: Benjamin Tausig | Monday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

Tourism accounts for roughly 10% of the global economy annually, and in almost all aspects is suffused with music. From cruise ship bands to nightlife acts to cultural events, musical labor keeps the engines of the tourist economy running. Entire musical careers are oriented toward tourist audiences, and the financial power of these audiences shapes local musics profoundly in turn. Meanwhile, music soundtracks everyday tourist experiences in carefully considered ways. The relationship between music and tourism has been the subject of much recent writing, especially in anthropology and ethnomusicology. How is music integral to the functioning of tourism? What power imbalances and contradictions might it reveal? How is musical practice affected by being

situated in economies that are dependent on tourism? Beyond music, sound itself is also a key element in tourism. The sounds of touristic destinations are important markers of local specificity, and are managed to convey particular moods and to meet particular expectations. These sounds can be analyzed to understand how race and gender in particular are ever-present components of tourism. This course will engage with literature (as well as media) from music and sound studies, gender studies, critical race studies, history, and anthropology to examine these topics in detail.

This course is suitable for all graduate students. For MM and DMA students, this course fulfills the Elective Group 1 requirement. For students in the MA or PhD track in Critical Music Studies, it fulfills the Elective Group 1 requirement.

3 credits

MUS 536, Area Studies in Ethnomusicology – The Blues, Black Communities, and the Great Migration

Instructor: Margarethe Adams | Tuesday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

This course explores music, oral history, and community in the context of the Great Migration (approximately 1910-1970). In this class we will consider music practices of migrants and regional Black communities, focusing particularly on the Blues and the vast and lasting influence they have had on American music. Finally, we will examine the issues of race, violence, and economics that surround this monumental demographic shift. Requirements include weekly readings, weekly written assignments, one article presentation, and a final paper. Attendance and active participation in seminar discussion are mandatory.

3 credits

MUS 537, Research Methods in Ethnomusicology

Instructor: Kevin Holt | Thursday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

Just An Ordinary Day: Ethnographic Research Methods and the Mundane: Qualitative ethnographic methods entail spending extended time in the field observing and interviewing people; inevitably, much of that research captures "downtime" or the mundane navigations of everyday life. While one might assume ethnographic research is done with an eye toward the big, specially marked events (like concerts or festivals), it is in the unmarked, everyday occurrences that people build and perform the worldviews that give such events meaning. This course offers an exploration of research methods grounded in capturing and theorizing everyday life. In doing so, seminar participants will contend with one of ethnomusicology’s core research methods, analyze various means of conveying that research in writing, and apply those methods in their own work.

Coursework includes weekly readings, posts on Brightspace, research assignments built around the practical application of ethnographic methods, and a final written assignment related to research to be conducted during the seminar (with a final presentation).

This seminar is primarily intended for MA/PhD students, and it is a required course for students in the MA or PhD Critical Music Studies track. With the permission of the instructor, interested MM or DMA students may enroll in the course, which fulfills the Elective Group 1 requirement.

3 credits

MUS 553, Topics in 19th Century Music – Wagner and Race

Instructor: Ryan Minor | Tuesday, 9:30am – 12:20pm

This seminar considers the works, writings, and legacies of Richard Wagner as they reflect and refract questions of race, from the mid-19th century into the 21st. As this time span suggests, our focus will range from 19th-century anti-Semitism, and Wagner’s own role in its racialization, through Nazi-era cultural and racial politics, to current debates surrounding whiteness, canonicity, casting, and representation.

We will consider a broad range of texts: Wagner’s own operas that thematize identity and community (Dutchman, Lohengrin, Meistersinger, and Parsifal), as well as comparisons with the more explicitly racialized and exoticized works in contemporaneous French opera; ambitious dramaturgical treatments of these operas, viewed either online or on DVD; Wagner’s own essays on race, performance, and community; historical and theoretical work on the relationship—and differences—between racialized anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, particularly anti-Black racism; literary texts grappling with the legacy of Wagner’s operas and their role in promoting ideals of both white supremacy and Black futures (DuBois on Bayreuth and Lohengrin; Amiri Baraka’s version of Dutchman); and para-operatic topics such as the neocolonial aspirations of Schlingensief’s Wagnerian “opera village” in Burkina Faso.

In addition to the readings, students will be expected to screen six (Wagnerian length) opera productions throughout the semester. Participants will write a research paper, a “conference” version of which will be presented during the final week of class, and will also give at least two in-class presentations. A weekly response is required as well.

This course is primarily intended for MA and PhD students, and it fulfills the Elective Group 2 requirement for students in the MA or PhD Critical Studies track. With the permission of the instructor, interested MM or DMA students may enroll in the course, which fulfills the Elective Group 1 requirement.

3 credits