MUS 222 - Western Music History II: 1750 to the Present

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR: Meets general academic requirements AR and W.
Prerequisite(s): Ability to read music or permission of the instructor.
This course concerns the history of music from the mid-eighteenth century through the present and addresses current debates in historical musicology. Readings, score analysis, listening, and writing assignments trace the development of composition and performance practices and their relationship to cultural and intellectual perspectives. In these ways, students will consider music as a way of knowing our world and the composers, performers, patrons, and listeners who made this music possible. Topics may include mid-eighteenth century musical styles and schools, the Viennese classicists (Haydn and Mozart), Beethoven and the Romantic expansion of form and technique, opera, the beginnings of modernism (Debussy, Stravinsky), and more recent developments since World War II extending into the twenty-first century.