MUS 238 - Empire, Madness, & Decadence in Viennese Music

1 course unit

In this course, paired with GRM 257 Freud’s Vienna, we examine music in Vienna (and beyond to the broader Hapsburg empire) from the time of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to the early interwar era. By focusing on a relatively narrow temporal and geographical span, we are able to closely examine the ways in which historical and cultural debates shaped and were shaped by musical works. The questions that will shape our discussions include: What does Beethoven Symphony no. 9 mean for the future of the genre? What role do composers play in shaping ideas about identity in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual state like the Hapsburg empire? What correlations do musical events in discourses have? How are political trends - Viennese liberalism and the reaction against it - reflected in musical works and in the discourse about them? What consequences did the revolutions in thought about psychoanalysis, gender, and sexuality have for musical works, and how did musical works shape the ways these ideas were disseminated and understood?
Meets general academic requirement HU and is a cluster course and a linked (IL) course.