MUSC 306-01: Topics in Advanced Musical Analysis

Spring 2022

 Course Description

This seminar will focus on recent theoretical, analytic and compositional studies which concentrate individual dimensions (parameters) of sonic design such as pitch space and register, time and rhythm, timbre, form as well as notation and transcription. In the first part of the semester, we will engage in the creation of analytic frameworks that can be applied to a wide range of musical traditions including older and new music in the classic tradition, Jazz, and music drawn from certain Asian and African traditions. After considering Heinrick Schenker's theories, we will explore how recent scholars have extended Schenker's theories to explain Jazz improvisation and North Indian Ragas. We will also consider Simah Aron's theories of African rhythm as applied to composers such as Reich and Ligeti, mathematical notions such as symmetry and fractal geometry and their influence on contemporary composers, as well studies of sound color (timbre) by Cogan and Grisey as applied to analysis and Composition.