This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples — sound art, environmental recordings, music — will be provided and invited throughout the term.

This course examines European music from the early Middle Ages until the end of the Renaissance. It includes a chronological survey and intensive study of three topics: chant and its development, music in Italy 1340-1420, and music in Elizabethan England. Instruction focuses on methods and pitfalls in studying music of the distant past. Students’ papers, problem sets, and presentations explore lives, genres, and works in depth. Works are studied in facsimile of original notation, and from original manuscripts at MIT, where possible.

This is a text by Dr. Christine Gengaro to be used primarily for film music appreciation courses. Some of the materials are applicable to music appreciation, cinema studies, film studies, music history, musicology, and media studies. It attempts to provide a methodology for studying and analyzing film music without requiring the specific study of a particular set of films. It is appropriate for those with musical backgrounds and those who simply love film music. Suggestions are made in the instructor materials for assignments and assessments that empower students to analyze films in multiple ways, drawing upon cultural context, emotional viewing experience, historical milieu, among other lenses.

This subject covers a specific branch of music history: Western concert music of first sixty years of the twentieth century. Although we will be listening to and studying many pieces (most of the highest caliber) the goal of the course is not solely to build up a repertory of works in our memory (though that is indeed a goal). We will be most concerned with larger questions of continuity and change in music. We will also consider questions of reception, or historiography - that is, the creation of history and our perception of it. Why do we perceive much of this music, so much closer in time to us than Mozart or Beethoven, to be so foreign? Is this music aloof and separate from popular music of the twentieth century or is there a real connection (perhaps hidden)? The subject will continue to follow some topics of central interest to music before 1960, such as serialism and aleatory, beyond the 1960 cutoff. Conversely a few topics which get their start just before 1960 but which flourish later (minimalism, computer music) will be covered only in 21M.263.

The Music Librarianship Course working group developed this syllabus from 2019-2021, centering the principles of critical music librarianship with a particular focus on social justice and antiracist practices. This working group was funded by a Music Library Association grant. The syllabus may be used as a template for library educators or as a self-guided independent study for Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) students attending programs without a specialization in music librarianship. Learn more about our process in our white paper on the need for online music librarianship offerings and our MLA conference poster on the course planning project are in Humanities Commons. 

This class is an introduction to the analysis of tonal music. Students develop analytical techniques based upon concepts learned in 21M.301-21M.302. Students study rhythm and form, harmony, line and motivic relationships at local and large scale levels of musical structure. Three papers (totaling 20 pages, one to be revised) and one oral presentation are required.

This site offers a sampling of traditional Omaha Indian music. The sound recordings include wax cylinder recordings made in the 1890s, as well as songs and spoken-word segments from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow, segments from an interview with an Omaha elder in 1983, songs and speeches from a performance by members of the Hethu'shka Society in 1985, and portions of an interview with an Omaha musician in 1999. Photos, fieldnotes, and more from the 1983 pow-wow are included.

This site presents sheet music, essays, and video and sound clips related to ragtime. This distinctly American music appeared (in its published form) during the mid-1890s mainly in the South and Midwest, spread across the U.S. and to Europe, and influenced early jazz styles. Learn about Scott Joplin, one of the best known ragtime players. Hear segments of his classic Maple Leaf Rag, which helped spread the ragtime craze. See more than 100 pieces of sheet music.

The disciplines of music history and music theory have been slow to embrace the digital revolutions that have transformed other fields’ text-based scholarship (history and literature in particular). Computational musicology opens the door to the possibility of understanding—even if at a broad level—trends and norms of behavior of large repertories of music. This class presents the major approaches, results, and challenges of computational musicology through readings in the field, gaining familiarity with datasets, and hands on workshops and assignments on data analysis and “corpus” (i.e., repertory) studies. Class sessions alternate between discussion/lecture and labs on digital tools for studying music. A background in music theory and/or history is required, and experience in computer programming will be extremely helpful. Coursework culminates in an independent research project in quantitative or computational musicology that will be presented to the class as a whole.