Courses

A one-semester introduction to art music in the Western tradition, its forms and history, with an emphasis on the major composers of the common practice period. Assignments focus on developing critical listening skills and an appreciation and understanding of Western art music.

Introduction to the rudiments of music theory (notation, scales, intervals, chords, rhythm and meter) and basic musicianship (keyboard skills, score reading and ear training). Enrollment is limited to students with no previous background in Music.

Beginning/intermediate students enroll in a first semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Beginning/intermediate students enroll in a second semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Beginning/intermediate students enroll in a third semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Beginning/intermediate students enroll in a fourth semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Students attend all regularly scheduled rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and concerts during the period of enrollment. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation. Students may repeat this course and/or other ensemble courses.

Students attend all regularly scheduled rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and concerts during the period of enrollment. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation. Students may repeat this course and/or other ensemble courses.

Students attend all regularly scheduled rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and concerts during the period of enrollment. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation. Students may repeat this course and/or other ensemble courses.

Students attend all regularly scheduled rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and concerts during the period of enrollment. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation. Students may repeat this course and/or other ensemble courses.

Students attend all regularly scheduled rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and concerts during the period of enrollment. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation. Students may repeat this course and/or other ensemble courses.

Students attend all regularly scheduled rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and concerts during the period of enrollment. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation. Students may repeat this course and/or other ensemble courses. Department consent required.

Intro to Audio Recording explores, through traditional and experiential learning, the role of the recording studio in music. Through the study of recording studio theory, critical listening and analysis, classroom discussions, and in-depth examinations of seminal repertoire, students will gain insight into the critical role of the recording studio in sparking innovation, and, perhaps paradoxically, shaping musical aesthetics. Through exercises in microphone selection and placement, frequency filtering, audio mixing, and signal processing, as well as a final cumulative creative project, students will engage with the recording studio as a living laboratory. By the end of the course, students will gain an understanding of how to apply the potential of the recording studio to their own creative work, as well as an appreciation of how the recording studio has fundamentally changed the way musicians and listeners alike experience music.

This course explores the power of song in Western culture drawing on both classical and popular traditions. Songs of love, songs of war, songs of worship, songs of protest - every human emotion has been expressed in song. The focus is on questions of expression and shared values in over four centuries of music.

Historical survey of American popular song-Stephen Foster, blackface minstrels, sentimental parlor songs, songs of the Civil War, gospel hymns, vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, Broadway musicals, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, jazz-band songs and singers, country music, rhythm and blues, rock-n-roll, rock, popular "folk" songs, and more.

Survey of rock music from its beginnings in earlier forms of popular music to the twenty-first century. Attention is given to the relationship of rock music to its cultural, political, and economic contexts.

Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field that approaches the study of disability not as a medical pathology but as a pervasive human condition and identity category subject to social, cultural, and political constructions, much like gender, race, and sexuality. This course pursues various intersections of this field with the study of music, with topics covering disability's role in shaping musical identities (especially those of composers and performers), disability's expansion of categories of musical knowledge and experience, and representations of disability within musical discourses and narratives.

Surveys three main repertoires of music in the United States: folk and traditional music of urban, rural, and ethnic origin; jazz; and art music from Charles Ives to the present, with particular attention to the influence of science and technology on recent developments.

An introduction to the rich and varied musical traditions of Latin America, this course will explore a range of issues including social function, political context, literature, and religion as they assist in understanding music in and as culture. We will study the musics of several regions without attempting a comprehensive survey. The focus will be on listening critically and appreciating music as a vehicle through which to understand culture and society. Lecture and discussion will feature audio and visual performances of many genres.

This course will introduce students to a range of global popular musics, in particular twentieth and twenty-first century genres such as afrobeats, bhangra, K-pop, and funk carioca, among others. We will investigate musical sounds and performances, as well as the roles that music plays in social and cultural life. Our approach will be primarily ethnomusicological, but we will also draw on scholarship and theories from musicology, anthropology, and cultural studies. The course is designed to help students develop listening skills, as well as an awareness of the ways that cultural particularity informs musical production and consumption. This requires that we consider questions of community, musical genre, commerce and industry, gender performance, race, and cross-cultural exchange alongside sounds and performances. Students can expect to engage with scholarly and journalistic literature, performance videos and, above all, listen to a lot of music. No prior musical training is required.

This course will survey the music related to military conflicts, political movements, and peace making efforts from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Students will explore how folk music, popular music, and art music have been used to depict war, express pro- and anti-war sentiments and promote political and ideological positions. Throughout the semester students will examine the broader relationship between music and society, and how world events shape musical styles and genres.

Ever wonder how music works? This course offers an integrated approach to music theory that is applicable to a broad range of styles from the classical symphony to popular song. Through analysis, musicianship exercises, and creative projects, students learn how composers and songwriters use common elements such as rhythm, scales, chords, melody, and counterpoint as building blocks to create unique musical styles. Music 201 is suitable for students from all majors and class years.

A corequisite of Music Theory 1, this lab offers an introduction to ear training, sight singing, and keyboard skills. Active participation is required. This lab is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

The second semester of the two-semester Western music theory sequence devoted to the underlying principles of tonal music, Music Theory 2 explores the musicals elements of chromatic music through listening, discussion, analysis, and musical composition. Topics include advanced chromaticism, extended counterpoint, and large-scale musical forms. Students must have the ability to read one or more musical clefs.

A co-requisite of Music Theory 2, this lab offers intermediate to advanced training in aural skills, sight-singing, and keyboard skills. Active participation is required. This lab is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Intermediate level students enroll in a first semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Intermediate level students enroll in a second semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Intermediate level students enroll in a third semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

Intermediate level students enroll in a fourth semester of individual instruction on an instrument or voice with an appropriate instructor. Ten private lessons are given at a mutually convenient time to be arranged. This course is taken pass/no pass as an overload and does not count toward graduation.

This course offers a survey of music in Western Europe from the earliest Chants in the Roman Catholic Church to the music of Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach in the 18th Century. To study the European heritage in music allows us to discover an extraordinary variety of musics from earlier times and faraway places and to connect these distant musics from long ago to our present. In this class, we will study broad traditions and individual works of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods with an emphasis on aspects of the surrounding culture as well as a range of issues and activities that are involved in the writing of music history. Emphasis will be placed on the development of musical styles, genres, compositional procedures, and performance traditions from many different periods, places, and repertories.

This course offers a survey of music in the Western tradition from 1750 to the present time. Our focus will be on musical works, styles, and genres that were influential as well as on the people who created, performed, and listened to this music. We will study important trends, figures, and moments from the Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods with an emphasis on understanding the music in its surrounding culture. Emphasis will be placed on the development of musical style, compositional procedures, and performance traditions from many different periods, places, and repertories.

Introduces students to the fundamentals of jazz harmony and improvisation. Topics include chord and scale construction, harmonic progression, symbols used in improvisation, jazz scales and modes. These theoretical concepts are applied to the analysis and performance of standard jazz tunes. A portion of the class is devoted to performance and improvisation.

Examination and analysis of contemporary jazz improvisation techniques. Students are required to play their own instruments in class. Recorded jazz solos by jazz artists will be analyzed and discussed.

Independent study on a topic in any field of music conducted under the direction of a faculty director. Weekly meetings and a student-designed term project are customary. Permission of faculty member and the department chair required.

This course explores the many ways in which the Jesuits have been involved in the field of music over time and space. While it is now well-known that the Jesuits have been important composers and patrons of music, the many ways in which the Society of Jesus has used music as a tool of its mission across all contexts remains less well understood. The goal of the course is to construct a more robust sense of the many ways the Jesuits have engaged with music as art and music as a tool of mission. The course will also examine the many sites of Jesuit music culture around the globe, then and now, to draw a better understanding of Jesuit religious/missionary work, Jesuit engagement in and proximity to slavery and colonialism, and the complex cultural legacy of the Society of Jesus.

Introduces students to Balinese music through the performance of selected pieces from the Gong Kebyar repertory. Instruction provided in the technique of playing the instruments that make up the Gamelan.

Introduces students to more advanced techniques of playing the instruments in the Gamelan.

Introduction to music of selected African, Asian, and American cultures. Each culture is approached through its social and cultural context, its theoretical systems and musical instruments, as well as its major musical and theatrical genres.

This course is a survey of African-American music from the early 20th century to the present day. This course will consider various musical styles, with special emphasis on developments since 1950, including blues, gospel, R&B, rock and roll, doo-wop, soul, funk, disco, hip-hop, and rap-from the rural south to the urban north; from the east coast to the west coast; from the live stage to the recording studio. Though the primary function of the course will be to consider the development of musical style (that is, the music itself), we will also consider broader questions concerning the influences on and influences of African-American music, issues of cultural appropriation and race, and the agency of such music in social movements from the civil-rights era to the present day.

Brazil, the world's fifth largest nation by both population and area, is home to wide variety of musical traditions. Brazilian musical practice has contributed to the formation of local and national identities, accompanied religious ceremonies and rites, been subject to the possibilities and pitfalls of industrial and neoliberal capitalism, and served as a vehicle for protest and political organizing. In this course, we will examine many of the country's major musical styles and practices, particularly as they are bound up with social and cultural trends, changes, and issues. Musics to be covered include capoeira, samba, bossa nova, MPB, tropicália, sertanejo, funk carioca, tecnobrega, and hip hop. We will also learn about the history and culture of Brazil, situating musical practices and meanings within their particular contexts and uses. Students will learn critical listening and music interpretation skills, which they will use to complete a research paper on a Brazilian music topic. No prior language or musical training is required.

Designed for all students interested in the electronic music studio, this survey course provides a comprehensive overview of the techniques, literature, and materials of electroacoustic music. Topics include musical acoustics, classic musique concrète techniques, digital music, sound design, and production. Course goals include gaining fluency in appropriate technologies and strengthening interpretive and creative skills through the completion of original musical compositions.

Coding Music welcomes all majors interested in DIY instrument design and collaborative performance of live electronic music. An experiential class, students learn the science of sound synthesis by designing digital synthesizers that react in real-time to human interaction (pressing keys on a computer keyboard, tilting a cellphone accelerometer, toggling a hacked gaming joystick, etc.). These synthesizers are then used to create musical compositions that the class performs live for the end of the semester H-CLEF (Holy Cross Laptop Ensemble Federation) concert. Using technology to create both instruments and repertoire, students broaden creative capacity while exploring how technology can expand artistic expression.

Explores the role of digital media in the world of music and teaches how digital tools are utilized by the contemporary composer. Students get "hands-on" experience with digital audio, MIDI, the internet, and a host of computer applications (PowerPoint, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, ProTools, Audacity, Adobe Premier), that are essential for the aspiring musician.

This seminar is designed for students interested in exploring community engagement (and career paths in the arts). Majors and non-majors interested in music performance or composition, visual and creative arts, sound installation, video, technology, creative writing, business, performance art and theatre as well as other related fields are especially encouraged to enroll.

In this course students will come to understand the history of Gregorian chant, both as a religious phenomenon and as a repertory of music. The course will begin in the Early Christian era and trace the history of Gregorian chant through the Middle Ages all the way to the present. Students will consider the role chant was made to play in asserting theological and cultural disagreements that historically led the rise of a variety of forms of Christian worship in the early centuries, some of which continue to be preserved and practiced in the present. The course will also consider chants role as art music and popular music, from the History of Western Music to film and popular song.

Study of representative works of this century, illustrating their compositional techniques and relationship to the past (i.e., the music of Bartok, the different styles of Stravinsky, the atonal and serial music of Schoenberg and his followers). This course also includes selected readings on contemporary music theory and practice.

Introduction to the orchestra, its instruments, and repertory from the inception of public concerts in the 18th century to the present day.

Beethoven was the most celebrated composer in Europe during his lifetime and his fame has only increased over the last two centuries. His heroic perseverance in the face of deafness--an almost unthinkable affliction for any musician--has transformed his biography into a story of struggle and triumph. In this course we will study some of his most famous works in depth, with an emphasis on the development of his musical style, the immediate socio-cultural context, and reception history.

This course will serve as an introduction to the history of African and Afro-diasporic music cultures and their corporeal, musical, visual, and literary manifestations. This course will expand students musical worldview and equip students with the tools to contextualize and understand a variety of musical styles, from electronic music genres like batida in Lisbon and Jamaican dub music to traditional music styles such as Angolan semba and Cape Verdean morna. Through engagement with music, literature, and film, students will critically engage with musical and cultural issues involved in the study of music of the Black Atlantic from the mid-1970s onward, which include, but are not limited to, the relationship between music and politics; music-making in post-colonial and diasporic contexts; varying notions of cultural authenticity, and the musical implications of globalization.

Musical practice has served as an important component in the formation and expression of national identity throughout Latin America, particularly in the Twentieth Century. Genres like samba, merengue, tango, and cumbia have come to engender feelings of national belonging, establish sonic borders, and attract tourists. Because of the contingent and multivalent nature of musical meaning, though, these genres and traditions are also spaces of contestation, where musicians, audiences, politicians, and others debate and work out the nature of national identities. In this course, we will explore musical styles that have become associated with particular nations in Latin America. We will read scholarship that situates these styles historically and culturally and listen to a variety of examples of the traditions in question. Class meetings will be discussion focused, supplemented by participatory musical activities and presentations of student work. No music training is required. Translations of lyrics will be provided.

What does power look like? What does it sound like? This class explores the relationship between power both political and social and the arts (music, visual art, literature). We will survey key musical works from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, including Italian intermedii, English court masques, French ballet de cour, and opera. Along the way, we will consider the roles race, gender, sexuality, and class play in the visual and musical language of these spectacles and how such works helped shape public opinion and national identity.

What does it mean to be human? What are the limits of the human? And how do we confront the unknown and overcome our fears and nightmares? Monsters and madness feature prominently in music history, from opera to orchestral works and film scores. these represent a variety of trans historical fears that include the fragility of the human mind, atrocities committed during political conflicts, our powerlessness in the face of natural disasters, and, ultimately, confronting death and the unknown. This class explores different types of monsters and monstrosity depicted in musical works, from mythology to murdering parents. Each week we will listen to or watch musical performances and discuss related readings documentaries, and podcasts that help to explain our fascination with these themes. Weekly assignments include discussion posts on central questions and writing assignments building toward the midterm and final projects. this is an interdisciplinary seminar, and you are not required to have musical training to take this class, though it will help. A background in Sociology, Gender Studies, Art History, or critical theory would also prove helpful.

Music 305 focuses on 20th-century musical systems with an emphasis on the study of compositional theory and the analysis of selected works. Original composition is required.

Topics-oriented seminar in advanced music theory and analysis open to students who have completed Music Theory 1-3 or by permission of the instructor. May be used as an upper-division elective for the music major.

This course explores music history from a methodological perspective. How do we construct and make sense of the music of the past? How does this activity inform our understanding and appreciation of music today? With an emphasis on critical reading, listening, analysis, discussion, and writing. Topics, materials, and course format vary from year to year.

Independent study on a topic in any field of music conducted under the direction of a faculty director. Weekly meetings and a student-designed term project are customary. Permission of faculty member and the department chair required. Advanced.

Instrumental or vocal lessons for students of intermediate competency. Interested students must have completed four semesters of individual instruction, perform at the intermediate level and obtain the permission of the Director of Performance and the Chair of the department.

Instrumental or vocal lessons for students of intermediate competency. Interested students must have completed four semesters of individual instruction, perform at the intermediate level and obtain the permission of the Director of Performance and the Chair of the department.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (17561791) was a child prodigy, musical innovator, virtuoso performer, and compelling dramatist whom biographers later dubbed the Shakespeare of Music. The world in which he composed and struggled at times was a vibrant, competitive, multilingual, multicultural hotbed of enlightenment debate and revolutionary tension. It turns out that many of the themes and conflicts Mozart wrote about in his time still matter in ours: human affection in society, reconciliation, gender, identity, and difference. This course offers an in-depth exploration of Mozarts music that draws on historical context to engage Mozart today. Musical scores, recordings, videos, primary sources (including the Mozart family letters), and a rich variety of readings will frame discussion of familiar works and rarely performed gems.

Where once popular music was considered to be merely a reflection of social change, today, scholars regard popular music to be a powerful agent of change itself. It is thus that we have come to celebrate artists and musicians among the very architects of the civil rights and women's rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the role of music in various gay rights movements remains less well understood. This course will consider the complex relationship between popular music and gay rights over the last fifty years. Examining the fraught notion of gay music in musical, historical, and aesthetic terms, the course will also explore the role music has played in building up and breaking down certain conceptualizations of sex, gender, and sexuality in American popular culture; in shaping distinct forms of gay identity (inclusive of LGBTQIAPK+ identity) in the popular media; in drawing attention to issues of voice-formation and cultural appropriation; and in forging political agency via song. The ability to read musical notation is not required and while this course has no specific prerequisite, students should be prepared to engage at an upper intermediate to advanced level. A prior course in music, sociology, cultural studies, or GSWS may be helpful, but is not required.

Is climate change audible? What role does music play in environmental conservation? What is sound pollution? Is birdsong music? This course will explore how sound mediates the relationship between humans and the environment, what some researchers describe as an acoustic ecology. Combining interdisciplinary approaches from sound studies, disability studies, environmental studies, and musicology, we will contemplate how we come to know our environment through deep listening, consider how people communicate their relationship to the environment through their musical creations, and reflect on the sound relations between humans, plants, and creatures. Finally, we will ponder the role that music and sound play in our experience of climate change and as a resource for building connection with the natural world.

This seminar is designed for students interested in studying composition/songwriting at an advanced level. It is a project-based course, including both smaller-scale creative exercises as well as a substantial final creative project. Through these projects, students will develop composing/songwriting skills within an environment that fosters discussion about contemporary composition/songwriting and the creative process. Course materials will be delivered via lecture, analysis and discussion, and workshopping of materials.

Required for music majors. This course is designed to provide an opportunity for juniors and seniors to integrate the knowledge and skills they have acquired in the major by drawing on multiple methodologies (musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, historical performance practice, and popular music studies, among others) to study selected musical works in depth. Topics and repertory vary from year to year. The culmination of this course is a capstone project designed by the student.

Instrumental or vocal lessons for students of intermediate to advanced competency. Interested students must have completed four semesters of individual instruction, perform at the intermediate or advanced level and obtain the permission of the Director of Performance and the Chair of the department.

Instrumental or vocal lessons for students of intermediate to advanced competency. Interested students must have completed four semesters of individual instruction, perform at the intermediate or advanced level and obtain the permission of the Director of Performance and the Chair of the department.

Instrumental or vocal lessons for students of advanced competency. Interested students must have completed four semesters of individual instruction, perform at the advanced level and obtain the permission of the Director of Performance and the Chair of the department.

Instrumental or vocal lessons for students of advanced competency. Interested students must have completed four semesters of individual instruction, perform at the advanced level and obtain the permission of the Director of Performance and the Chair of the department.