MUSA 3209 Music of the Modern Era

This course explores Western art music from the dawn of modernism in the late 19th and early 20th century (Debussy, Mahler, Schoenberg, Strauss, Stravinsky) up to contemporary music in the 21st (Adams, Golijov, Saariaho, Shaw, Soper) that has commanded audiences' attentionresulting variously in shock and disdain, rapture and reverence, and sometimes just simple pleasure and some applause. We will balance historical-cultural and formal-analytical approaches as we consider the aesthetic motivations, compositional techniques and materials, and reception of this music. We will move mostly chronologically through the many -isms in/around/after modernism: impressionism, expressionism, primitivism, nationalism, neoclassicism, surrealism, serialism, experimentalism, postmodernism, minimalism, syncretism. We will consider when and how the prestige culture of classical music and its avant-gardes has excluded and included certain voices and musicsespecially vernacular/popular music, especially by women and people of color, including blues, jazz, and singer songwriter/performer-focused musicsand reflect on the state of contemporary concert music composition, performance, and audiences today. We will attend at least one live concert together. MUSA3209 replaces MUSA2209 Fulfills elective on Western art music or elective at 3000-level for Music Major; fulfills elective for Minor. Required in the pre-26 Music Major; fulfills music period course in pre-26 Minor.