This course poses the questions “What do we mean by tonality?” and “How can we describe music when it challenges the norms of tonality?” Through diverse repertory, techniques designed for tonal, chromatic, and post-tonal music are synthesized and expanded to explore answers to those questions.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate students will have heightened requirements for discussion and class leadership. The final project for graduate students will include a more significant component of original research and larger expectations for the review of the literature.
Athena Title
Dissolution of Tonality
Prerequisite
MUSI 2100 and MUSI 2110
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Successful students will be able to identify the components of systems of tonality and articulate their interrelationships and dissolutions.
Successful students will be able to apply, compare, and classify analytical tools appropriate to tonal music.
Successful students will be able to interpret and critique analytical arguments about tonal music.
Successful students will be able to synthesize methodologies to formulate analytical and interpretive arguments about tonal music.
Topical Outline
Understanding and unpacking the components of functional models of tonality
Working with tonal musics beyond the "Western Classical" canon
Theories of voice-leading, including neo-Riemannian analysis
