Analyzing Musical Mad Scenes from Ophelia to Salome

3 Credits.

A tapestry of ideas, musical style since 1945 is as varied as the polemics of its composers – individuals who sometimes defined their work as much by its divergence from their peers as its convergence. In the sprit of this contrast, this semester we will explore a diverse selection of music with an ear towards two ideas: clarity and complexity. Through listening and analysis, we will consider how a complex musical idea can be clearly rendered and vice versa and how this realization may inform the harmonic, formal, or procedural structure of an individual composition. Our discussion will further extend to the roles performer and audience share with the composer in bringing an idea to life, including how different the demands on each may be.