Expression in the Classical Style

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What's the "joke" in Haydn's String Quartet in E-flat Major? How can Mozart's music have emotional variety while employing conventional (one might even say formulaic) harmonic and formal structures? In this course, students will deepen their understanding of the Classical style's representational and affective possibilities through theories of humor, gesture, and topics (musical signs such as dances, hunt calls, etc.). Students will explore evidence for such effects in historical writings, current scholarly research, and score study. Key course themes will include the role that convention plays in communicating meaning; the location of musical meaning between composer, work, and audience; the tension between formal structure and expressive content; how notions of "absolute" music cloud understanding of Classical expression; and whether twenty-first-century listeners can hear Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with the "ears" of late eighteenth-century listeners. The course is discussion-based and emphasis will be on score study. Students will learn how to construct sound interpretive readings of works in the Classical style through a variety of essay assignments and oral presentations.