Music and Meaning

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course examines music as a case study for the non-verbal communication of meaning. We will ask what music means? How does it mean? Does it mean anything? We will engage these questions not simply on a philosophical level—reading core texts in the history of aesthetics—but also on a historical one: studying a diverse selection of musical works from across (and beyond) the Western canon. Rather than simply asking what music means, then, we will ask what it has meant, charting the changing conceptions of the medium's form, function, and significance. In the course of this music-historical journey, students will interrogate the relationship between artistic theory and practice; and they will draw comparisons with other art forms (painting, sculpture, literature, and so on). Last but not least, students will confront the central challenge of translating their own ephemeral, seemingly ineffable, musical experiences into clear, verifiable, and eloquent written prose. Typical core aesthetic texts encountered in the class include: Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790), Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794), Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation (c. 1844), Moreas's "Symbolist Manifesto" (1886), W. E. B. Dubois "Criteria of Negro Art" (1926), Adorno's "On the Fetish Character in Music" (1938), and Cage's "Future of Music: Credo" (1937). Typical repertoire includes Bach's cantatas, Beethoven's symphonies, Schubert's songs, Wagner's music dramas, African-American spirituals, Tchaikovsky's ballets, Cage's experimental music, classical Hollywood film scores, and contemporary popular music.