Narrating Musical Pasts and Futures

4.0 credits

What kind of story is music history? Whose interests and what purposes do music histories serve, both today and in the past? How can we actively shape the stories that are told about music in our own work as scholars and performers? This course addresses these questions through readings and discussions investigating a wide range of music-oriented literature as well as the rhetorical and ideological dimensions of historiography—the writing of history—more generally. Our journey will begin by examining the role of music histories in relation to nation building in early 19th-century Europe; we will then touch on the origins of musicology in the late 19th century and the consolidation of “the history of Western music” before moving on to consider recent efforts to dismantle and diversify that story from a variety of different perspectives. Along the way, students will be encouraged to think about—and begin telling—their own stories about music history based on clearly formulated personal and intellectual rationales. Short writing assignments, in-class presentations, and a final project will be required.