Friday, December 23, 2005
Teaching the Twentieth Century at Brooklyn College
So I get to teach the fourth (and final) semester next Spring of Brooklyn College’s undergraduate theory sequence: Music 7.4, Twentieth Century Music. Now, good heavens, there are so many different kinds of music in the twentieth century – and so many fantastic composers – that a semester simply isn’t enough to make sense of it all, and worthy subjects will inevitably be skipped. But here’s my plan.
I don’t want to breeze blithely over every little thing; I’d rather cover a few things in depth. So I’m centering all my lectures around the following pieces, all of which I’m comfortable with and all of which are important and/or exemplary in some way. (Note that, in order to pick up some necessary slack from Music 7.3, I’m starting in the nineteenth century. But, honestly, I can’t wait to lecture on Tristan.)
Wagner, Tristan und Isolde
Debussy, Trois Nocturnes
Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra
Webern, Variations Op. 27
Stravinsky, Symphony in C
Lutoslawski, Symphony No.3
Reich, Music for Eighteen Musicians
Prof. Salvage’s Favorite Pop Music – a TBA swirl of Beatles, Billy Joel, and others
To fill in the gaps, I’ve selected twenty (the approximate number of students in the class) topics each of which will be the subject for a twenty minute oral presentation by a student. These topics run the gamut from Ives’s Unanswered Question, to Cage, to Charlie Parker, to Richard Rogers. The term paper, 10-15 pages on a topic of their choice, must be on music that is not considered classical. Finally, there are four composition assignments (I’m supposed to assign a lot of formal composition) each requiring students to use some of the techniques I’ve illustrated in the lectures on the above pieces.
posted by David Salvage
11:41 PM
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