TOPICS IN MUSIC HISTORY 607

READINGS

(F-08)

 

Topic 1 – Igor Stravinsky, Life and works

Edward T. Cone, “Stravinsky: The progress of a method,  in Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky (ed. Boretz and Cone, 1972), 155-194.

Charles Hamm, “The Genesis of Petrushka,” in Igor Stravinsky, Petrushka, An Authoritative Score . . . (ed. Charles Hamm, 1967), 3-20.

Richard Taruskin, “The Rite of Spring,” in Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 4 (2005), 170-190.

Joseph N. Straus, “Stravinsky the serialist,” in The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky (ed. J. Cross, 2003), 149-174.

 

Topic 2 – The Rise and fall of 12-tone music

Arnold Schoenberg, “Composition with twelve tones,” in Classic Essays on 20th-century Music (ed. R. Kostelanetz & J. Darby, 1996), 233-264. (1st published, 1950)

David Cope, “Serialism,” in Techniques of the Contemporary Composer, 58-75.

Luciano Berio, “Meditation on a 12-tone horse,” in Kostelanetz & Darby, 167-171 (1st published, 1968)

Dmitri Shostakovitch, “Music and the times,” in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (ed. E. Schwartz & B. Childs, 1978), 107-110 (1st published, 1965)

Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett, “Aaron Copland and the politics of twelve-tone composition in the early cold war United States, Journal of Musicological Research 27 (2008), 31-62.

Pierre Boulez, “Schoenberg is Dead,  in Music in the Western World (ed. P. Weiss & R. Taruskin, 1984), 507-509 (1st published 1952)

 

Topic 3 – Experimental Music

John Cage,  Experimental music,” in Silence (1961), 67-75.

Cameron Catherine M.  Dialectics in the Arts: The Rise of Experimentalism in American Music (1996), 1-9.

Cameron Catherine M.  Dialectics in the Arts: The Rise of Experimentalism in American Music (1996), 1-9

Frederic Rzewski, “Little Bangs: A nihilist theory of improvisation,” in Audio Culture (ed. C. Cox and D. Warner, 2004), 266-271.

 

Topic 4 - 20th-century opera

Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (1952), “Introduction.”

Bertolt Brecht, “Modern theater is epic theater,” in Modernism and Music (ed. D. Albright, 2004),   (1st published 1930)

 

Topic 5 – Art/Pop/Folk

Béla Bartók, “The influence of peasant music on modern music,” in Schwarz and Childs (1967), 72-79. (1st published, 1931).

Constant Lambert, “Nationalism and the modern scene,Music Ho! (1936/1966), 151-163.