Topics will include rhythm and meter, keys and scales, chords and their inversions, melodic construction, elementary harmonic progressions, and ear training. Some familiarity with musical notation is recommended. 21 Music from Gregorian Chant to Bach The changing styles of European music from the emergence of Gregorian chant through about 1750. Composers to be studied include Machaut, Josquin, Palestrina, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach and Handel. The development of European music styles and genres from approximately 1750 to 1900 in the works of composers such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler.
Genres considered include symphony, concerto, string quartet, piano sonata, opera, and art song.
The many divergent paths taken by western art music since Debussy and the impressionists. The music of the United States from colonial days to the present, traced to its European roots but with primary focus on the contributions of distinctively American figures, such as William Billings, Stephen Foster, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Leonard Bernstein. Topics include twentieth-century American contributions to art music, the rise of American musical theatre, jazz, and rock and roll. A study of the life and works of J.S. Bach set against the cultural background of the 18th century and the prevailing norms of musical styles and genres. Topics include structural analysis of organ fugues, the rhetorical content of the B Minor Mass and the Brandenberg Concertos as reflections of the Enlightenment.