Where did musical notation first emerge, East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, or Western Europe? What kind of music might you have encountered in Northern Africa towards the end of the Roman Empire? How aware were thirteenth-century Europeans of middle Eastern singing techniques, and what did they make of what they heard? This course will address the intriguing and often surprising answers to these questions. Students will engage with music scholarship beyond Western music history in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how music was performed and perceived by diverse groups and individuals in different parts of the world before ca. 1600. Topics will include religious difference, disability, gender, race, and class, as well as modern responses to and portrayals of the musics, musicians, patrons, and audiences we will encounter.

This course explores the phenomenon of medievalism—that is, the perception and representation of medieval culture in post-medieval eras—and examine its impact on Western popular cultures, especially musical cultures. We will discuss the ways in which Western artists from centuries past and present have used images of the medieval past to connote such varied meanings as authenticity, spirituality, liberty, virtue, class, gender, race, rebellion, democracy, alienation, horror, romanticism, and magic. Additionally, we will discuss the ways in which fantasies about the past affect the creation and interpretation of pre-classical music in modern times by composers, performers, and listeners of/to a variety of genres of music.

Sites of medievalism discussed in this class will include novels, films, operas and musical theatre, folk songs, visual art and architecture, politics, hip-hop, and new media. Attention will also be paid to digital cultures that draw on medievalism, such as memes that proliferate via social media and the YouTube musical trend known as bardcore. No special knowledge of medieval music or notation is required to succeed in this course.

This course investigates the ways in which gender and sexuality have influenced and been influenced by music, musicians, musical (sub)cultures, and music scholars in the Anglophone West. Drawing on feminist and queer theories, students will explore the complex, shifting dynamic of gender and performance as applied to music of the past and present. Our objects of inquiry will include a wide variety of Western music written, performed, and consumed from the eleventh century to the present day, comprising an array of musical genres such as medieval love songs, chamber music, orchestral works, opera, folk music, doo-wop, hip-hop, and pop.