Selected Topics in Music Theory (435-0-2)

Topic

BACH

Instructors

Vasileios Byros
847/467-2032
v-byros@northwestern.edu
Vasili Byros received his PhD in music theory from Yale University in 2009. He researches the compositional, listening, and pedagogical practices of the long 18th century from a holistic perspective that combines schema theory, Formenlehre, topic theory, and historical pedagogies, in order to reconstruct “insider” perspectives on music of the period. In 2017 he was awarded the Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory and the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship from Northwestern. He is currently working on a book project on period composition from technical, aesthetic, and philosophical positions, through the lens of his own historical compositions.

Meeting Info

RCMA 1-172: Mon 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Theory of melody emerged in the eighteenth century to supplement theories of counterpoint and harmony in the training of young composers. Launched by Johann Mattheson and further developed by Joseph Riepel, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, and Heinrich Christoph Koch, this theory was guided by the metaphor of music as language. This is why composition handbooks of the era are full of concepts derived from grammar and rhetoric. Starting with these concepts and following the most authoritative composition handbook by Heinrich Christoph Koch, the course will guide you step-by-step from smallest musical building blocks up to entire compositions, and it will teach you how to apply concepts developed by eighteenth-century music theorists in analyses of pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Your skills developed in class will be tested in two quizzes and two analytical papers related to Haydn's string quartets and Mozart's symphonies.

The course will appeal to students in music theory as well as performance, musicology, music education, conducting and composition.