Selected Topics in Music Theory (335-0-2)
Topic
19th Century Analysis
Instructors
Richard D Ashley
847/491-5720
r-ashley@northwestern.edu
Office Hours: W 10-11 and by appt.
Professor, music theory and cognition program. Research and publications in music cognition focusing on expressive performance, musical communication, and long-term memory for music. President, Society for Music Perception and Cognition. Member, editorial board, Music Perception. Recipient of two Fulbright grants for research in the Netherlands and grants from National Endowment for the Humanities and U.S. Department of Education. Recipient, Bienen School of Music Exemplar in Teaching Award. Also teaches in the cognitive science program.
Meeting Info
RCMA Lower Level 111: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
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.