Topics in Popular Music (333-0-1)

Topic

What Makes Music Popular?

Instructors

Andrew J. Talle
847/491-7228
RCMA 4-133
Office Hours: by appointment
Coordinator, musicology program. Andrew Talle '95 studied at Northwestern from 1990-1995, earning a bachelor’s degree in cello performance as a student of Hans Jørgen Jensen, as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees in linguistics. From 1995-2003, he was a PhD student at Harvard University, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in musicology. Dr. Talle spent one year lecturing at Harvard before moving to Baltimore in 2004 to join the musicology faculty at the Peabody Conservatory. In 2011, he was named a Gilman Scholar of the Johns Hopkins University, a distinction reserved for fewer than 20 faculty members across all nine divisions. He joined the Northwestern faculty in 2017.

Meeting Info

RCMA Lower Level 111: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

The term ‘popular music' is as mysterious as it is common. Should we define it according to stylistic hallmarks? Should we define it in terms of audience demographics? Or of the goals of its creators? In this course, we will explore these questions on the basis of both US-American popular music and examples from other times and places, including my own research on eighteenth-century Germany. The last portion of the course will be devoted to the work of students in the 433 section, each of whom will develop a project that explores the question of ‘What makes music popular?' from a unique perspective.