Compositional Concepts and Techniques (439-0-2)
Topic
Aesthetics for Composers
Instructors
Jay Alan Yim
847/467-2030
jaymar@northwestern.edu
Office Hours: By appointment
Jay Alan Yim has received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and many other awards for his music, which has been featured at international festivals (Darmstadt, Tanglewood, Ars Musica, Wien-Modern, Gaudeamus, Huddersfield, Aspen, ISCM, ICMC) and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Nederlands Radio Filharmonisch, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble SurPlus, Arditti, JACK, and Spektral Quartets, dal niente, ICE. He co-founded the intermedia collaborative 'localStyle' with Marlena Novak, and their work has been exhibited internationally (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Chicago, Eindhoven, London, Mexico City, New York, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Warsaw) in festivals, museums, galleries, and public spaces.
Meeting Info
RCMA Lower Level 115: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM
Overview of class
The class will survey and discuss aesthetic positions of the 20th and 21st centuries and examine their impact on contemporary music and sound art. A selection of texts that have influenced cultural production and reception will be read, by writers such as Benjamin, Borges, Foucault, Baudrillard, Higgins, Jameson, Deleuze & Guattari, DeLanda, Morton, and others. A central part of the course discussion will be to interrogate the ways that these ideas support, oppose, and elaborate upon each other, and in particular, to observe how the perspectives presented by these writers have served as fodder for contemporary sonic praxes, and ultimately to construct the recently minted traditions that undergird our own sound-making as we enter the second quarter of the 21st Century.