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

Topic

Theory of Melody

Instructors

Danuta Mirka

Meeting Info

RCMA Lower Level 113: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

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.

Registration Requirements

To succeed in this class, students should have obtained the grade of 90% or more in the undergraduate music theory sequence.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the class the student will be expected to have learned the eighteenth-century terminology related to phrase structure and form and have acquired the ability of using it in music analysis in order to describe and explain a range of means by which eighteenth-century composers crafted their pieces.