FEIT INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR
Words and Music
IDC 4050 JL13H M/W 10:45-12:00
Primary Texts for classroom study
Available in the Baruch College Bookstore and Shakespeare & Co. for student purchase:
Leskov, Nikolai. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Intro and Trans. Robert Chandler. London: Hesperus, 2003. Shakespeare, Macbeth. The New Folger Library. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, 1992. Verdi, Macbeth. Claudio Abbado, cond., live performance from La Scala, Milan, 1975. Allegro CD OPD-1337.
Essays to be distributed through Blackboard will be available in Course Documents. Other readings will be provided as class handouts. We will be preparing these throughout the semester; they are not all included in the syllabus as of the first day of classes. Musical selections will be provided on specially created FREE course cds.
Course Learning Goals
By the end of the semester students will be able to: listen more closely to words and music and relationships between them; identify the elements of music and poetry that appear in a given work of art; analyze how these aesthetic elements shape an understanding of the work; understand different approaches to setting words to music and the ways that different approaches relate to each other; articulate artistic judgments based on this understanding.
Tentative Schedule for Classroom Study and Discussion
Overview: The topic and some approaches to viewing it critically
1. Monday, 30 January – Introduction
EXTRA SESSION: Introduction to musical terminology, for those who answered “no” to most of the questions sent around on e-mail. Time to be determined at first class meeting.
Focus: The Example of Orpheus
2 2. Wednesday, 1 February – Ovid, Metamorphoses, X:1ff. and XI:1ff.; Selections from Plato, The Republic, as handouts
3. Monday, 6 February – Words as mistress of music: Monteverdi, Madrigal: Cruda Amarelli; Peri, Euridice (1600) and Monteverdi, Orfeo (1607); readings and scores available in Course Documents. Audio tracks on class cd.
4. Wednesday, 8 February – Euridice, Orfeo
5. Wednesday, 15 February – From the Florentine Camerata to Handelian Opera. student report on Handel’s career
6. Tuesday, 21 February – Sampling Handel: “Orpheus could lead the savage race,” from Dryden, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1739); “O ruddier than the cherry,” from Acis and Galatea (1720);. Handouts: Dryden, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day.
7. Wednesday, 22 February -- From Handel to Gluck: Sampling Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762); student report on the significance of Gluck
Focus: Songs
8. Monday, 27 February -- The Art Song: German Lieder Student report on Schubert; Songs and Song Cycles Sung versions of Goethe, Ganymed: Schubert/Wolf Goethe, Kennst du Das Land: Schubert, Thomas, Wolf, on class cd; handout: selections, Kenneth Wilton, Goethe and Schubert: The Unseen Bond (Portland, OR: Amadeus, 1999).
9. Wednesday, 1 March – Selections from Schumann, Dichterliebe. Student report on Hugo Wolf.
10. Monday, 6 March – The American Musical Tradition: writing for the stage Student report on Cole Porter; from Cole Porter, The Gay Divorce (1932), Night and Day; Jerome Kern, All The Things You Are; an introduction to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Reading available through Course Documents: Philip Furia, “The Tinpantithesis of Poetry: Cole Porter,” The Poets of Tin Pan Alley (New York: Oxford UP 1990).
11. Wednesday, 8 March – The evolution of the Broadway musical; Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story (1956); Stephen Sondheim, Send in the Clowns (from A Little Night Music, 1973); student report on Stephen Sondheim
12. Monday, 13 March -- The Art Song in English: guest artist, contemporary composer Lee Hyla
13. Wednesday, 15 March – A revolution in popular music: The Beatles 3 Yesterday (1965); In My Life (1965); Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967); student report on The Beatles. Deryck Cooke, “The Lennon-McCartney Songs,” handout.
14. Monday, 20 March – Recent trends in popular music.
Focus: Hearing the Music of Macbeth
15. Wednesday, 22 March – Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605-06), Acts 1-2; student report on Shakespeare’s sources
THURSDAY, 23 March CLUB HOURS Class viewing of video of Verdi’s Macbeth (1847; revised 1865)
16. Monday, 27 March – Shakespeare, Macbeth, Acts 3-4; student report on “equivocation” in Jacobean England
17. Wednesday, 29 March – Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5; student report on Verdi’s political positions Readings, selections from Julian Budden, Verdi, and Graham Bradshaw, “Operatic Macbeths: what we could still learn from Verdi,” in Course Documents; listen to Acts I-III of the CD of Verdi’s Macbeth.
Ethics Week at Baruch: words and music as reflections of values
18. Monday, 3 April – Selections from Verdi’s Macbeth. Listen to Acts IV-V of Verdi’s Macbeth.
19.Wednesday, 5 April – Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865); student report on Shostakovich’s political positions
Thursday, 6 April CLUB HOURS Class viewing of video of Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
20. Monday, 10 April – Selections from Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
S P R I N G B R E A K
Focus: The Music of Films
21. Monday, 24 April – Alexander String Quartet on Shostakovich
22. Wednesday, 26 April – Wagner, Tristan – Prelude and Liebestod; student report on Wagner
Thursday, 27 April CLUB HOURS Class viewing of video of Vertigo 4 Saturday, 29 April, 4-6 p.m. Free Event at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, a panel discussion celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Shostakovich.
23. Monday, 1 May -- Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo; student report on Alfred Hitchcock
24. Wednesday, 3 May -- Vertigo
25. Monday, 8 May -- Musical scores for filmed adaptations of Shakespearean plays; student report on the collaboration of William Walton and Laurence Olivier for Olivier’s versions of Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955)
Focus: Student Presentations
26. Wednesday, 10 May
27. Monday, 15 May
28. Wednesday, 17 May
There will be no formal final examination in this class.
Course Requirements and Percentages of Final Grades
--lively class participation and questions to be completed on the Blackboard Discussion Board (20%) -- one ten-minute individual presentation to the class on a topic from list distributed in class (10%) --one exploratory essay, to be written by Monday, 27 February (20%) --two 4-5 page essays, each worth 15% (30%) The first paper, on a song, will be due Friday, 24 March The second paper, having to do with Macbeth, will be due Friday, 27 April --long-range term assignment: To be presented as a work-in-progress to the class during one of the last three meetings of the semester and then handed in as completed work on Friday, 19 May (20%)
ACADEMIC HONESTY: The Feit Interdisciplinary Seminar Program fully supports Baruch College's policy on Academic Honesty, which states, in part:
"Academic dishonesty is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Cheating, forgery, plagiarism and collusion in dishonest acts undermine the college's educational mission and the students' personal and intellectual growth. Baruch students are expected to bear individual responsibility for their work, to learn the rules and definitions that underlie the practice of academic integrity, and to uphold its ideals. Ignorance of the rules is not an acceptable excuse for disobeying them. Any student who attempts to compromise or devalue the academic process will be sanctioned." In this class, any evidence of plagiarism, however minute it may be, will earn you an F grade on the work in question and will result in your being formally reported to the Office of the Dean of Students. . For discussion of plagiarism and clarification of its parameters, see Ann Raimes, 5 Keys for Writers, pp. 116-128 (4th ed.), or see the college’s plagiarism tutorial, available at http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/plagiarism/index.htm.
Before the start of class on Wednesday, February 1, send a Word document to the Digital Dropbox on the Blackboard site truthfully stating that you have read the paragraph on academic dishonesty quoted above, that you have understood it, and that you agree to act according to the principles it expresses.
Office Hours
Paula Berggren [email protected] VC 7-271 646-312-3931 Tuesdays, 11:00-12:00, Wednesdays, 3:00-4:00, and by appointment
Gary Hentzi [email protected] VC 8-265 646-312-3890 By appointment
Dennis Slavin [email protected] Room 712 135 East 22nd Street 646-660-6504 By appointment