MUS 121 • Writing about Music

Spring 2014 Class meeting times: TBA Class location: ACSM, room TBA

Prof. Emily Wilbourne [email protected] ACSM 248 718.997.3813 office hours: W 10:00—11:00, or by appointment

Elvis Costello famously said that writing about music is like dancing to architecture. These are compelling words, though their force relies in part on the irony of the formulation—in effect, the quote does exactly that which it (convincingly) claims is impossible to do, explicating in words the difficulties of transposing musical experience into text.

In this class students will engage with a variety of written accounts of music: novels, poems, descriptive texts, blogs, music journalism, music history, and musicology. Furthermore, students will work to craft written accounts of musical sound and musical meanings, answering questions such as, “How does music mean what it means?” and “How can we put those meanings into words?” In the process, students will learn how to parse and critique the sounding world and to think constructively about the historical materiality of sound and music.

Music 121: Writing about Music is a College Writing 2 course. Instruction about writing is included throughout the semester; students should come to each class, prepared to write, to revise their own work, and to think constructively about the work of their peers.

1 Required texts:

Readings and listening exercises for each class will be available on the class blackboard site. Please ensure that you access the site regularly and that you keep abreast of any announcements.

Recommended texts:

• Richard Bullock, and Francine Weinberg, The Little Seagull Handbook (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011).

• Richard J. Wingall, Writing about Music: An introductory Guide, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009).

• Claire Kehrwald Cook, Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985).

Grade breakdown:

Informal writing exercises during class periods 20 % Essay 01. Musical description 15 % Essay 02. Inferring musical meaning 15 % Essay 03. Performance Review 25 % Essay 04. Cultural critique 25 %

Academic integrity:

Original work is a crucial component of a university education; plagiarism will not be tolerated in any form. All sources must be properly cited, including online resources. Ignorance is not an adequate excuse for mistakes that concern the appropriation of the intellectual work of others. Be warned: any attempt to pass off the work of others as your own will be dealt with to the fullest extent.

The full university statement on Academic Dishonesty, INCLUDING THE PENALTIES FOR SUCH BEHAVIOUR, can be found at http://web.cuny.edu/academics/info‐ central/policies.html.

Attendance:

Students are expected to attend all classes: unexcused absences will have a dramatic impact on your grade. Ensure that you bring adequate documentation to class such that I can decide whether the absence was legitimate (e.g. doctor’s note, police

2 report, vet bills, obituaries, wedding program . . . you get the idea); the absence doesn’t count as “excused” until you have heard back from me IN WRITING. MORE THAN TWO UNEXCUSED ABSENCES WILL RESULT IN YOUR GRADE BEING CAPPED AT A B—REGARDLESS OF YOUR OVERALL AVERAGE.

That said, every student has two “mental health” days (or excused‐unexcused absences) to do with as they wish—without having to justify it to me. You have my blessing to spend the day in bed reading fanfic, go and get your haircut, catch up on sleep or homework, hang out with a grieving friend, go to the NYPL and track down elusive sources for your research papers only TWICE during class time. At all other times I expect to see you in your seat, and paying attention. NOTA BENE: if you decide to take a mental health day on the day an assignment is due, you must arrange for someone to hand your assignment in for you—on time and in hard copy.

Please remember that after any absence it is your responsibility to obtain lecture notes from your fellow students; please do not ask me whether you missed “anything important.”

Note also that PERSISTENT LATENESS WILL BE TAKEN AS AN ABSENCE. I expect you to be in class for the entire period. During this time you will need to refrain from going to the bathroom, taking calls on your cell phone, and popping out to buy snacks. You are welcome to bring food to class and eat it here, just be organised enough that you don’t need to leave the room.

Electronic devices:

Laptop computers and cell phones are not permitted in the classroom.

Americans with disabilities act:

Students with disabilities needing academic accommodation should: (1) register with and provide documentation to the Special Services Office, Kiely 171; (2) bring a letter to the instructor indicating the need for accommodation and details about the type of accommodation required. This should be done during the first week of classes. For more information about services available to Queens students contact: Mirian Detres‐Hickey, Ph.D., Special Services Office, 171 Kiely Hall, 718‐997‐5870 (8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). E‐mail: [email protected]

More information is available at the website: http://sl.qc.cuny.edu/oss/

3 Preliminary class schedule:

WEEK 01. Introduction to class; poetry. reading: • selected Shakespeare poems about music (“Mark the music,” etc.)

WEEK 02. Novels about music I reading: • Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (New York, 1995), first half. in­class exercise(s): • practice building sentences with technical vocabulary (specific models, templates)

WEEK 03. Novels about music II reading: • Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (New York: Riverhead Trade, 1995), second half. in­class exercise(s): • using musical sound as evidence, extract from Heller • description of operatic scene (from dvd, i.e., responding to visuals + music) DUE: Writing assignment 01 ("Developing a vocabulary for musical description")

WEEK 04. Novels about music III reading: • Vikram Seth, An Equal Music (New York, 1999), first half. in­class exercise(s): • how to structure assignment two

WEEK 05. Novels about music IV reading: • Vikram Seth, An Equal Music (New York, 1999), second half. in­class exercise(s): • writing exercises around musical metaphor and emotional response

WEEK 06. Short stories reading: • Honoré de Balzac, “Sarrasine,” in Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Miller (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975), 221‐254. in­class exercise(s): • free writing around musical examples

4 WEEK 07. Short stories (cont.) reading: • Honoré de Balzac, “Sarrasine,” in Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, trans. Richard Miller (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975), 221‐254. in­class exercise(s): • reverse outline/revision planning DUE: DRAFT OF Writing assignment 02 ("Inferring musical meaning")

WEEK 08. Musicology I reading: • Elisabeth Le Guin, “One Bar in Eight: Debussy and the Death of Description,” in Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing, ed. by Andrew dell’Antonio (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 233‐251. in­class exercise(s): • descriptive exercises utilising you‐tube videos (visuals + music + cultural context)

WEEK 09. Journalism I reading: • recent concert reviews taken from The New York Times, and The Village Voice. in­class exercise(s): • “Lede” sentences DUE: Writing assignment 02 ("Inferring musical meaning")

WEEK 10. Journalism II reading: • recent concert reviews taken from The New York Times, and The Village Voice. in­class exercise(s): • first response vs thought out response • auto‐ethnography

WEEK 11. Journalism III reading: • Alex Ross, “Strauss, Mahler, and the Fin de Siècle,” in The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Picador, 2007), 3‐35. in­class exercise(s): • choosing strong verbs

WEEK 12. Journalism IV reading: • Alex Ross, “Dance of the Earth: The Rite, the Folk, le Jazz,” in The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Picador, 2007), 80‐130. DUE: Writing assignment 03 ("Concert review")

5 WEEK 13. Musicology II reading: • Gary Tomlinson, “Ficino’s Magical Songs,” in Music and Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 101‐ 144 in­class exercise(s): • “loose sentences sink papers” • choosing appropriate verbs (re‐vision; use sections of drafts)

WEEK 14. Musicology III reading: • Gary Tomlinson, “Musicoanthropophagy: The Songs of Cannibals,” in The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voice in the Era of European Contact (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2007), 93‐123. in­class exercise(s): • in‐class workshop on portions of assignment drafts DUE: DRAFT OF Writing assignment 04 ("Historical context")

WEEK 15. Musicology IV reading: • [none; please use this time to work on your final papers] in­class exercise(s): • revision exercises

DUE DURING FINALS WEEK: Writing assignment 04 (“Historical context”)

Assessment:

Essay 01. Musical description. 5‐6 pp. Choose a short piece of music (ca. 3 mins) and describe first the piece and then the listening experience in as much detail as possible. Note that the two aspects of this task will require different approaches. In the first instance, concentrate on finding precise language with which to convey the musical features of the piece; use the technical vocabulary that we have defined in class where appropriate (timbre, beat, metre, dynamics, texture, &c.). In the second, search out language that best captures the affect of the music. Ask yourself, “how does this music make me feel?”

Essay 02. Inferring musical meaning. 6‐8 pp. Select a scene from an opera, film, novel or television show in which music provides crucial information that is otherwise absent from the narrative. Analyse the specific musical features of the music and articulate how these musical details affect the

6 meaning(s) engendered by the piece and its narrative context. Be careful to spend no more than two pages describing the scene itself.

Essay 03. Performance Review. 6‐8 pp. Attend a live performance and write about it from two different perspectives (detailed below). In essence this assignment is really two separate writing tasks on the same topic; students should submit two papers stapled together (each 3‐4 pp. long). 1. Ethnographic field notes: Describe the event as a site of cultural production, focussing on the audience, their behaviours, their interactions, and the ways in which they express their appreciation for the music. What conclusions can be drawn from your observations? How did this performance enable certain kinds of experience, whether contemplative or social? What was the meaning of this event in the lives of the participants? 2. Music criticism (concert review) Write a review of the concert utilising a journalistic style. In your evaluation of the performance, be aware of whether you are critiquing the intrinsic qualities of the particular musical “works” under consideration (however defined) or aspects of the specific live performance at which you were present.

Essay 04. Cultural critique. 6‐8 pp. Using one of the historical pieces of music that we have studied, construct an argument about the culture within which the work was created and appreciated. I am interested in your interpretation about how this music was utilised by contemporary audiences and what the music meant to the listeners (and/or performers) during that time. How did the formal features of this music enable certain kinds of behaviours? What does insight does this music give us into the culture of the past?

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