In this seminar we will engage in detailed analyses of selected works from the free-atonal and serial music of Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg, whose music forms the core repertoire of the Second Viennese School. In support of our analyses, regular readings will be assigned from theoretical articles and texts by such writers as Kathryn Bailey, Reginald Smith Brindle, David Headlam, George Perle, Josef Rufer, and Joseph Straus; selections from Schönberg’s collected essays and letters will also be included.

After an introductory unit on post-tonal analytical techniques, weekly music-theoretical readings and analyses will serve to generate discussions and inform large in-class analyses. Students will be required to select a research topic related to the course (a particular piece from a given list or, with approval, one of their own choosing) and develop their analyses into a music-theoretical presentation and ultimately an analytical term paper. Topics need not be confined to the three composers mentioned above; rather, they may extend to other composers whose works in some way owe their theoretical organization to the Second Viennese School. To this end, attention will be given to such composers as Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose work can be understood in many ways as direct proliferations or extensions of the Second Viennese School.

Although not required, students will be encouraged to offer informal in-class performances of works studied (or portions thereof) in order to provide closer personal connections and aural relationships with the repertoire.

While the term "post-tonal" often suggests the innovations of the Second Viennese School and serial composers, post-tonal musical practice adorns a much wider selection of repertoire. Despite stylistic differences, this shared departure from the common practice tonal tradition brings the possibility for shared analytic methodologies. This semester, we will examine a diverse selection of primarily mid to late twentieth-century music from a set-theoretical perspective. Reading and analysis will introduce the principles of set theory and some of its extensions as found in recent scholarship. Our effort aims to elucidate aspects of post-tonal works that may inform interpretation, reveal compositional process, and invite broader historical and aesthetic consideration.

Repertoire will include works by Boulez, Carter, Dutilleux, Lindberg, Messiaen, Pärt, Reich, and Rochberg, among others.

An analytical seminar devoted to the music of French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), whose immense, influential body of work engages with Roman Catholic theology, birdsong, rhythm, and synesthetic color. A devout Roman Catholic composer whose oeuvre includes opera, orchestral and choral works, organ and piano literature, song cycles, and instrumental chamber music, Messiaen remains of the most important and original figures in twentieth-century composition.

Messiaen’s own theoretical writings assist in articulating his highly original musical vision, expressed by means of distinctive terminology (e.g., modes of limited transposition, personnages rhythmiques, non-retrogradable rhythms).

The first portion of the seminar will consist of gaining familiarity with Messiaen’s theoretical writing with respect to his own music; the second will explore the extensive analytical literature on Messiaen (e.g., Robert Sherlaw Johnson, Peter Hill, Jonathan Bernard, Christopher Dingle, Roger Nichols, Carla Huston Bell, Anthony Pople). These studies will be supplemented by focused analysis of selected Messiaen works throughout the semester.

In the final weeks, seminar members will give a presentation on a piece or topic relevant to Messiaen. A term paper is the capstone project.

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), composer of several operas which have enjoyed a continual place in the operatic repertoire since their premiere, is generally celebrated as a supremely gifted melodist with a keen dramatic sense. The clear, logical, economical structure of his scenes, his sophisticated harmonic language, as well as his substantial gifts as an orchestrator, are often relegated to secondary consideration, however.

This course seeks to discover the structure and language (use of motives, return of ideas, and harmonic language) underlying Puccini’s scores, shedding light on this composer’s impressive compositional technique. The seminar will analyze a small number of operas in detail. Tosca will be considered first, particularly as it corresponds with Washington National Opera’s production in September 2011. Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West will also be studied, in addition to passages from other operas as time and interest permit (such as completing the unfinished Turandot).

The seminar will analyze Puccini’s harmonic language and scene structures. Audio, production video, secondary literature and score study will aid seminar members in developing an informal grammar of dramatic structure, exploring how Puccini employs and capitalizes on musical devices to serve dramatic purposes.

Students in the seminar will present on a topic related to the course, and a term paper will explore a Puccini topic in detail.

The Missa pro defunctis or "Requiem Mass" has become one of the most important genres of sacred music, one developed by many composers since 1700. Though we now consider the Requiem a somewhat standard genre with specific texts, the early history of this work was much more varied. The genre was intertwined with the liturgy and ceremonial of Catholic tradition and the various local "uses" of chant. Before the Council of Trent, churches in many areas of Europe maintained a distinct version of the chants for the Requiem Mass; during this era, composers who wrote polyphonic settings of the Requiem thus had to conform to the various local versions of the Mass for the church in which their work would be performed. Though various important Renaissance composers (including Dufay, Ockeghem, La Rue, and the Iberian composer Escobar) are known to have written polyphonic Requiems, this genre would be defined by the Spaniard Cristóbal Morales (d. 1553); his five-voice Mass became the first widely known Requiem performed throughout much of Western Europe and later in Colonial Latin America. Morales also wrote a number of items for the parallel service of Matins for the dead. Among these pieces is the first European polyphonic work known to have been sung in the Western Hemisphere. In Latin American as in Europe, these Renaissance works proved amazingly long lasting in the repertory; Morales’ works seemingly continued to be performed in a number of places in a living performance tradition until the twentieth century.

This seminar will examine these early pieces in terms of each composer’s approach to setting the required texts and chants. How did each find ways to structure such a Mass in polyphonic music? We will examine the development of the chants and liturgy for the Office for the Dead and how the theological discussions of Purgatory and the "Good Death" affected the desire for music to elaborate these services. The early traditions in Latin America will be discussed with the important manuscript sources examined. Each student will plan their own in-depth research project related to one of the early settings of the Mass or items for the Office. Students will present a formal in-class presentation and a significant research paper at the end of the term.

This course offers an exciting opportunity to be part of the creative force behind a production of one of the most magnificent operas of the seventeenth century, Monteverdi’s final opera L’incoronazione di Poppea. The course is directly tied into a production of the opera by the CUA Opera Theater, which will occur on April 17-19; the class meetings, conducted by Dr. Weaver with the assistance of Rachel Barham (co-director of the production), will directly impact what happens on stage in the production.

One of the most vexing issues facing anybody who wishes to perform this opera today is that of authenticity; a huge variety of musical and textual sources for this opera have survived, including ten different libretti (only one of which can be definitively connected to the original production) and two scores (both of which were copied after Monteverdi’s death and neither of which is connected to the original production). The first half of this course will be spent engaging with original sources in order to create the performance edition that will be used for our production. The goal will be not to unearth Monteverdi’s intentions or to recreate the exact version performed in the seventeenth century, but to craft a workable version of the opera that best presents the important messages and meaning of the opera.

The issue of meaning, however, is another vexing yet fascinating aspect of this opera. What are modern performers to make of a work in which the virtuous characters suffer, the wicked characters win out in the end, and corruption and unchecked passion seem to reign supreme? The second half of the course will explore this issue by focusing on the characters of the opera, reviewing recent research and exploring individual scenes in depth to determine how these characters should be presented on the stage in order to convey a coherent message to the audience. There will also be guest lectures by prominent scholars of seventeenth-century Italian opera, including Ellen Rosand, Professor of Music at Yale University and author of Monteverdi’s Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy (2007); Tim Carter, David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (2002); and Wendy Heller, Professor of Music at Princeton University and author of Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (2003).

Class meetings will be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations. Final projects will vary depending on the student. Some students may choose to write an independent research paper, while others, such as cast and crew members, may have final projects deriving from their involvement in the production (including performance practice issues); others may choose to write a take-home final exam. Some final projects may also involve independent preparation of opera scenes, the writing of program notes for the production, or participation in the Opera Preview.

An exploration of scholarly approaches to the intersection of music and diplomacy, primarily focusing on the early modern era (especially the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). Special attention will be given to musical sources, examining them as cultural artifacts that served diplomatic purposes above and beyond their function as preservers of musical notation.

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations; students will receive weekly reading and listening assignments and will also occasionally write short papers. There is also a final independent research paper on a topic of the student’s choice, which need not be limited to the early modern era or musical sources.

Robert Schumann has long been recognized as one of the masters of the early Romantic Lied. This seminar is an in-depth look at Schumann’s song output, organized around the poets of some of his most beloved songs and song cycles: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Adelbert von Chamisso, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, and Heinrich Heine. Attention will be paid to both the poetry and the music, focusing especially on the text–music relationship and the construction of musical meaning within Schumann’s Romantic aesthetic. Other topics to be covered in the course are issues in the song cycle as conceived by Schumann (narrative, meaning, and coherence), as well as the stylistic shift in Schumann’s later Lieder. Throughout the semester we will approach the works both through critical evaluations of the work of other scholars and through our own hands-on engagement with the poetry and music.

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations; students will receive weekly reading and listening assignments and will also occasionally write short papers. There is also a final independent research paper on a topic of the student’s choice, which need not be limited to the songs of Robert Schumann.

Rome boasted one of the richest, most vibrant musical centers in seventeenth-century Europe. Unlike many city-states, where musical patronage was confined primarily to a single central court, Rome was home to a variety of musical establishments: the Papal court was of course the most famous, but no less lavish were the chapels of the prominent Cardinals vying to be the next Pope, as well as those of prominent religious orders, especially the Jesuits and the Oratorians.

This seminar shall examine three important genres of music cultivated in seventeenth-century Rome, all of which partake of the sacred in different ways: the Latin motet, the Italian and Latin oratorio, and the Italian opera on a religious theme. We will place each genre into the rich religious, political, and cultural context of Rome, focusing on the first half of the seventeenth century. Much emphasis will be placed on context, with detailed examinations of the noble and ecclesiastical patrons of music and the functions that the genres served for the patrons, but just as much attention will also be given to close musical analyses of specific works. Our analyses will encompass a variety of issues and analytical techniques—such as text choice, text–music relationship, harmonic symbolism, formal–structural analysis, and rhetorical expression of the affects—all with the aim of elucidating musical meaning and understanding how the compositions would have spoken to seventeenth-century listeners.

Throughout the semester, each student shall also engage closely with a printed primary source (in facsimile), dealing with such issues as transcription, text and music editing, and performance issues, as well as putting the source into its context and teasing larger meaning out of it.

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations and short papers. Students shall have weekly reading and analytical assignments, in addition to assignments relating to their primary source. There will also be a final independent research paper; this may be related to the primary source, but it could also be another topic entirely, of the student’s choosing.

This seminar offers students a focused immersion into the experience of applying contemporary literary theory to music. Our theory of choice will be narratology, the theory and study of narrative texts, which has been a mainstay in the musicological literature for over three decades but has rarely been applied to texted music. In our class meetings, we will use narratology to explore a genre that has received almost no narratological attention, the Romantic Lied, with our primary goal being hermeneutic, opening up new interpretations of the works within their aesthetic context. The course will be divided into three roughly equal parts: the first part will be devoted to reading seminal works of narratology, the second part will focus on the application of narrative theory to individual settings of various types of poems (ballads, lyric poetry, etc.), and the last part will focus on three of Robert Schumann’s greatest song cycles: Dichterliebe, the Heine Liederkreis (Op. 24), and the Eichendorff Liederkreis (Op. 39).

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations; students will receive weekly reading and analysis assignments and will also occasionally write short papers. There is also a final independent research paper applying narratology to a substantial texted musical work of the student’s choice, which need not be limited to the Romantic era.

The seventeenth century was a critical time for the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna, as the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) tested the limits of their absolute authority. The nature of this authority changed throughout the century: The reign of Ferdinand II saw glorious military victories at the start of the war, that of Ferdinand III saw mounting military defeats and a less-than-glorious end of the war, and the reign of Leopold I saw the triumphant reassertion of Habsburg power by the end of the century. Through all of this, the patronage of music played an important role in projecting a positive public image and helping to maintain imperial authority.

This seminar shall examine the sacred vocal music written for these three Habsburg emperors, placing it into the rich religious, political, and cultural context of seventeenth-century Vienna, as well as comparing it to music composed in other important musical centers. While much emphasis will be placed on context, just as much attention will also be given to close musical analyses of specific works. Our analyses will encompass a variety of issues and analytical techniques—such as text choice, text-music relationship, harmonic symbolism, formal-structural analysis, and rhetorical expression of the affects—all with the aim of elucidating musical meaning and understanding how the compositions would have spoken to seventeenth-century listeners.

Throughout the semester, each student shall also engage closely with a printed primary source (in facsimile), dealing with issues such as transcription, text and music editing, and performance issues, as well as putting the source into its context and teasing larger meaning out of it.

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations. Students shall have weekly reading and analytical assignments, in addition to assignments relating to their primary source. There will also be a final independent research paper; this may be related to the primary source, but it could also be another topic entirely, of the student's choosing.

Richard Strauss’s place in general music history surveys is normally confined to the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, with discussion limited to the tone poems and his two operas Salome and Elektra. Yet Strauss enjoyed a long, active career (composing right up to his death in 1949), throughout which he was widely hailed as Germany’s most famous living composer. He lived through both World Wars and the rise and fall of the Third Reich, all of which had a profound influence on his compositional career.

Why do music history surveys ignore the post-1910 Strauss? Was he really outside of the mainstream of western musical history? Is it possible to reconcile his output with the dominant aesthetic trends and musical styles of his day? This course will seek to answer these questions by examining specific works from throughout Strauss’s career in light of what else was going on musically, aesthetically, and politically in twentieth-century Europe. Class discussions will be focused on the music itself, but always in the context of Strauss’s life and relationships. Works to be covered include well-known early works such as the tone poems Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche and Also sprach Zarathustra and the operas Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, but we will also cover many of the lesser-known operas and instrumental works from throughout Strauss’s later career.

This seminar shall be an in-depth examination of the seminal song cycles of the early-nineteenth century, focusing solely on the giants of German Romanticism. The primary works to be studied are Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, and Schumann's Frauenliebe und -Leben and Dichterliebe.

Each song cycle shall be approached from a variety of angles, including textual and musical analysis, historical and cultural context, and musical meaning (in individual songs and in the cycle as a whole). Throughout the course we will also be discussing larger issues that cut across all of the works to be studied, applying the same basic questions to each work; included among these are the issues of coherence and narrative. Equal emphasis shall be placed on our own examinations of the works and on existing scholarship; discussions of our own ideas will be just as important as discussions and critical analyses of studies by other scholars.

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations; students will receive weekly reading and listening assignments and will also occasionally write short papers. There will also be a final independent research paper, preferably on a work not covered in our class material. Term papers on works that technically lie outside the scope of the course (such as works from other countries or from the twentieth century) will be permitted, provided the paper deals with issues similar to those covered in class.

The seventeenth century was an extremely turbulent time in all aspects of European life: the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) ravaged central Europe and affected all of the major European powers; the emerging Baroque style shocked audiences and challenged long-standing artistic precepts; and absolute rulers struggled to maintain their political authority in the face of rapidly changing social structures. Nor could the Catholic Church escape the turbulence of the age. Still facing the threat of the strengthening Protestant faiths, the Church found herself embroiled in political and cultural intrigues as she struggled to maintain her supremacy as the spiritual (and temporal) leader of the western world.

This seminar shall examine the sacred vocal music of the 1630s, 40s, and 50s in this rich religious, political, and cultural context, focusing on three major political and religious centers: Rome, Venice, and Vienna. Sacred music was viewed by Church and Monarch alike as a valuable tool in overcoming the turbulence of the age, and each of these centers showcased a remarkable variety of approaches and solutions in the use of sacred music toward larger religious and political aims.

Emphasis shall be placed first on the cities themselves; we will examine a variety of scholarly approaches (both musical and non-musical) that have been formulated to help understand the issues faced by church and political leaders -- and citizens -- during the mid-seventeenth century. We will then use this as a frame of reference for close musical analyses of sacred compositions by leading composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Giacomo Carissimi, and Giovanni Felice Sances. Our analyses will encompass a variety of issues and analytical techniques -- such as text choice, text-music relationship, harmonic symbolism, formal-structural analysis, and rhetorical expression of the affects -- all with the aim of elucidating musical meaning and understanding how the compositions would have spoken to seventeenth-century listeners.

Throughout the semester, each student shall also engage closely with a printed primary source (in facsimile), dealing with issues such as transcription, text and music editing, and performance issues, as well as putting the source into its context and teasing larger meaning out of it.

Classes shall be conducted primarily as discussion, with frequent student presentations. Students shall have weekly reading and analytical assignments, in addition to assignments relating to their primary source. There will also be a final independent research paper; this may be related to the primary source, but it could also be another topic entirely, of the student's choosing.