Graduate

Practical introduction to graduate study in music focusing on research methods, music sources and bibliography, techniques of scholarly writing, and critical readings in the discipline. Culminates in a public oral presentation on the model of a professional conference paper.

Study and analysis of pre-tonal and tonal music from the Greeks through the 18th century. Course combines a history of theory with analyses that utilize contemporaneous theoretical concepts.

Encompasses various forms of linear analysis, set theory, and selected topics in current analytical practice.

A study of performance practices in medieval music from Gregorian chant to the 14th century. History of instruments and notation. Rhythmic interpretations of chant and a study of improvised practices in organum. Editing and performance of representative works. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

A study of performance practices in Renaissance music, including concepts of mode, musica ficta, ornamentation, text underlay, tempo, and articulation. Basic principles of white notation and a brief history of instruments. Transcription, editing, and performance of a Renaissance work. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

An examination of historically informed performance practice techniques in Baroque music, with attention to aspects of ornamentation, articulation, figured bass realization, dance choreography, rhythm and tempo, and organology. In-class performances and editing of source materials are included. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

Issues in performance practice focusing on selected topics and styles from the time of C.P.E. Bach through Haydn. Development of selected genres and ensembles, sources and editing, and interpretation and improvisation. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

Interpretation of music from Beethoven to Scriabin through examinations of both the musical texts (form, genre, harmony, texture, orchestration, etc.) and the period performance practices. Topics range from interpretative analyses of selected compositions to critical assessments of modern as well as documented 19th- and early 20th-century performances. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

Projects in analysis, notational studies, extended instrumental techniques, and the aesthetics and performance practices associated with composers from Debussy to the present. Reading and listening focuses on the writings and performances of the composers themselves and upon interpretive writings by informed performers of 20th-century music. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

Ethnomusicological field methodology; vocal and instrumental performance practices as related to the ethnomusicological endeavor. Specific topics: philosophical paradigms, historical overview, and definitional issues of ethnomusicology; field research concepts and procedures; studies in instrumental and vocal performance practices of diverse cultures; selected writings of Charles Seeger; transcription and analysis issues; studies in micromusics. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

Intensive examination of the vocal and instrumental performance practices of living musical traditions of Indonesia, Latin America, or other regions. Topics may incorporate soloistic and ensemble traditions, secular and sacred traditions. Research rubrics include tuning, tone quality, performance posture and rhetoric, and improvisational and fixed patterns, as dictated by regional norms. May be repeated for credit in a different area. Offered on a rotational basis with other courses in the 203 series.

Provides graduate students with an opportunity to reflect on and practice a wide variety of pedagogical skills necessary to teach post-secondary music in a number of settings, including rehearsals, lectures, sections, and labs. These skills may include lesson planning, inclusive teaching, active learning, assessment, evaluation, teaching with technology, syllabus design, teaching statement writing, and lesson facilitation. Pedagogical skills modeled through a series of facilitated activities.

Focuses on the mechanics of academic writing (including grammar and syntax) with a focus on styles specific to writing about music. Topics covered will include writing music criticism, developing ethnographic descriptions of musical events (i.e., "thick description"), crafting written descriptions of musical sound, and academic writing for general audiences. Students also utilize the workshop to develop large-scale writing projects specific to their course of study (such as preparatory qualifying exam essays, composition program notes, dissertation and thesis chapters, conference papers, etc.).

Focused analysis of selected works from the Western classical music repertoire, Emphasis is on aural and analytical skills, the modal and tonal foundations of Western music, and the evolution of form and expression.

A broad survey of traditional and vernacular musical practices from around the world with an emphasis on aural analysis and critical listening skills.

Studies in the history, structure, and cultural function of music from cultures as diverse as Global African, central European, Korean, Latin American, Indonesian, and Indian traditions. Examines ways in which composers such as Bartok, Anthony Braxton, Chou Wen-Chung, Lou Harrison, and Takemitsu sought and integrated such influences. Students choose to write critical and analytic essays on musics exhibiting diverse cultural influences, or to compose music that takes a vernacular or non-European music as a model for a compositional/improvisational approach. (Formerly World Music Composition.)

Study of techniques of algorithmic and computer-assisted composition in a variety of contemporary idioms. Topics may include stochastic methods, generative grammars, search strategies, and the construction of abstract compositional designs and spaces. Final project for course involves students formulating and algorithmically implementing their own theoretical assumptions and compositional strategies.

Hands-on music technology composition seminar combining real-time computer music applications with instrumental writing or installation work. Students work closely with an accomplished instrumentalist, learning to compose for the instrument with live electronics technology and developing computer programs that accompany the live performance with computer-generated sound. Students examine significant works in this evolving canon, studying both the score and attendant computer programs as models for new compositions. Students may also engage in the creation of installation works, with or without user interaction, and involving a significant computer sound component. The course is designed for students with any level of familiarity with programming to succeed.

Cross Listed Courses

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students; undergraduates may enroll with permission of the instructor.

Investigations in the psychology of musical listening and awareness. Topics include time and rhythm perception, auditory scene analysis, pattern recognition, and theories of linguistics applied to harmony, melody, and form in the music of diverse cultures. Explores applications of the cognitive sciences to music transcription, analysis, composition, interpretation, and performance practice. Students apply existing knowledge in the cognitive sciences to a developing creative or analytical project, or develop and conduct new experiments.

Examines different sonic practices, challenging culturally pre-formed definitions of music (and how music is experienced). Students familiarize themselves with critical theoretical writings on modern and postmodern theories and sound studies and by studying closely the work of various sound artists and composers. Questions posed include: What were the conditions and attitudes that have sparked and shaped experimental attitudes? How has the development of audio technologies changed how we listen and create sound-based work? What propels someone to experimentation? What are the social and cultural implications of experimental work? How do you experiment in your work?

Explores the ontology of music and relevant topics. Weekly readings in addition to guest speaker(s) and workshops. Everyone is expected to read and digest as much as possible ALL of the assigned readings.

Short compositional exercises incorporating diverse contemporary techniques with emphasis on problem solving and development of compositional skills. Exercises focus on particular strategies for organizing and coordinating aspects of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and other musical dimensions, depending on interests of instructor and students.

Instruction in individual composition offered in the context of a group; composition in large forms of the 20th century with emphasis on techniques since 1950. May be taken by upper-division undergraduates for credit. Interview with instructor at first class meeting.

Explores the transformations and aesthetic possibilities of the digital age through a study of perceptual shifts of the past, from orality to literacy, gift to commodity, pre-colonial to colonial, pre-modern to modern, and the technological revolutions that accompanied these shifts.

An interactive colloquium featuring presentations by faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars on research projects in composition, musicology / ethnomusicology, and performance practice, followed by focused discussion.

Explores trends in musical scholarship in the 20th and 21st centuries, focusing on broad questions and modes of inquiry within historical musicology and ethnomusicology.

Traditional and experimental rhythmic and temporal systems representing diverse cultures, with emphasis on unmeasured, divisive, additive, and multilayer practices in cultural context. Students examine rhythmic composition, improvisation, and rubato performance in selected cultures, including rhythmic notation and transcription systems.

Addresses both song and musical performance as modes of discourse. For song: musical and textual phrase and verse structures and their interrelationships. For musical performances: musical performance as rhetoric and emblem.

Explores ethnography—the description of culture—as it relates to musicology and ethnomusicology, particularly where culture and cultural production are historically dynamic and geographically porous. Examines music with sensitivity to such complexities of context, and the disciplinary points of reference from which cultural difference is calculated. Considers the ideological imprint of methodology on cultural analysis: how to study an unfamiliar music in a way that transcends the measure of difference from the familiar, and, conversely, how to conduct an objective study of a familiar music.

Performance can describe activities in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Recognizing the mappings of this concept, this course examines selected performances and performative behavior through theoretical and critical lenses. Emphasis is on investigating the act and practice of musical performance in multicultural context, and on analyzing scholarly writing as performative discourse.

Comprehensive study of musical instruments including, but not limited to, physical and engineering concepts; theory and methods of description, analysis, systematic, and cultural classifications; physiology and performance techniques; cultural significance; anthropomorphic and zoomorphic symbolism; ritual usage; and more. Previous enrollment in introductory ethnomusicology course (e.g., MUSC 11D) helpful, but not required. Enrollment by interview only, except music M.A. and Ph.D. students. Enrollment restricted to junior and senior music majors, electronic music minors, anthropology majors, or physics majors,and graduate students.

Explores the influence of Asian musics on Western composers from Debussy to Britten to American experimentalists such as Harrison, Cage, Riley, and Rudyard. Questions of cultural appropriation and originality are addressed through specific examples and critical readings.

Examines the life and work of composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). In addition to a close study of his biography and musical compositions, course considers the role of historiography and reception history in the development of his "heroic" status and Romantic cultivation of the "cult of genius." Also critically examines issues having to do with canon construction, positivist research vs. "new musicology," and how Beethoven has been used for political purposes and in popular culture.

Introduces the ways jazz history has been conceptualized, evaluated, and transmitted. Examines the social, intellectual, and cultural formations that have influenced this historiography. Considers the interdisciplinary project of new jazz studies in relation to established and alternative historical narratives.

Seminar focuses on musicological and ethnomusicological work incorporating feminist and queer theories published since the late 1980s. Cross-cultural approach to the examination of music, gender, and sexuality, drawing examples from both Western and non-Western traditions.

In-depth examination of John Cage's interdisciplinary work, his pioneering activity in live electronic technology, and his influence in current multimedia creativity. Approximately one-half of the seminary is devoted to student research and creative projects and reflect Cage's legacy.

Explores San Francisco's musical life during the city's first century, including opera, symphony, Chinese music, musical theater, and other genres. Considerable emphasis on music and society, including issues of race.

Drawing on Jose Esteban Munoz's suggestion that queer politics is most radical when it is looking to the possibilities of the future rather than the pragmatics of the present, this course interrogates the radical vision of postcolonial and queer music-making.

Covers the period in United States history between the Revolutionary Era and the Civil War (approximately 1770-1865). Examines historical and contemporary writings about music in the United States, its composers, musicians, musical institutions, economics, and performance practices.

Dissertation research grant applications and their attenuating dissertation proposals represent the first time most graduate students think through the theoretical issues and strategic planning of a major project and convince others within and outside their field of its academic validity. This seminar (primarily for Ph.D. and D.M.A. students in their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year who are applying for grants to support doctoral research) provides guidance on topics about dissertation research, professional development, and grant applications.

Explores avant-garde experiments with new musical resources by composers centered on the West Coast around the period from 1920 to 1960. The objective is for students to learn about new compositional practices of the time including alternative tuning systems, interactions between music and dance, new instrumental resources (found and invented instruments as well as expanded techniques on traditional instruments), and new approaches to compositional processes. Composers to be studied include Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Johanna Beyer, Lucia Dlugoszewski, and others. Weekly assignments include readings, listening, and analysis.

Through a close study of both primary sources and secondary literature, this graduate seminar examines characteristics of minimalism in music across a broad range of historical eras, geographical settings, and stylistic contexts, as well as in related arts (visual art/sculpture; theater design and production; poetry and literature; dance, etc.). Students engage in original research, resulting in scholarly presentations and written papers.

Through a close study of both primary sources and secondary literature, this graduate seminar examines a variety of topics and issues characteristic of global contemporary and experimental music across a broad range of historical contexts, geographical settings, and stylistic performance practices, as well as in related arts (visual art/sculpture; theater design and production; poetry and literature; dance, etc.). Students engage in original research, resulting in scholarly presentations and written papers.

One hour of individual instrumental or vocal instruction for graduate students. Repertory, technique, and performance practice. A minimum of nine hours per week of individual practice is required. Students are billed a course fee of $650. Admission by audition with the instructor prior to first class meeting.

Participation by graduate students in ensembles. Enrollment limit appropriate to the size of each ensemble. Admission by audition with the instructor prior to first class meeting.

Graduate-level techniques and procedures of computer music composition and visualization. Practical experience in the UCSC electronic music studio with computer composition systems and software, including visualization and interactive performance systems. Extensive exploration of music and interactive graphic programs such as Max/MSP/Jitter. Enrollment is by permission of instructor; appropriate graduate experience required. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Directed reading, which does not involve a term paper. May be repeated once for credit. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Independent study, creative work, or research for graduate students who have not yet begun work on their thesis. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Independent study or research for graduate students. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

A public performance in the student's primary area of interest, related to the thesis or dissertation project, under the supervision of a faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

A thesis consisting of a substantive and original creative or scholarly work, related to the graduate recital, under the supervision of a faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.