Music has the capacity to make us aware of the flow of time. Music theorists tried to capture this quality by describing music’s form, which, no matter how we define it, remains an abstraction. In this course we explore how tonal music unfolds in time, looking at the form of pre-tonal music by Lasso and investigating the gradual dramatization of the tonal process in the works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. At the end of the course we will consider the transformation of tonal music in the nineteenth century. Topics include eighteenth-century counterpoint, invention, fugue, minuet, sonata form, and romantic character piece.
Fulfills one of the required music theory sequences for majors. Two lectures and two ear-training sections per week.
Requisite: Music 241 or consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Prof. Moricz.