Because of its invisibility, music is the most direct of all art forms; it can both personal and universal at the same time. A musical work can have a profound effect on us as individuals, and it can offer a sense of community, such as in those many concerts following the tragedy of 9/11. But how do these supposedly abstract sounds, causing
our eardrums to vibrate, elicit such powerful emotions of joy and sorrow, love and hate, the sublime and the banal? The aim of this course, quite simply, is to answer this simple, yet profound question. In discussing various genres of music from classical to popular genres such as jazz, rock, film music, and the like, we will explore how
musicians put together sounds to achieve their expressive goals. This course will help students with no musical background bridge that gap between the explainable and the seemingly inexplicable in music, to translate the nonverbal into the verbal, to be able to articulate what one hears. By achieving this connection between emotion and intellect,
each student will come away from this course with a far more powerful understanding of music as expression. |
