Undergraduate Program
Selected Course Offerings:
Ethnomusicology
A number of electives in Ethnomusicology are offered on a regular basis. They include:
Music 225: Javanese Gamelan Performance.
Professor Sarah Weiss.
A study of Javanese musical genres from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Introduction to the playing techniques of multiple instruments. Survey of theoretical and aesthetic discourses on gamelan and other Indonesian performance. Members of the class form the nucleus of the Yale Javanese Gamelan Ensemble.
Music 376: World Music Theories: Practice and Aesthetics.
Professor Sarah Weiss
Survey of the musical processes of various mode-based musical systems, selected from the Indian raga, Arabic maqam, Irish tune-family, Javanese pathet, Persian dastgah, and Vietnamese Dieu. Readings about eh musical cultures are combined with notation and analysis of the music as well as discussion about the related aesthetics systems.
Music 397: Popular Music: The Experimental Tradition.
Professor Michael Veal.
Examination of post–World War II traditions of experimental music (in both Western art music and jazz) as they influenced American and European popular music produced between 1965 and 1985. Album-length musical works studied in cultural, musical, and technological context. Artists include Can, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, Glenn Branca, Faust, and the Velvet Underground.
Music 420: Gendering Musical Performance.
Professor Sarah Weiss.
A critical examination of the discourse on gender, sexuality and music. Grounded in the cross-cultural detail of specific musical genres and performers, we will examine the ways in which issues of race, class, ethnicity, spirituality, and embodiment intersect with gender in the shaping of musical cultures and aesthetics.
