SLO Music Research Project
Student Learning
Outcome: 80% of students in MUSC 1101 will score 70% or higher by analyzing,
comparing, and contrasting specific characteristics of musical compositions from
different periods in history and/or by different composers or artists.
Music
Research Requirements
Create a 15-slide PowerPoint presentation using the attached
SLO Template. This PowerPoint must include information from each of the three
content areas that follow:
1.
Share biographical information on two composers
or artists from two different periods, from the Middle Ages through Contemporary.
Biographical information may include, but is not limited to the following (Note:
these are suggestions—it is understood that some information may be unavailable
for some composers/artists):
·
Place/date of birth and/or death;
·
At least one painting or picture of each
composer/artist;
·
Information on the time period and location in
which the composer/artist lived;
·
Influences on the composer/artist and on the
development of his or her music;
·
Interesting personal information about the
composer/artist;
·
A memorable quote from the composer/artist.
2.
Analyze musical elements/characteristics used by
the two composers/artists. What elements make a work easily recognizable as
being from one of these composers/artists? Characteristics may include the
following:
·
Sound: Pitch, Dynamics, Tone Color;
·
Mood;
·
Instrumentation;
·
Rhythm: Beat, Meter, Accent and Syncopation,
Tempo;
·
Melody;
·
Harmony: Consonance and Dissonance, Chording;
·
Key: Major scale, Minor scale, Chromatic scale,
Modulation, Tonic Key;
·
Texture: Monophonic, Polyphonic, Homophonic;
·
Form;
·
Performance; and
·
Style.
3.
Closely compare/contrast a single work by
one of the two composers/artists to a single work by the other. Use correct
terminology to describe the similarities and differences between the works.
Presentation
Development and Requirements
In the following order, presentations must include:
1.
Title Page with a descriptive title, the
student’s name, and date;
2.
Overview slide that includes the main points in
the presentation (hint-complete this last);
3.
Slides with biographical information, including
portraits/pictures, for each of the two subjects;
4.
Slides analyzing composers’/artists’ use of
musical elements in their bodies of work;
5.
Slides comparing and contrasting a single work
from each subject to the other.
6.
A “So What?” slide. What should the audience do
with this information? What’s the “take-away”?
7.
Works Cited slide(s) with all sources included
in the presentation (must use at least 3 sources in addition to
lectures/the textbook). Include the author, title, date, URL (for sites),
publisher (for books), and page numbers. Do not use Wikipedia! Images in the
presentation must also be cited. Do not copy and paste from sources.
Composers/Artists Suggestions:
Students are not limited to the following, but if other composers/artists are
chosen, be sure to get your instructor’s approval of your choices before you
begin work:
Hildegard of Bingen
Perotin
Francesco Landini
Guillaume de Machaut
Josquin Desprez
Pelestrina
Thomas Weelkes
John Dowland
Francisque Caroubel
Giovanni Gabrieli
Johann Sebastian Bach
Claudio Monteverdi
Henry Purcell
Arcangelo Corelli
Antonio Vivaldi
George Frideric Handel
Joseph Haydn
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Franz Schubert
Robert Schumann
Clara Wieck Shumann
Frédéric Chopin
Franz Liszt
Felix Mendelssohn
Hector Berlioz
Modest Mussorgsky
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Bedřich Smetana
Antonín Dvořák
Johannes Brahms
Georges Bizet
Giuseppe Verdi
Giacomo Puccini
Richard Wagner
Gustav Mahler
Claude Debussy
Maurice Ravel
Igor Stravinsky
Arnold Schoenberg
Alban Berg
Anton Webern
Béla Bartók
Dmitri Shostakovich
Sergei Prokofiev
Charles Ives
George Gershwin
William Grant Still
Aaron Copland
Alberto Ginastera
John Cage
Edgard Varèse
George Crumb
Astor Piazzolla
Philip Glass
John Adams
John Philip Sousa
Harold Arlen
Benjamin Britten
Eric Whitacre
Kaija Saariaho
Jennifer Higdon
Tania León
Dave Brubeck
Scott Joplin
Bessie Smith
King Oliver
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
Dizzy Gillespie
Miles Davis
Glenn Miller
Leonard Bernstein
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe
John Williams
Irving Berlin
Henry Mancini
John Barry
Alfred Newman
Marvin Hamlisch
David Foster
Ennio Morricone
Hans Zimmer
Danny Elfman
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Stephen Schwartz
John Kander and Fred Ebb
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Cole Porter
Stephen Sondheim
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Jonathan Larson
Category: Music appreciation
In Unit 2, we’ve looked at a few specific case studies that allowed us to explore how the concepts and factors of “public,” “private,” “professional,” and “amateur” music-making have applied to various musics, people, communities, and places during the 19th and 20th centuries. In your paper, I’d like you to focus on the “public-ness,” “private-ness,” “professional-ness,” and “amateur-ness” of our case studies, using these things as the primary lens to approach writing about this material.
In your paper, please pick two of our Unit 2 case studies to put in dialogue with one another. The basic goal of this paper is for you to craft an argument as to why/how your two chosen examples relate (or not) to each other insofar as conceptions of the public, private, professional, and amateur are concerned. You could take this as an opportunity to find similarities between two lecture case studies, or you could equally use this as an opportunity to highlight differences between examples. Those two approaches are also not mutually exclusive. I’d also like to give you space to discuss unit themes in the context of more recent musical examples that might be
more directly related to your own personal musical experiences. In your response, please consider the following questions:
What were the primary places where your examples’ musicking took place? How did this physical space contribute to musical activity?
Who was making the music in your chosen examples? How did aspects of training (i.e., professional, amateur) impact the music being made?
Audiences have been a central theme in this unit. Who was listening to the music in your examples? Did specific audiences or fandoms develop around your chosen examples? If so, why? What could the audience/fan activities of your chosen examples tell us about the music’s reception?
Are there gendered aspects of music-making at play? If so, what are they? How did the gender norms/expectations of the time dictate musical practices and/or products?
Do you think the categories of “public,” “private,” “professional,” and “amateur” are neatly applicable to your examples? If so, why? If you think these categorizations do not adequately describe the music and case studies discussed in lecture, please discuss.
Do you think that these categories/labels are useful? Might there be other ways to talk about this historical material?
Additionally, feel free to discuss how your own musical habits and/or musical culture today reflects any of the historical legacies we’ve discussed in class (i.e., how aspects of fandom operate today, how fandoms can be gendered, amateur vs. professional musicking, concert culture and etiquette, etc.). Making transhistorical connections is a great way to connect your own lived experiences to matters of “thinking historically.”
Note: Please do not feel obligated to respond to all of these questions. As I’ve noted in past assignments, I’m not expecting you to address all of the questions above, nor are you limited to them. I’m trying to outline a general area in which your discussion can take place. If you are really interested in one particular aspect and would like to center your response/argument on that one thing, that is absolutely fine (as long as you do so in a clear and well-supported way).
Your response must include at least one appropriate reference/quotation from at least two of the readings from this unit (i.e., you’ll engage with at least two Unit 2 readings in your response).
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Reminders: Your Short Paper should be about 650 words (double-spaced, standard 1-inch margins, standard 12pt, Times New Roman font), submitted in a .doc or .docx format. When referencing/citing readings, you’ll need to include an appropriate citation. Let’s follow a simple, in-text citation style. So, for example, if you’re citing page 9 of a reading written by John Doe, your citation would look like this: (Doe, 9).
Readings:
1. Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin (editors), “Music as a Proper Occupation for the British Female” (excerpts from Music in The Western World: A History in Documents, 1984), pp. 335– 336.
• This is a primary source. This document (from 1814) gives us some information about the widespread trend/trope of gendered aspects of nineteenth-century music-making–– namely, the expectation of middle- and upper-class women trained to play the piano in a private/domestic setting.
2. Tricia Henry, “Punk and Avant-Garde Art,” The Journal of Popular Culture 17, no. 4 (1984), 30–36.
• Themes: punk rock ideals and aesthetics, links between punk music and other avant- garde artforms, musicians responding to their social and political contexts.