# A 12-Week Self-Study Curriculum in Musicology *Using the prototypes and report in this directory as primary instruments of study.* --- ## Orientation This guide is a twelve-week, roughly sixty-hour structured introduction to musicology, built around the artefacts in this directory: the integrating report at `REPORT.md` and six prototypes that operationalise pitch-class set theory, neo-Riemannian transformation, tuning, the discipline's institutional history, fretboard synthesis, and polyrhythm. Each week pairs about three hours of *core* engagement (reading plus hands-on prototype work) with about two hours of *stretch* listening and supplementary reading. There are no formal prerequisites. Basic ear training and treble-clef literacy help, but if you lack both, the prototypes will get you to every exit criterion. The interactive tools matter because musicology is a discipline of *sound* as much as of text — reading about parsimonious voice leading without hearing a hexatonic cycle is like reading about wine without drinking any. Treat the prototypes as laboratory instruments, and do the writing: thirty-six reflection paragraphs across twelve weeks is the spine of an actual education. ### Tools and materials Headphones in a quiet room; the prototypes (open `index.html`); staff paper or MuseScore; a streaming subscription with classical and global catalogues (IDAGIO, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music); a notebook; library access for a handful of cited books. --- ## Week 1: Foundations — What Is Music? What Is Musicology? ### Why this week Musicology is younger than you might think — academically organised only since 1885 — and most contemporary arguments trace back to tensions in its founding moment. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Read REPORT.md sections I, II, and III (one hour). Spend forty-five minutes in `prototypes/04-timeline.html`: filter to "institutions" 1880–1950, then to "publications" — locate Adler 1885, Hornbostel–Sachs 1914, Forte 1973, Kerman 1985, McClary 1991, Ewell 2020. Locate Joseph Kerman, *Contemplating Music* (Harvard, 1985; UK title *Musicology*); read chapter 1 (an hour) — Kerman is the hinge between "old" and "new" musicology. If unavailable, the introduction to Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, eds., *Rethinking Music* (Oxford, 1999). Close with fifteen minutes in `prototypes/01-pcset-calculator.html` and `prototypes/03-tuning-lab.html` to make the interfaces familiar. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Lydia Goehr, *The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works* (Oxford, 1992), introduction and chapter 8. ### Listening list - Hildegard von Bingen, *Ordo Virtutum* (c. 1151) — Sequentia, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 1998 - J. S. Bach, *Goldberg Variations* BWV 988 — Glenn Gould, Sony 1981 - Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 131 — Quartetto Italiano, Philips 1968 - Stravinsky, *Le Sacre du printemps* — Boulez / Cleveland Orchestra, DG 1991 - John Cage, *4'33"* (1952) ### Reflection questions 1. What does each of Adler's three branches do well, and what does each tend to miss? 2. Kerman accuses formalist analysis of evasion. What of, and is the accusation fair? 3. After Hildegard, Bach, and Cage, what definition of "music" do you reach for — and where does it fail? ### Exit criteria You can articulate the difference between historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and systematic musicology, and name a founding figure for each. You can locate the New Musicology (early 1980s) and explain in two sentences what it reacted against. --- ## Week 2: Acoustics and Tuning ### Why this week Before any argument about meaning or canon, there is a physical fact: a vibrating air column, the small-integer ratios that govern its harmonics, and centuries of compromise mapping those ratios onto fixed-pitch instruments. Tuning immunises you against assuming the equal-tempered piano is "natural." ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Open `prototypes/03-tuning-lab.html` for an hour. Module A: click partials 1–16, then play "stack 1..N" at N=4, 8, 16. Module B: run the major-scale comparator across 12-TET, 5-limit JI, Pythagorean, and ¼-comma meantone; listen for the major third (sweet in JI and ¼-comma, sharp in Pythagorean, fourteen cents wide in 12-TET). Module C: drag the two oscillators past each other and listen to the beating slow, stop, and reverse. Re-read REPORT.md section VIII first half and section IV item 7 (thirty minutes). Then Hermann von Helmholtz, *On the Sensations of Tone* (1863; Dover reprint of the Ellis translation, 1954), part one chapter one and skim chapter five (ninety minutes). ### Stretch (~2 hours) Marc Perlman, *Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory* (California, 2004), introduction and chapter 1. For deeper acoustics, Thomas Rossing, *The Science of Sound* (Pearson, multiple editions). ### Listening list - Wendy Carlos, *Beauty in the Beast* (1986) - Lou Harrison, *La Koro Sutro* (1972) - Harry Partch, *Delusion of the Fury* (1969) - Ben Johnston, String Quartet No. 4 *Amazing Grace* (1973) — Kepler Quartet, New World Records - La Monte Young, *The Well-Tuned Piano* (1987 recording, Gramavision) ### Reflection questions 1. Why did equal temperament win in the West? What did musicians gain, and give up? 2. Helmholtz explains dissonance as roughness from coincident partials beating. What does this get right, and where does it strain? 3. Which scale sounded most "in tune" in the Tuning Lab — and what does that tell you about your listening history? ### Exit criteria You can place at least four tuning systems on a continuum (12-TET, 5-limit JI, Pythagorean, ¼-comma meantone) and explain in plain language why a perfect fifth and a major third cannot both be pure on a 12-key keyboard. You can identify beating by ear within a few cycles per second. --- ## Week 3: Modes, Scales, and the Chromatic Universe ### Why this week Tonality is not the only game, and within tonality the choice of scale shapes everything else. This week runs from diatonic modes through symmetric scales of late 19th- and 20th-century music, into the doorway of pitch-class set theory. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) An hour in `prototypes/05-guitar.html`. With Standard tuning, cycle the overlay through Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian — play each slowly along the second string and pluck the tonic to feel each mode's colour. Switch to whole-tone, octatonic, hexatonic; symmetric scales have no tritone privilege. Then DADGAD with a Lydian scale — same pitches, different hand. Read REPORT.md sections V and VI (forty-five minutes). Then Dmitri Tymoczko, *A Geometry of Music* (Oxford, 2011), introduction and chapter 1 (ninety minutes) — his exposition of scale-as-object is the clearest English-language introduction. Close with twenty minutes in `prototypes/01-pcset-calculator.html`: input a major scale (C D E F G A B), then a hexatonic (C D♯ E G A♭ B), then an octatonic (C D♭ D♯ E F♯ G A B♭). Note the unusual interval vectors of the symmetric collections. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Robert Gjerdingen, *Music in the Galant Style* (Oxford, 2007), introduction and Romanesca chapter. For a philosophical detour, Jonathan Cross, *The Stravinsky Legacy* (Cambridge, 1998). ### Listening list - Debussy, *Voiles* (Préludes Book I, 1909) — Krystian Zimerman, DG 1994 - Messiaen, *Quatuor pour la fin du temps* (1941), movement 1 — Tashi, RCA 1976 - Bartók, *Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta* (1936) — Reiner / Chicago, RCA 1958 - John Coltrane, "Naima" — *Giant Steps*, Atlantic 1959 - Joni Mitchell, "A Case of You" — *Blue*, Reprise 1971 ### Reflection questions 1. The diatonic modes have different "feels" despite using the same pitch collection. Is the difference produced by the tonic, the surrounding harmony, or the listener? 2. What does it mean to call a scale "symmetric"? Pick one and write a paragraph on what its symmetry does *to* music written in it. 3. Which alternate guitar tuning surprised you most, and why? ### Exit criteria You can play, sing, or hum the seven diatonic modes from a given tonic. You can identify whole-tone, octatonic, and hexatonic collections by ear in unfamiliar repertoire often enough to make a useful first guess. --- ## Week 4: Tonality and Form, 1700–1900 ### Why this week The Western tonal tradition between Bach and Mahler is the most heavily theorised territory in the discipline. Mastery of functional harmony and sonata form takes years; the goal here is enough orientation that the textbook concepts have referents. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Read REPORT.md section V (thirty minutes). Then a textbook: J. Peter Burkholder, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca, *A History of Western Music* (10th edition, Norton, 2019), chapters on the Classical period and early-19th-century instrumental music (ninety minutes). Richard Taruskin's *The Oxford History of Western Music* (5 vols., Oxford, 2005; abridged with Christopher H. Gibbs, 2019) is the polemical alternative. Spend forty-five minutes with a single sonata-form movement, score in hand — Mozart, Piano Sonata in C major K. 545, first movement. Locate first theme, move to dominant, second theme, development's modulations, and recapitulation's return-and-resolution. Open `prototypes/02-tonnetz.html` for fifteen minutes — just navigate the lattice and observe common-tone retention geometrically. Week 7 returns here. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Charles Rosen, *Sonata Forms* (revised edition, Norton, 1988), introduction and first-movement chapter. For the contemporary counterweight, James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, *Elements of Sonata Theory* (Oxford, 2006), introduction. ### Listening list - Bach, *Well-Tempered Clavier* Book I, Prelude and Fugue in C BWV 846 — Glenn Gould, Sony 1963 - Haydn, Symphony No. 104 *London* (1795) — Brüggen / Orchestra of the 18th Century, Philips - Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 *Eroica* (1804) — Gardiner / ORR, DG Archiv 1994 - Schubert, *Winterreise* (1827) — Fischer-Dieskau / Moore, EMI 1962 - Brahms, Symphony No. 4 (1885) — Carlos Kleiber / Vienna Philharmonic, DG 1980 ### Reflection questions 1. Describe sonata form to a friend who knows nothing about it. Where does your description struggle? 2. After listening to *Eroica*, what specifically do you hear that the Haydn does not have? 3. Functional harmony names tonic, dominant, and subdominant as central. What assumption is hiding in that "central"? ### Exit criteria You can identify a sonata-form movement's exposition, development, and recapitulation by ear with score in hand. You can name the major Western style periods and one canonical work per period. --- ## Week 5: Counterpoint and Analysis ### Why this week Counterpoint — voice leading between independent lines — is the engine room of the Western tradition and the bedrock of nearly every analytical method that followed. Schenkerian analysis claims to reveal counterpoint's deep grammar. This week introduces the technique and, with REPORT.md section IX, the controversy around its founder. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Read REPORT.md section IX item 1 on the Schenker affair *before* the technique (twenty minutes). The sequencing is deliberate: know that the foundational figure of Schenkerian analysis held openly racist views, and that the dispute is live, before sitting down with the method. Then Heinrich Schenker, *Free Composition* (*Der freie Satz*, 1935; trans. Oster, Longman, 1979), introduction and first two chapters (ninety minutes); work through one analysis with the score open. If unavailable, Allen Cadwallader and David Gagné, *Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schenkerian Approach* (Oxford). Run the Schenker-affair overlay in `prototypes/04-timeline.html` end to end (thirty minutes) — ten annotated points from Ewell's 2019 plenary to the July 2025 settlement. Thirty minutes of first-species counterpoint: write a counterpoint above and below the cantus firmus *D F E D G F E D* in whole notes. Consonant intervals only (unisons, thirds, fifths, sixths, octaves), stepwise motion preferred. This sounds trivial; it is not. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Philip Ewell, *On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone* (Michigan, 2023), introduction and Schenker chapter. Then at least one response in *Journal of Schenkerian Studies* vol. 12 (UNT Press, 2020), so you encounter the disagreement on its own terms. ### Listening list - Bach, *Art of the Fugue* BWV 1080 — Pierre-Laurent Aimard, DG 2008 — start with *Contrapunctus I* - Palestrina, *Missa Papae Marcelli* (1567) — Tallis Scholars / Phillips, Gimell 1980 - Josquin des Prez, *Missa Pange lingua* (c. 1515) — Tallis Scholars, Gimell 1986 - Mozart, *Requiem* K. 626 (1791) — Herreweghe / Collegium Vocale, Harmonia Mundi - Beethoven, *Grosse Fuge* Op. 133 (1825) — Quartetto Italiano ### Reflection questions 1. What is the *Ursatz* and what work does it claim to do? 2. Ewell argues Schenker's theory cannot be cleanly separated from Schenker's politics. State the strongest version, and the strongest counter-argument. 3. What surprised you about how few options you had in your first-species exercise? ### Exit criteria You can write four-bar first-species counterpoint above and below a simple cantus firmus, observing the basic rules. You can articulate, without caricature, both the case for and the case against treating Schenkerian analysis as core curriculum. --- ## Week 6: Atonality and Pitch-Class Set Theory ### Why this week When the tonal grammar is suspended, the analytical tools change. Allen Forte's *The Structure of Atonal Music* (1973) gave the discipline a way to talk about non-functional sonorities as objects with intrinsic properties. `prototypes/01-pcset-calculator.html` is a complete operational model of Forte's apparatus. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Re-read REPORT.md section IV item 2 and section X (twenty minutes). An hour with `prototypes/01-pcset-calculator.html`. Begin with common triads (major, minor, diminished, augmented); watch the normal forms, prime forms, and Forte numbers appear. Input the Tristan chord (F G♯ B D♯) and read off its set class (4-27). Then the opening of Schoenberg's Op. 11 No. 1. Use Tn and TnI to verify equivalence. By the end you should know what the interval vector of [0,1,3,7] is and why it matters. Read Allen Forte, *The Structure of Atonal Music* (Yale, 1973), chapter 1 and the 223-set-class appendix (ninety minutes). Then thirty minutes with the score of Webern's Op. 27 *Variationen für Klavier* (1936): pick one phrase, identify its salient sonorities, run them through the calculator, write down the set classes. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Joseph Straus, *Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory* (4th edition, Norton, 2016), introduction and chapter 1 — the pedagogical successor to Forte. Then skim the relevant section of Tymoczko's *A Geometry of Music* for the critique. ### Listening list - Schoenberg, *Drei Klavierstücke* Op. 11 (1909) — Maurizio Pollini, DG 1974 - Webern, *Variationen für Klavier* Op. 27 (1936) — Pierre-Laurent Aimard, DG - Berg, *Lyric Suite* (1926) — LaSalle Quartet, DG - Varèse, *Ionisation* (1931) — Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain, Sony - Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 2 (1959) — Juilliard Quartet ### Reflection questions 1. Forte's apparatus strips out octave, transposition, and inversion. What does it strip away that *might* matter musically? 2. Two sonorities can share a Forte number while sounding wildly different. When is the formal equivalence telling you something true, and when is it merely true? 3. After analysing Webern with the calculator, do you feel closer to or further from the music? ### Exit criteria You can enter a small pitch collection into the pc-set calculator and explain the resulting normal form, prime form, interval vector, and Forte number to a newcomer. You can articulate at least one principled critique of pc-set theory's reductive moves. --- ## Week 7: Transformational and Neo-Riemannian Theory ### Why this week Late-19th-century chromatic harmony — Wagner, late Liszt, Schubert, Bruckner — is awkward to analyse with Roman numerals. David Lewin and Richard Cohn shifted the question from "what is this chord?" to "what does this transformation do?" The Tonnetz prototype operationalises the result. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Open `prototypes/02-tonnetz.html` for ninety minutes. Begin with P, L, R one at a time, writing down what each does (P swaps mode preserving root and fifth; L moves the root down a semitone; R moves the fifth up a tone). Run the hexatonic cycle preset (PLPLPL) and listen to it close — the chromatic structure that organises *Tristan*'s climaxes. Run the octatonic cycle (PRPRPRPR), then the 24-triad cycle (RLRL…); you visit every major and minor triad before returning. *Transcribe the hexatonic cycle's six triads on staff paper.* Read David Lewin, *Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations* (Yale, 1987), introduction and chapter 1 (forty-five minutes); do not panic if you only half-follow. Then Richard Cohn, "Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions" (*Music Analysis* 15/1, 1996) — forty-five minutes. Cohn is clearer and grounds the abstractions in actual repertoire. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Richard Cohn, *Audacious Euphony* (Oxford, 2012), introduction and Wagner chapter. Re-listen to the *Tristan* prelude with score and map the hexatonic moves you can identify. ### Listening list - Wagner, *Tristan und Isolde*, Prelude and *Liebestod* (1859) — Furtwängler / Philharmonia, EMI 1953 - Schubert, String Quintet in C major D. 956 (1828) — Casals et al., Sony - Liszt, *Sonata in B minor* (1853) — Krystian Zimerman, DG 1990 - Bruckner, Symphony No. 8 (1890) — Günter Wand / Berlin Philharmonic, RCA 2001 - Hugo Wolf, *Mörike-Lieder* (1888) — Fischer-Dieskau, EMI ### Reflection questions 1. The hexatonic cycle is "parsimonious" because each move retains two common tones. Why does parsimony make musical sense as a principle? 2. Roman numeral analysis works well for Mozart and badly for late Wagner. What breaks the older method? 3. Lewin treats musical objects as networks of transformations rather than things. What does this gain, and lose? ### Exit criteria You can perform P, L, R, N, and S on a given triad without thinking. You can recognise a hexatonic or octatonic cycle by ear or in score and explain what makes it parsimonious. --- ## Week 8: Ethnomusicology and Global Traditions ### Why this week For most of its history, Western musicology treated non-Western music as material for "comparative" study, measured implicitly against a European norm. Ethnomusicology renounced the comparison and became the study of music *in* (and *as*) culture. This week pushes you out of the Franco-Italo-Germanic corridor. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Re-read REPORT.md section VI (forty-five minutes) slowly, with audio open in another tab. Return to `prototypes/03-tuning-lab.html` for forty-five minutes in Module B with slendro and pelog. A/B-compare each gamelan tuning against 12-TET; pelog's deviations are striking. Then run the maqam Rast tetrachord under 24-TET and listen to the half-flat third. These are not approximations of Western scales — they are their own systems. Open `prototypes/06-metronome.html` for forty-five minutes. Engage polyrhythm mode and run 2:3 first; let your ear find the alignment. Then 3:4, 4:5, 5:7, 7:11 — you may not track 7:11 directly, but the LCM (seventy-seven beats) becomes audible. This is the rhythmic territory of certain Sub-Saharan African and Indian classical traditions. Bruno Nettl, *The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions* (3rd edition, Illinois, 2015), discussions 1, 2, and 17 (forty-five minutes). ### Stretch (~2 hours) John Miller Chernoff, *African Rhythm and African Sensibility* (Chicago, 1979), introduction and chapter 2; then Kofi Agawu, *Representing African Music* (Routledge, 2003), introduction and chapter 3. Together they let you see ethnomusicology arguing with itself — Chernoff's ecstatic ethnography and Agawu's structural critique are both indispensable. ### Listening list - Ravi Shankar, *Raga Jog* — any HMV concert recording from the 1960s - M. S. Subbulakshmi, *Kurai Onrum Illai* — HMV/EMI, Carnatic - *Court Gamelan from Yogyakarta* — Felix Gronemeyer / John Noise Manis editions - Master Musicians of Jajouka, *Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka* (1971) - Hossein Alizadeh, *Endless Vision* — World Village 2006, Persian classical ### Reflection questions 1. Slendro is roughly five-equal but not exactly; pelog has unequal intervals that resist Western notation. What does this resistance teach you about transcription? 2. After Chernoff and Agawu, which account of African polyrhythm rings truer, and what is the cost of choosing? 3. "World music" is contested. Why, and what would you replace it with? ### Exit criteria You can describe at least three non-Western traditions — naming a tuning system or scalar concept (raga, dastgah, maqam, slendro/pelog), a temporal organisation (tala, usul, colotomic cycle), and a representative recording. You can hold a 3:4 polyrhythm with two hands. --- ## Week 9: The New Musicology ### Why this week In the late 1980s and early 1990s — Kerman, Kramer, McClary, Abbate, Tomlinson — a generation argued that musicology had repressed questions of meaning, gender, sexuality, race, and ideology in favour of formal analysis. The dispute was bitter, the consequences are with us, and the reading is still electric. Engage on its own terms. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Susan McClary, *Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality* (Minnesota, 1991; reissued 2002), introduction and chapter 5 on Bizet's *Carmen* (ninety minutes). Lawrence Kramer, *Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900* (California, 1990), introduction on hermeneutic windows (thirty minutes). Then Carolyn Abbate, "Music — Drastic or Gnostic?" (*Critical Inquiry* 30/3, 2004) — forty-five minutes. Abbate is herself a New Musicologist who by 2004 has begun pushing back against her generation's textualising tendencies. Open `prototypes/04-timeline.html` for fifteen minutes and trace the publications track from 1985 to 1995: Kerman, Kramer, Abbate, McClary, Tomlinson. This is a movement. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Gary Tomlinson, *Music in Renaissance Magic* (Chicago, 1993), introduction. Then Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, eds., *Queering the Pitch* (Routledge, 1994; 2nd edition 2006), introduction and one chapter. ### Listening list - Bizet, *Carmen* (1875) — Maria Callas / Georges Prêtre, EMI 1964 — listen with McClary's reading at hand - Monteverdi, *L'incoronazione di Poppea* (1643) — René Jacobs / Concerto Vocale, Harmonia Mundi - Mussorgsky, *Boris Godunov* (1869) — Boris Christoff / Issay Dobroven, EMI - Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 *Pathétique* (1893) — Mravinsky / Leningrad Philharmonic, DG 1960 - k.d. lang, *Ingénue* (1992) ### Reflection questions 1. McClary reads the cadence as a gendered structure. What is her argument, and what would you have to believe for it to be true? 2. What does Kramer's "hermeneutic window" actually do methodologically — is it a method or a posture? 3. Abbate distinguishes "drastic" from "gnostic" engagement. Which side does the present curriculum lean toward, and is that the right balance? ### Exit criteria You can summarise the New Musicology's central claims in language its proponents would recognise, and articulate at least two principled objections that are not simple defences of the prior status quo. --- ## Week 10: Sound Studies and Music Technology ### Why this week Recorded sound transformed musical life more profoundly than any compositional movement of the 20th century, and sound studies — institutionalised by Sterne's *The Audible Past* (2003) — provides the discipline's tools for understanding it. This week traces a hundred-and-fifty-year arc from Edison's cylinder to generative AI. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Read REPORT.md section VIII in full (forty-five minutes). Then Jonathan Sterne, *The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction* (Duke, 2003), introduction and chapter 1 (ninety minutes). Forty-five minutes tracing recording aesthetics. Listen, in order: Enrico Caruso, "Vesti la giubba" (1907 acoustic); Bing Crosby, "White Christmas" (1942 electrical, crooning); the Beatles, "A Day in the Life" (1967, multitrack tape, varispeed); Brian Eno, *Ambient 1: Music for Airports* (1978, studio as instrument); Burial, *Untrue* (2007, sample-based DAW). Write a paragraph after each on what you can hear about how it was made. Mark Katz, *Capturing Sound* (revised edition, California, 2010) is the conceptual scaffolding. ### Stretch (~2 hours) Emily Thompson, *The Soundscape of Modernity* (MIT, 2002), introduction and chapter 1. Then dip into Curtis Roads, *The Computer Music Tutorial* (MIT, 1996), a chapter on a synthesis method that interests you (FM, granular, physical modelling, additive). The Karplus–Strong synthesis in `prototypes/05-guitar.html` is one example. ### Listening list - Pierre Schaeffer, *Cinq études de bruits* (1948) — INA-GRM editions - Karlheinz Stockhausen, *Gesang der Jünglinge* (1956) — Stockhausen Verlag CD 3 - Wendy Carlos, *Switched-On Bach* (1968) — Columbia - Brian Eno, *Ambient 1: Music for Airports* (1978) — Editions EG - William Basinski, *The Disintegration Loops* (2002) — 2062 ### Reflection questions 1. Sterne argues recording is not a transparent capture of sound but a cultural technique. Give the strongest specific example of his thesis you can. 2. Mark Katz coined "phonograph effects" for compositional adaptations to recording. Pick a track and identify three. 3. The studio became an instrument in the 1960s. Where exactly does that transition appear in your listening? ### Exit criteria You can sketch a timeline from 1877 to the present marking major shifts in recording technology and explain how each shifted what musicians could do. You can identify by ear the difference between an acoustic, an electrical, a multitrack-tape, and a DAW production. --- ## Week 11: Current Debates — Race, Decolonisation, AI ### Why this week The field's centre of gravity in 2026 is in dispute on three fronts: the antiracist turn Ewell catalysed (and Lee's 2025 *JAMS* article complicates); canon-and-decolonisation debates around Smith and Maust; and the generative-AI wave whose RIAA litigation began in June 2024. Engage all three on their own terms. ### Core engagement (~3 hours) Re-read REPORT.md section IX (thirty minutes), then run the Schenker-affair overlay in `prototypes/04-timeline.html` end to end (twenty minutes) — revisit with more context than week 5. Philip Ewell, *On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone* (Michigan, 2023), introduction and chapters on the white racial frame and on Schenker (ninety minutes). Gavin S. K. Lee, "From Difference to Ambiguity: Undoing Antiracist Fallacies in US Music Studies" (*Journal of the American Musicological Society* 78/3, December 2025) — forty-five minutes. Lee writes in the antiracist tradition while criticising the dichotomous-difference logic he finds in much recent literature; do not read Ewell and Lee as straightforward opponents. Twenty minutes on current coverage of Suno and Udio: the June 2024 RIAA filings, the 2025 WMG/UMG settlements with Udio, the live Sony cases, and GEMA's Munich filing against Suno. The questions: does training generative-audio models on copyrighted recordings count as fair use, and what does opt-in licensing mean for working musicians? ### Stretch (~2 hours) Ayana O. Smith, *Inclusive Music Histories* (Routledge, 2023), introduction and one repertoire chapter. Then Gavin Steingo, "Songs of the New World and the Breath of the Planet at the Orbis Spike, 1610" (*JAMS* 76/1, 2023) — the foundational ecomusicology article. ### Listening list - Florence Price, Symphony No. 3 (1940) — Nézet-Séguin / Philadelphia, DG 2022 - Julius Eastman, *Femenine* (1974) — S.E.M. Ensemble, Frozen Reeds 2016 - William Grant Still, *Symphony No. 1 "Afro-American"* (1930) — Järvi / Detroit, Chandos - Caroline Shaw, *Partita for 8 Voices* (2011) — Roomful of Teeth, New Amsterdam - A Suno or Udio output of your own — for analytical comparison ### Reflection questions 1. Ewell argues music theory has a "white racial frame." State his thesis charitably, then state the strongest objection. 2. Lee's "from difference to ambiguity" pushes against essentialism even within antiracist scholarship. Is this a refinement of the antiracist project, or a repudiation of part of it? 3. Generative-AI music is technically derivative of copyrighted training material. Is that a copyright problem, an aesthetic problem, both, or neither? ### Exit criteria You can name the principal living interlocutors (Ewell, Lee, Hisama, Smith) and articulate their positions without caricature. You can describe the legal status of the Suno and Udio suits as of mid-2026 and explain what is at stake for working musicians. --- ## Week 12: Synthesis Project ### Why this week A discipline is something you do, not just something you read. This week you produce a piece of musicological work of your own, drawing on at least three different lenses. ### The project (~5 hours) Pick one piece of music — any tradition, any period — that you can listen to repeatedly. Apply at least three of the following lenses: - **Analytical**: structural analysis using one of the methods you have learned (sonata form, Schenkerian sketch, pc-set analysis, neo-Riemannian transformation, schema-theoretic reading). - **Ethnographic / contextual**: who made this, for whom, in what institutional setting? What cultural work does it do? - **Hermeneutic**: what does the piece *mean*, and what evidence in the music supports your reading? - **Technological**: how is the recording or performance shaped by the apparatus that produced it? Produce a 2,000-word essay, cite your sources, and use at least one prototype in your analytical work. Construct a personal listening anthology of ten tracks across the field, each annotated with a sentence. Close with a paragraph on where these methods agree and where they are incommensurable. ### Reflection questions 1. Which lens generated the most insight on your chosen piece, and why? 2. Where did two of your lenses produce conflicting accounts? How did you resolve the conflict, or did you? 3. What would your essay have looked like twelve weeks ago? ### Exit criteria You have produced a 2,000-word essay grounded in at least three methodological perspectives, with a worked analytical example involving at least one prototype. You can describe musicology in a paragraph to someone who has never heard of it, in a way that is accurate, generous, and your own. --- ## What to Read Next **Analysis.** Joseph Straus, *Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory* (4th edition, Norton, 2016); Steven Rings, *Tonality and Transformation* (Oxford, 2011). **Ethnomusicology.** Timothy Rice, *Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction* (Oxford, 2014); Jeff Todd Titon, ed., *Worlds of Music* (Schirmer); Steven Feld, *Sound and Sentiment* (Pennsylvania, 1982; 3rd ed. 2012). **Philosophy.** Roger Scruton, *The Aesthetics of Music* (Oxford, 1997); Theodor W. Adorno, *Philosophy of New Music* (1949; trans. Hullot-Kentor, Minnesota, 2006); Andrew Bowie, *Music, Philosophy, and Modernity* (Cambridge, 2007). **Sound studies and technology.** Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, *Analog Days* (Harvard, 2002); Paul Théberge, *Any Sound You Can Imagine* (Wesleyan, 1997); Tara Rodgers, *Pink Noises* (Duke, 2010). **Current debates.** Subscribe to the open-access *Music Theory Online* and follow recent issues of *JAMS* and *Ethnomusicology*. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **I have no music theory background. Can I still do this?** Yes. The curriculum is designed to be entered cold; the prototypes do most of the work textbooks would otherwise do. You will move slower than someone with conservatory training, but may notice things they miss because the default categories will be unfamiliar. **Should I learn an instrument first?** No. A few hours with a free piano app or the guitar prototype substitutes for years of lessons in the limited sense the curriculum requires. Patient repeat-listening matters more. **What if I disagree with the New Musicology?** Encouraged — disagree on its own terms. Read McClary, Kramer, and Tomlinson closely enough that your disagreement is with their actual claims. The same applies the other way: read Carl Dahlhaus and Peter Kivy with equal care so any sympathy is reasoned rather than reflexive. **How can I tell if a tuning sounds "right"?** You cannot, absolutely. Tunings sound right when coherent with the music written in them and when your ear has acclimatised. Which scale you prefer in the Tuning Lab says more about your listening history than about the scales. **Where do I find recordings for non-Western traditions?** Ocora, Smithsonian Folkways, Nonesuch Explorer, Lyrichord, Inédit, the BBC and Radio France field-recording archives, and the Alan Lomax Archive. For Indian classical, the HMV/EMI live recordings of the 1960s–70s. For gamelan, the Gronemeyer / Manis Indonesian series. IDAGIO's non-Western catalogue is deep. **What if I want to write my own paper?** The week-12 synthesis project is the prototype. Beyond it, follow the conventions of the journal you imagine submitting to: *Music Theory Online* and *JSAM* are open-access; *JAMS*, *Ethnomusicology*, and *19th-Century Music* are prestige venues. Read three articles from your target journal back to back and the form becomes legible. Cite generously, write plainly, and remember that the best musicological prose makes the reader want to listen to the piece again. --- *Compiled 2026, for use with the prototypes and report at `index.html`.*