MUSIC 3270 - The Soundtrack to the Last Days of Mankind: Music and the Great War

(HA-AS)

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

D. Friesenegger.

This course explores how World War I shaped music culture and how music accompanied the war experience. We will examine the role of music in soldiers’ and civilians’ daily lives, the strategic use of music in war propaganda, musicians’ commitment to or explicit abstinence from the war effort; we will study popular songs, choral and band pieces, operas, musicals and symphonic music. Our engagement with music, newspapers and journals, fiction, and film, and our inquiry into technology, gender, race, and disability studies will help us understand how the Great War, and the subject of music and war at large, have been seminal in our thought about and experience of music today. No prior knowledge of music is required.