MUSIC 2235 - [The Lied in History and Performance]

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015.

R. Moseley, J. Kellock.

This course, open to suitably qualified undergraduates and graduate students, will survey the rich and varied repertory of the nineteenth-century Lied and its resonance throughout Europe and the Americas. In charting the history of the Lied, we will focus on representative songs by Loewe, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler, and others, exploring how musico-poetic and cultural meanings emerged from the Romantic imbrication of notes and letters. Above all, we will consider the Lied as musica practica, in accordance with the diverse social functions it performed in parlors, salons, and concert halls across Germany and beyond. To this end, every participant in the course will be expected to sing (or perhaps to play the piano) in order to reflect on the experience of song-making and how it might inform aesthetic, historical, analytical, and hermeneutic perspectives on Lieder. As needed, untutored vocalists will be coached, either by Professor Kellock or by advanced singers taking the course.