MUSIC 7213 - History of Sound

4 credits.

B. Piekut.

This seminar will investigate themes in the interdisciplinary area of inquiry known as sound studies. The focus of this class will be on historical rather than ethnographic approaches to sound; therefore, we will treat themes in sound studies from the perspective of music history and its attendant methodologies. We will, however, read some theories of the connections between material culture and sound that have emerged from the social sciences. These theoretical readings have been chosen because they are particularly suggestive for formulating historical projects. Rather than attempting a chronological history of sound, this syllabus groups the assigned readings around topic areas, allowing seminar participants to recognize sympathetic methodological concerns among disparate scholars, and to register important differences about how to research and write critically about the following subjects: acoustic instruments, places for hearing, electronic instruments, recording and reproduction, subjectivity, liveness/deadness, embodiment, listening, power, operatic/cinematic intersections, digitality, and soundscapes.

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