3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

In this seminar we’ll explore the roots and developments of English music across nearly seven centuries. Divided into a series of case studies centered around composers, major works, and institutions, this course will investigate English music from a variety of angles. We begin with the organum of the High Middle Ages, explore the Tudor polyphony of the English Reformation, courtly music of the Restoration, Thomas Arne, George Frederic Handel, the English choral revival, Stanford, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Britten. We end our inquiry with the diverse musical paths English music has taken in the last fifty years, finally stopping with Adès’s recent opera, The Exterminating Angel. The aim of this course is twofold, to provide students with a clear chronology and to familiarize them with important repertoire, while still addressing critical issues in interaction between music and theology, politics, and gender—to name a few