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Music - Its Language, History, and Culture (Cohen)

  • Page ID
    51167
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    This text is designed to introduce students to works representative of a variety of music traditions including the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Ages through the present; of the United States, including art music, jazz, folk, rock, musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent). A primary goal is to enable students to speak and write about the features of the music, employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre,and form used by musicians. The texts explores the historic, social, and cultural contexts and the role of class, ethnicity, and gender in the creation and performance of music, including practices of improvisation and the implications of oral and notated transmission. Similarly, the text aims to acquaint students with the sources of musical sounds—instruments and voices from different cultures, found sounds, electronically generated sounds; basic principles that determine pitch and timbre. Lastly, the text aims to examine students to the influence of technology, mass media, globalization, and transnational currents on the music of today.


    This page titled Music - Its Language, History, and Culture (Cohen) is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Douglas Cohen (Brooklyn College Library and Academic IT) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.