Basic course in the elements of music. Both semesters.

The focus of this course involves writing songs and acquiring basic skills in arranging.

A music appreciation class focused on examining, evaluating, and understanding the musical compositions and performances of classical, jazz, electronic and world music presented at the Music Department’s Music at Midday concert series, interspersed with readings and discussions of writings on music performance philosophy.

A course designed to increase the listener's perception and enjoyment of music employing masterworks of the European classical tradition.

A chronological survey of masterworks of the European classical tradition.

The Mexico-U.S. border has historically been a site of contention. Walls and policing try to keep the two sides separate and to make the U.S. impenetrable. But sound has different boundaries and is hard to contain. Moreover, for large groups of people, the border is a way of life where the categories “Mexican” and “American” have fluid meaning. This course examines musical recordings and performances from a transnational perspective, pointing at the limits of the nation-state and of the category of “Hispanic” to understand and embrace border populations and their musics.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Primarily for music majors and minors.

Primarily for music majors and minors.

The study of diatonic and secondary chord structures and progressions with written exercises and analysis of music from the common practice period. Basic musicianship laboratory. Prerequisite(s): MUSC 1000. Corequisite(s): APMS 1090.

Chromatic harmony and modulation, written exercises using expanded harmonic vocabulary. Formal analysis of classic period works. Advanced musicianship laboratory. Prerequisite(s): MUSC 1510. Corequisite(s): APMS 1100.

This course will be an intense study of Black American Music theory. There will be emphasis on the application of rhythm, melody, and harmony. The course is designed for music majors and minors as well as for non-majors who have a firm grasp of music fundamentals.

In this course, we will explore approaches to musical composition and the fundamentals of arranging, including the range, transposition, idiomatic techniques of instruments, and styles of ensemble arranging. Our primary text is Richard Sussman and Michael Abene’s Jazz Composition and Arranging in the Digital Age, and a recommended text is Samuel Adler’s The Study of Orchestration, 3rd Edition or any comparable orchestration book. Additional score excerpts and recordings will be supplied. Through written arrangement exercises and class discussion, we will practice the basic skills of composition and arranging that can be applied to your own music projects. Completion of MUSC 1530 is suggested.

Special Topics in Music; title and topic varies by semester.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course is intended as an introductory survey of New Orleans music, including jazz, brass band, Mardi Gras Indian, rhythm and blues, funk, and hip-hop, through an intensive exposure to existing research, field trips, and occasional visits from local researchers and musicians. Musical socialization--the role of young people in extending the city's musical traditions--will be a running theme throughout the course and will connect the course materials to the optional service learning project.

Sound is one of the five senses and a primary way we relate to one another and to the world. Speech distinguishes humans from other animals; we locate ourselves in spaces through echo; we feel sound in our bodies and vibrate sympathetically; we capture sound waves on vinyl or as binary codes. In this introduction to the field of sound studies, we will take up familiar topics like voice and listening, music and technology, and unpack them through readings from leading scholars. We will listen intently to speech and song, silence and noise. And we will dive into case studies that focus on people and places in the Unites States.

Transfer Coursework at the 1000 level. Department approval may be required.

An in-depth study of harmonic, contrapuntal, rhythmic, and formal procedures in representative works selected from the Baroque through the Romantic periods. Expanding and applying analytical skills learned in 1510 and 1520 to entire compositions. Corequisite(s): APMS 2090.

This course explores the relation between music, sound and climate change. We do an overview of the field of acoustic ecology and explore key terms such as ambient music, soundscape, keytones and soundwalks, environmental sound art, among others. We look at issues of sound pollution and the sonic relations between humans and non-humans across different cultures, especially environmental racisms and the relation between climate change, music and the colonial. We explore these issues through specific audiovisual and sonic materials.

Analysis of works by Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Lutoslawski, etc. Writing skills based on 20th-century melodic and harmonic principles. Prerequisite(s): MUSC 1520. Corequisite(s): APMS 2100.

The development of music for orchestra from Bach to Mahler. Listening, reading, and written reports.

Transfer Coursework at the 2000 level. Department approval may be required.

This is a survey history of American popular music from pre-Civil War Minstrelsy to MTV. The course is intended for the general student body, with no musical prerequisites required. Lectures integrate an in-depth discussion of the music itself, generously illustrated by recordings, with a solid presentation of the music's historical and cultural context. Major topics include the multicultural roots of American popular musics, the parallel development of four separate streams of popular music (an urban mainstream and three rural sub streams), the increasing tendency of these separate streams to interact to create new popular styles, and the function of the music industry in the dissemination of popular musical styles.

An introduction to the critical role of computers in the music field today. As a survey of computer tools and techniques, this course will include applied work with notation, MIDI, digital sound-editing and multi-media software.

This course will involve an examination of the electronic music repertoire with a focus on both the music and technology. We will learn about the history of electronic music through philosophies, aesthetics, and technologies that have been and are being used today.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A chronological survey of music in the United States from the Pilgrims to jazz and rock. The course traces the widely varied paths taken by music in America and shows how the three spheres of folk, popular, and classical music have continually interacted to form a variegated whole. Lectures move from genre to genre, placing each in its historical and sociological order.

An overview of the field of ethnomusicology and the types of issues and concerns that have guided the research of world music within that field. A number of selected musical case studies from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas that illuminate the differences and similarities between Western musics and their counterparts in other parts of the world. Particular interest will be given to the way in which cultural, social, and religious beliefs have informed stylistic, performance practice, and aesthetic development in other parts of the world as a means of reflecting about the same types of connections in Western music.

Course includes lectures concerning the nature of opera and also a historical outline of the development of opera in Europe. Emphasis is then placed on viewing a number of complete operas, which will be screened on laser discs.

This course prepares students for operational and administrative as well as creative and technical positions within the music and entertainment industry.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Transfer Coursework at the 2000 level. Department approval may be required.

A survey of music in different societies throughout the world with assignments and readings in music other than Western art music. The lectures explain how to listen to this music and consider systematically the function of music in societies ranging from Australian Aborigines, to Indian classical musicians, to urban popular music in Latin America.

This course will provide a survey of Latin American music and culture. The content of the course will change on a rotating basis each fall term. Topics include: Caribbean; Andean Countries; Mexico and Central America. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A survey of vernacular theatre music in America from its European roots in opera buffa, ballad opera, and operetta through the jazz and rock developments of the sixties.

Survey of Jewish liturgical music from Biblical times to the present, and of Jewish popular, theatre, and folk music. Emphasis on European, Israeli, Sephardic, and American traditions.

Development of jazz as a cultural, sociological phenomenon, and survey of jazz styles.

An introduction to the music of the contemporary world as it interacts with social, political, and cultural processes that distinguish the 20th century. Examines the full spectrum of modern musical styles (classical, jazz, popular, folk, rock) as they have adapted to the mass communications technology of the present day.

This course explores the relationship of African-American popular music and Latin American popular music, with a special focus on how New Orleans is a key site mediating these musical mixtures. It compares U.S. popular styles with styles from other countries in the hemisphere.

The music of three influential composers is studied in depth against the background of their careers and times. The composers selected will change each term; contact the instructor or department for more information. Student must have ability to read, analyze, and discuss musical notation in order to be successful in the course. Prerequisite(s): MUSC 1410*, 1420* and 2010*. * May be taken concurrently.

This course is an ethnomusicological exploration of selected vocal traditions from around the world. Anchored around three sets of guest lectures and live performances by Tuvan throat singers, a Persian Jewish singer, and a singer of Afro-Cuban religious music, the course will examine both the musical sounds that voices can produce, and the ways in which these voices are woven into the cultures from which they emerge.

The history of 19th- and 20th-century Russian music with special emphasis on Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich.

Opera has been an elite form of musical entertainment in Western culture since the seventeenth century. Even though most famous lead roles in opera are for women, operas until the twentieth century have been predominantly written by men librettists and composers. They capture and prescribe the predominant values of modern Western patriarchy. In this course, we watch and listen to operas from 1600 to the present time. We pair the viewings with readings to answer the question: why do women so frequently die (and lie) in opera?

The blues, as both a musical form and a state of being, is the primary layer of African American culture. This course considers how the blues permeates American life, through the music of work songs, rural blues, classic blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, cowboy and rock n roll.

Black music is celebrated as the signature artistic contribution America has given to the world. Music has been a source of power for people subject to enslavement, legal segregation, and an ongoing struggle for political citizenship and economic equity. This course highlights the agency of black musicians and the political significance of the music they have created, from slave songs to hip-hop. This is a social and cultural history, and no musical training is required for understanding course materials.

This lab is for music majors, minors, or any other performing musicians who are enrolled in MUSC-3440 “Black Music, Black Lives.” Students will discuss and perform the musical aspects of the material covered in that course. The two courses should be taken concurrently.

Though often considered apart from social and political trends, music is central to thought and action in the public sphere. Whether in protest marches or in dance clubs, music challenges the belief that public opinion is expressed solely through language. We will concentrate on conflicts across lines of social identity: race, ethnicity, gender/sex, religion, and nationality. We will focus especially on racism against Black Americans in the U.S., anti-Semitism against Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.The course is open to all undergraduate students.

Music forms vital part of ritual for most religions around the world. In performing and listening to music, religious affiliates seek connection with the supernatural, foster community ties, and create tradition bridging past, present, and future. Furthermore, music gives religious groups visibility in the broader society, whether in live or recorded performance. This course explores the traditional musical practices of the three major monotheistic religions -Judaism, Christianity, Islam -followed by one unit on Indian religions, and one unit about of selected spiritual practices inherited from Africa currently practiced in the Americas, including voodoo, candomble, and Santeria. We will also critically look at historical and current social perceptions reacting to these musical practices and to their practitioners. This is a cultural history class; no musical training is required.

In this course, we'll explore the relationship between gender and music in the West over the past 450 years. How have shifting rules and boundaries of gender identity interacted with similarly shifting rules and boundaries about beauty, function, and construction of music? In what ways has music helped to represent and/or define gender in culture? Further, how do gender identities intersect with other categories if social and cultural identity such as race, ethnicity, and class? This course will use a variety of case studies from popular and art music to explore the relationships between musical practice and gender identification, including: the courtesans and castrati of Baroque opera; Glam Rock; Clara Schumann, jazz singers; and Elvis Presley. Course open to both music majors and non-majors.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Transfer Coursework at the 3000 level. Department approval may be required.

This course explores how indigenous musics and sounds have been inscribed into ethnographic media. We explore how the notion of indigenous musics arose in the late nineteenth century based on how it was collected and inscribed on specific sound and audiovisual formats, creating a racialized and colonial notion of indigenous musics. Then we explore how indigenous peoples themselves, often in collaborative processes, are decolonizing and appropriating such histories by rethinking the early archives or documenting their own musics and sounds in new ways. In so doing, they challenge Western notions of musicality, of media inscription, of racialized histories of music, and how human and non-human sounds are understood. Graduate students: some readings in Spanish.

Music sounds loud and clear at the edge of law. From bandits to illegal immigrants, from underdogs to drug dealers, people who subscribe to their own rules reach out to our ears through song and dance. Their stories and sounds both fascinate and scare audiences well beyond their immediate surroundings, making their way to mass media and live events big and small. In this class, we will focus on Spanish-and Portuguese-speaking regions in the Americas, and our point of entry will be the music produced by and for groups or individuals who live(d) at the margin of law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Your study time will be equally divided between learning and practicing aural skills and musical terminology, and critically reading texts of historical significance. In the long term, I hope that this course helps you look at any outlaw groups in new, more informed ways. I invite you to let the musics we will study challenge our preconceptions about Latin American cultures.

This course introduces the student to the breadth and depth of signal processing used in musical applications. The course will cover fundamentals of signal processing and familiarize the student with classic computer music theories as well as state-of-the art topics for sound synthesis, analysis, and computer music composition. Students work mostly in a graphical coding language for audiovisual applications called Pure Data. No prior coding experience is required although experience with Matlab, Python or other languages translates well. Pure Data is an excellent coding language for students interested in both creative applications and science and engineering projects.

This Human Computer Interaction (HCI) course focuses on creative and innovative applications of engineering and design in the context of musical performance and composition. Students learn about the history of technology as it relates to musical instrument design and music composition as they design their own custom instruments, synthesizers, and controllers.

This course will be an exploration of computer music composition using various available techniques and state-of-the-art tools. This will be a hands-on course with compositional exercises and projects, working in our digital studio, and producing a concert at the end of the term.

Qualified junior and senior majors may receive credit for work in musical institutions in the community, such as recording studios, the New Orleans Opera Association, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and the like; this is to be accompanied by an academic component. Registration is administered by the Office Manager in the Department of Music, Brandt v. B. Dixon Performing Arts Center, Room 10. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Qualified junior and senior majors may receive credit for work in musical institutions in the community, such as recording studios, the New Orleans Opera Association, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and the like; this is to be accompanied by an academic component. Registration is administered by the Office Manager in the Department of Music, Brandt v. B. Dixon Performing Arts Center, Room 10. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course is designed to provide an historical introduction to the origins, idiomatic coalescence, and early development of New Orleans jazz.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This class provides an overview of the benefits of music education in the lives of young people. We will consider the influence of teachers in the development of professional musicians as well as the value of teamwork, leadership, and discipline imparted to all students. Focusing on marching bands in New Orleans, we will visit school bandrooms, attend a high school football game, and host visits from music educators. Students will get a birds-eye view of the fate of music education while researching the effects of increasing cutbacks in arts education.

Senior Honors Project in Fine Arts

Honors Thesis

Senior Honors Project in Fine Arts

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Transfer coursework at the 5000 level. Departmental approval required.

New Orleans is renowned for culture and it has been Black New Orleanians, above all, whose creativity has shaped the city’s musical, culinary, architectural, and religious identity. This course places culture at the center of struggles for full citizenship by African Americans and Creoles of Color as well as Italians, Jews, Latinos, and Vietnamese. Under colonial, antebellum, and Jim Crow rule, culture was a source of power in terms of fomenting an ethics of care and a politics of rebellion against white supremacy. Since the Civil Rights era, culture has increasingly been incorporated into the tourist economy. This added value has trickled down unevenly, with Black culture workers most exploited and subject to surveillance, enclosure, and extraction. This course will investigate the deep history of local culture as a contested source of value, drawing upon historical, anthropological, and cultural studies of Blackness and whiteness in New Orleans.

Opera has been an elite form of musical entertainment in Western culture since the seventeenth century. Even though most famous lead roles in opera are for women, operas until the twentieth century have been predominantly written by men librettists and composers. They capture and prescribe the predominant values of modern Western patriarchy. In this course, we watch and listen to operas from 1600 to the present time. We pair the viewings with readings to answer the question: why do women so frequently die (and lie) in opera?

This course explores how indigenous musics and sounds have been inscribed into ethnographic media. We explore how the notion of indigenous musics arose in the late nineteenth century based on how it was collected and inscribed on specific sound and audiovisual formats, creating a racialized and colonial notion of indigenous musics. Then we explore how indigenous peoples themselves, often in collaborative processes, are decolonizing and appropriating such histories by rethinking the early archives or documenting their own musics and sounds in new ways. In so doing, they challenge Western notions of musicality, of media inscription, of racialized histories of music, and how human and nonhuman sounds are understood. Graduate students: some readings in Spanish.

Music sounds loud and clear at the edge of law. From bandits to illegal immigrants, from underdogs to drug dealers, people who subscribe to their own rules reach out to our ears through song and dance. Their stories and sounds both fascinate and scare audiences well beyond their immediate surroundings, making their way to mass media and live events big and small. In this class, we will focus on Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking regions in the Americas, and our point of entry will be the music produced by and for groups or individuals who live(d) at the margin of law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Your study time will be equally divided between learning and practicing aural skills and musical terminology, and critically reading texts of historical significance. In the long term, I hope that this course helps you look at any outlaw groups in new, more informed ways. I invite you to let the musics we will study challenge our preconceptions about Latin American cultures.

See MUSC 4400 for course description.

See MUSC 4410 for course description.

See MUSC 4420 for course description.

This course introduces students to approaches of art and research that consider environmental sound. Students will learn technical skills, develop compositional processes, and engage with theoretical perspectives to inform the generation of original creative works, ranging from composed and improvised musical pieces to podcast episodes and radio dramas. Topics covered will include frameworks for environmental acoustics including ontologies of sound; listening practices; field recording; microphone technique; compositional strategies; audio editing and creative audio processing; spectral analysis; sonification; and more.

Graduate level special topics course.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

New Orleans is an American city with a unique history as a European colony, a hub for the slave trade, and a destination for immigrants from Europe and the Americas. The city celebrated musical traditions have been created by a diverse mix of people and shaped by their interactions in the shared spaces of the city. This course is intended as a comprehensive overview of New Orleans music, including jazz, brass band, Mardi Gras Indian, rhythm and blues, funk, and hip-hop, through an intensive exposure to existing research and visits from local researchers and musicians. No musical training is required for understanding course materials.

Students in Graduate Computer Music Workshop choose research or creative topics in consultation with the faculty and engage in personalized semester long study of these topics resulting in the presentation of creative work on end of semester concerts and submission to relevant festivals and conferences. Topics typically include Large Scale Electronic Media Composition, Acousmatic Music, Custom Instrument Design, Electronic Music Performance Techniques, Algorithmic Composition, Surround Sound, Interactive Composition, Electro-acoustic Composition, Musique Concrete, and Advanced Sound Synthesis.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.