HMU 192 Music Appreciation I
The course aims to guide and strengthen students in developing the skills of active listening in order to increase their enjoyment of classical music. To this end, the course strengthens the students’ ability to identify and respond to the basic musical building blocks - melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, tone color and form - and to the ways individual composers combine these elements to express and communicate substantive musical ideas. The course is not intended as a historical survey of the Western musical canon. Rather, it focuses on important core works in the genres of symphonic, chamber, and choral and solo vocal music, primarily from the common practice period extending from the late Renaissance to the late Romantic period, without excluding important trends and developments in earlier (medieval) and later (modern, post- modern) periods. The aim throughout is to focus on works that an interested music lover is liable to hear in live performance, and that form a basis for further musical exploration. At the same time, the course provides, without losing this central focus, at least brief exposure and consideration of selected examples of both world music and commercial pop music in some of its various forms. Finally, and unique to the Music and Technology program at Stevens, the course draws special attention, wherever appropriate, to important milestones in the development of music technology and their impact on the development of musical style.