Core Offerings
The Music Department offers foundational courses in theory, music history, musicology, and ethnomusicology that fulfill University Core Curriculum requirements in two areas: Arts and Cultural Diversity.
The department offers three courses (MUSA1100, MUSA1200, and MUSA1300) that satisfy the University Core requirement in the Arts. Each introduces a different area of musical knowledge.
Spring 2024 Arts Core Offerings
Cultural Diversity Core
The following courses fulfill the cultural diversity requirement and fulfill requirements or act as electives within the music major and minor.
- MUSA1320 Introduction to Musics of the World
- MUSA2303 Afro-Brazilian Musical Worlds
- MUSA2304 Musics of India
- MUSA2306 Musics of Africa
- MUSA2307 Musics of Asia
- MUSA2309 Music and Culture of the Middle East
Spring 2024 Cultural Diversity Core Offerings
The Music Department has formulated and adopted the following standards in learning and assessment for the Arts Core in Music.
Students taking courses in music for the Arts Core will acquire knowledge and skills to develop analytical and critical thinking and creative problem solving as applied within a choice of courses in the following musical disciplines: theory/composition (MUSA1100 Fundamentals of Music Theory), musicology (MUSA1200 Introduction to Music and MUSA1300 History of Popular Music), and ethnomusicology (MUSA1326 Introduction to Music of the World). In whichever course, students will gain the ability to analyze musical texts through the mastery of technical terminology and concepts, and will understand music within historical, social, and cultural contexts.
- Students in MUSA1100 gain skills in understanding and manipulating the elements of musical composition while touching on a broader understanding of how these elements are expressed in different historical and cultural contexts.
- Students in MUSA1200 and MUSA1300 gain a broad understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of works of music in the formation of Western culture (MUSA1200) or American culture (MUSA1300), the changing concepts of beauty and music as an expression of cultural identity, while applying correct technical terminology in their discussion of music.
- Students in MUSA1326 gain an understanding of the social and cultural contexts of works from a representative, varied range of cultures, addressing issues of how music shapes and expresses a society while acquiring the appropriate language to discuss such cultures and music.