The Culture and Basics of Music Making

MSC 110 treats music as a cultural practice you can actually parse rather than a mysterious art to admire, training you to hear how rhythm, melody, harmony, and form do similar structural work across radically different traditions — Schubert lieder, Hacı Arif Bey, Beatles songs, James Brown funk, Wagner opera, and Stravinsky ballet all sit on the same syllabus. The work is mostly listening and writing: short comparative essays, two concert reviews (one pop, one classical), an analytical paper, plus a midterm and final that test whether you can place an unfamiliar piece by genre, period, and culture. As a general-elective with no prerequisites, it's most useful if you want a vocabulary for talking about any music you encounter, not just a specific repertoire.