19th Century Music and Modernity

The course traces how nineteenth-century music absorbed and reshaped the cultural upheavals of Romanticism, moving from Beethoven's structural revolutions through the operatic battles of Verdi and Wagner to Debussy's dissolution of tonal certainty. You'll listen closely and write analytically, working through weekly repertoire with quizzes, homework, a midterm presentation, and a research paper that ties musical structure to its social and political moment. Sitting between earlier surveys of the Classical era and twentieth-century coursework, it gives you the stylistic vocabulary and historical framing you'll lean on for the rest of the music history sequence.