Syllabus for MUSL 242:

Music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

THIS PAGE IS NOT CURRENTLY BEING MAINTAINED.

To Reach Me

Professor Cyrus:

Office: Blair Rm 1113B (Campus Box 6320 Sta. B, Vanderbilt Univ.)

Phone: 322-7693; home phone: 646-2516 (please do not call after 8:30 p.m.)

E-mail address: Cynthia.Cyrus@vanderbilt.edu

Note: I welcome your questions and comments, both in class and outside of class. It is easiest to contact me by e-mail; I usually answer e-mail messages within 48 hours. I will not have office hours during maternity leave, but will be available via e-mail or through my home phone number.

To Submit Assignments, Drafts, and General Questions

send an e-mail message to cynthia.cyrus@vanderbilt.edu. Be sure to put "242" into the subject header!

Information, Policies and Grading

Teaching Statement

Students are said to retain approximately twenty percent of what they hear in lecture and approximately eighty percent of what they learn by doing. This course has been re- designed to take advantage of active learning: nearly every class period will have some task or activity that will apply your new-found knowledge. The material covered in the homework will not usually be explicitly reiterated in class. In fact, traditional lecture format will be a relatively small component of the planned activities, but questions (on the homework and other class material) are welcome at all times.

Course Objectives

By the end of the semester, the student should be able to:

• categorize medieval and Renaissance works by genre and by century and generation
• evaluate a given work in a period-appropriate vocabulary
• assess the impact of major social, cultural and political developments on musical life and musical style of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
• develop methodological tools to evaluate the quality of a performance
• compare and contrast selected Medieval-Renaissance genres with non-Western counterparts both in social and in stylistic terms. Remember, form follows function!

Materials

Grout, A History of Western Music, 6th ed.

Palisca, Norton Anthology of Western Music, 4th ed., vol. 1 and CD set

Weiss and Taruskin, Music in the Western World

Streaming Audio examples (particularly for non-Western repertory)

Grades

• Written work 40%
  5% Precis due 1/25
  10% Analysis of chant choices (5-7 pp.) due 2/3
  5% Annotated bibliography (of 20-25 scholarly items) due 2/22
  10% Round One for grant or book review (completed, proofread, "finalized" version) due 3/24
  10% Round Two for grant or book review (revised, reformulated, and perfected version) due 4/5
• Participation and weekly demonstrations of knowledge: 45%

  2-point quizzes every Tuesday, with double quizzes at the end of each unit

  Plain old participation –thoughtful, funny and informed – is worth 15% of the grade

• Cumulative final exam 15%

Participation

This class depends heavily on participation. You cannot participate if you are not present, and you cannot participate fully if you are not prepared. Thus, regular, pro-active preparation for class is imperative. You are welcome to work ahead, but DO NOT GET BEHIND!!! Class activities depend on your familiarity with the material under discussion.

Remember that participation is weighted as heavily as a midterm; your daily contributions to discussions and small group work is likely to be a more accurate measurement of your performance in this course than your ability to answer a few questions under pressure.

Academic Honesty

For this course, you are bound by the terms of the Vanderbilt Honor System. Any breach of academic honesty, including cheating, plagiarism, or failing to report a known or suspected violation of the Code will be reported to the Honor Council.

In particular, papers and web presentations must assign credit to the sources you use. Material borrowed from another--quotations, paraphrases, key words, or ideas--must be credited following appropriate citation procedures (footnotes and bibliography).

Other policies are printed on the syllabus, distributed in class.