Music 1907–1913
F05
Allen Shawn
This course will focus on a few path-breaking musical works composed between the years 1907 and 1913, and will attempt to place them in a wider artistic and social context through readings of work by Freud, Kafka, Rilke, and Gertrude Stein and a discussion of paintings by Matisse, Picasso, and Kandinsky. The music studied will include Bela Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle,” Claude Debussy’s “Jeux,” Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, Igor Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka” and “Le Sacre du Printemps,” and Arnold Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” and “Pierrot Lunaire.” Homework consists of reading and listening assignments, and students are asked to write a sizable paper related to the music under discussion.