Spring 2026 Course Search

Music Composition Project — MCO4802.01

Instructor: Allen Shawn
Days & Time: WE 10:00am-11:50am
Credits: 2

This is a course for composers who have taken composition courses previously and have good notation skills.  Enrollment is limited to 10 students. Each student will produce a sizable piece for String Quartet. The class time will be used for analysis and study of works composed for string quartet and for examination of the student’s works-in-progress.

BC Soundscape Dub Ensemble — MSR4373.01

Instructor: Cristian Amigo
Days & Time: TU 10:30am-12:20pm
Credits: 2

This ensemble-based course explores the intersection of live performance, experimental soundscapes, and dub aesthetics. Rooted in the traditions of dub music—including remix culture, delay and reverb manipulation, and bass-driven textures—students will create immersive sonic environments using a mix of acoustic instruments, electronic tools, field recordings, and live effects processing.

The Tuning in The Trees — MUS4279.01

Instructor: Omeed Goodarzi
Days & Time: FR 2:10pm-4:00pm
Credits: 2

The Tuning in the Trees is an advanced seminar in microtonality that treats tuning systems as both technical structures and living landscapes. Students will explore how musical intervals emerge from natural patterns—such as tree bifurcations, harmonic ratios, and number sequences—while engaging deeply with Just intonation, Meantone, Bohlen–Pierce, and other non-Western tunings.

Composing for the Lever Harp — MCO2132.01

Instructor: Rachel Clemente
Days & Time: TH 1:40pm-3:30pm
Credits: 2

In this course we will be taking a hands on approach to understanding the lever harp both historically and compositionally. We will be building and stringing small 19 string harps which will be used as the basis for our compositional work where students will be creating new works of varying length for the lever harp to be presented at the end of the semester. We’ll look at what techniques are and are not achievable, what makes this instrument unique to other harps, and how to include it in larger compositional contexts.

Queer French (in English) — FRE2109.02

Instructor: Stephen Shapiro
Days & Time: MO,TH 1:40pm-3:30pm
Credits: 2

In this course, we will examine French culture’s engagement with questions of sexuality and gender, with a focus on authors, artists, theorists, and others who have questioned ideas of normative sexuality from the Middle Ages through the 21st century. Authors and texts to be studied may include Marie de France, Gabrielle d’Estrées et l'une de ses soeurs, Montaigne, l’Abbé de Choisy, Charles Perrault (La Belle au bois dormant), le Chevalier d’Eon, Virginie Despentes, Paul Preciado, Wendy Delorme, Abdellah Taïa, Edouard Louis, Bambi (Sebastian Lifshitz), and Parole de King (Chriss Lag).