A two-term core sequence, Introduction to Musicologies, takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of music. In 2018, our department was one of the first musicology departments in the U.S. to design a new type of introductory course to replace the longstanding chronological survey of Western classical music. Lawrence's new core courses in musicology no longer position as central the repertoire of the Western classical canon. Instead, students encounter a rotating assortment of music topics and case studies drawn from various times, places, and cultures, which are chosen collaboratively by the four instructors who teach the course. In the new core courses, we provide students with opportunities to discover their own musical assumptions and values; to grapple with questions about musical meaning; to contemplate how discourses about music marginalize and empower; to explore how performance and scholarship might inform one another; to embrace nuance and complexity. We emphasize the ways that music scholars do research, make arguments, use writing, and construct histories.
In addition to our signature intro courses, we offer a variety of upper-level musicology seminars each term. Recent topics have included: Aesthetics of Music, Borrowed Music in the Movies, Concepts of Authenticity and Artifice in Popular Music, Cultural Histories of Sound Recording, Divine Love in the 17th Century, Early Music Revivals, History of the Wind Band, Jazz History, The Lied and German National Identity, Music and Disability, Music and the Environment, Music and Fairy Tales, Music and Gender, Music and Globalization, Music and Memory, Music and Power Under the Sun King, Music and Colonialism in the Early Modern Era, Music of India, Music of the Middle East, Opera and Betrayal, Performing Arts of Bali.