Fall 2003
Instructor: Chris Miller
Center for Humanities, room 104
phone: x4469
e-mail: <cjmiller@wesleyan.edu>
Class meetings: Monday & Wednesday, 11:00 - 12:20 pm
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 3 pm - 4 pm, or by appointment
This course is an introduction to the musics of China, Japan, and Korea. The focus is contemporary forms (in the broadest sense) of instrumental music, with an emphasis on that which retains, refigures, or renews connections with traditional forms. We will begin with an introduction to selected traditional genres and instruments. We will then review major shifts in the music-scape of East Asia resulting from modernization, including the introduction and widespread adaptation of Western musics. With this aesthetic and historical background, we will explore various facets of contemporary East Asian music from various perspectives: composers of avant-garde concert music and their encounter with traditional music; innovative performers of traditional instruments; newly invented or modernized ensembles of traditional instruments; pop music and efforts of traditional instrumentalists to popularize their music. We will also explore the presence of East Asian music in a North America.
Beyond the specific topical concerns of the course, a more general goal is to introduce different ways of thinking about and understanding music. Selected readings will focus variously on aesthetic and stylistic aspects, on biography and issues of identity, or on music's meaning and place in its cultural context.