• MUTH 3510 Form and Analysis Fall 2014
  • MWF MU 288 10-10:50
  • Instructor: Dr. David Bard-Schwarz
  • Office: MU 104
  • E-mail: david.schwarz@unt.edu
    • Office Hours TBA

In this course we are going to write beautiful, personally-motivated criticism of music, focusing on form. That means we're going to start with intuitive, visceral responses to music; from there we're going to go into the form of the music, using analysis to give depth and consistency to our experience with the work; we are also going to consult at least one source for each work, incorporating that person's comments into our own.

You will write five papers during the course; each paper will focus on a particular style, a particular form, a particular esthetic and analytic issue.

Your writing will integrate: a) personal, inutitive response, b) clear and precise analytic evidence, and c) responses from a published scholar. Your writing must be clear at the sentence, paragraph, and essy level.

For each class there are pdf files (where available) online for you to download and study; sound files will be posted on the player along with two video lectures per day. You will watch the videos each day and incorporate their content into the written, analysis assignments. Papers must be emailed to pinkpaperblueink@gmail.com by noon Central Standard Time (U.S.) on the day they are due. I will not accept papers posted more than 15 minutes past the due date and time.

I will comment on your papers and assign grades as notes added to pdf files. Please make sure when you save to pdf that you do not save to pdf/a, pdf/e, or pdf/x protocols. If you are using your own computers that probably won't happen. But if you go to some lab, internet cafe, or other establshment of questionable cybernectic hygiene, you may (without knowing it) save to one of those protocols. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) to read my comments. Download it now! Adobe Acrobat Reader for Machintosh or Adobe Acrobat Reader for PC

Grades will be determined as follows:

Plagiarism will result in an F for the course.

  • Paper 1 = 20%
  • Paper 2 = 20%
  • Paper 3 = 20%
  • Paper 4 = 20%
  • Paper 5 = 20%