Instructor Insights

Instructor Insights pages are part of the OCW Educator initiative, which seeks to enhance the value of OCW for educators.

Course Overview

This page focuses on the course 21M.260 Stravinsky to the Present as it was taught by Professor Emily Richmond Pollock in Spring 2016.

This course provides an overview of the musical styles and techniques developed over the past 115 years. The anthology and supplemental listening present a range of art music aesthetics in a variety of genres such as chamber music, symphonic and choral music, and opera. Students tune their ears to novel sounds, hone their own preferences and aim to understand the motivations behind and importance of a wide diversity of compositional orientations, including Expressionism, Impressionism, atonality, neo-Classicism, serialism, nationalism, the influence of jazz and popular idioms, post-tonality, electronic music, aleatory, performance art, post-modernism, minimalism, spectralism, the New Complexity, neo-Romanticism, and post-minimalism.

Course Outcomes

Course Goals for Students

  • Become familiar with the musical languages developed since 1900
  • Listen to music precisely and describe it using appropriate terminology
  • Identify and analyze important features in notated scores
  • React independently and critically to unfamiliar works to understand how music is shaped by aesthetic, historical, and political motivations
 

Instructor Insights

Students’ conversations become the class session. That’s how I teach. There's not a lecture, I don’t hold forth on particular topics for many minutes on end. Students have already done the work. They've completed the readings, looked at the details that I've asked them to explore, and come to class ready to share their reactions. Rather than dispensing information, I spend my time helping students refine their ideas.

— Emily Richmond Pollock

 

Curriculum Information

Prerequisites

21M.301 Harmony and Counterpoint I or permission of instructor.

Requirements Satisfied

  • GIR
  • CI-M
  • HASS

21M.260 may be applied toward a Bachelor of Science in Music or a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Engineering/Science.

Offered

Every spring semester

The Classroom

  • Classroom with two black pianos positioned near a whiteboard marked with musical scores. Tablet armchairs are positioned near the pianos. A flat-screen television is mounted to the wall.

    Room 1 of 1

    Seminar

    Seminars were held in a classroom equipped with two pianos, A/V, a whiteboard, and tablet armchairs.

 

Assessment

Grade Breakdown

The students' grades were based on the following activities:

The color used on the preceding chart which represents the percentage of the total grade contributed by attendance and warm-ups. 20% Attendance and warm-ups
The color used on the preceding chart which represents the percentage of the total grade contributed by five short listening quizzes. 10% Five short listening quizzes
The color used on the preceding chart which represents the percentage of the total grade contributed by papers. 45% Papers

Student Information

Less than 10 students took this course when it was offered in Spring 2016.

Breakdown by Year

Mostly juniors and seniors

Breakdown by Major

Mostly music majors or minors

Typical Student Background

Sometimes students come to a course like this one with a stereotypical bias against modern music, but in this case, that did not occur. Several students considered themselves composers and artists and were particularly excited to learn about twentieth-century music.

› Read More

 

How Student Time Was Spent

During an average week, students were expected to spend 12 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:

In Class

3 hours per week
  • Met 2 times per week for 1.5 hours per session; 27 sessions total.
  • Class sessions were discussion-based, and included warm-ups.
  • Joseph Auner, author of the course textbook, was a guest speaker during one of the sessions.
 

Out of Class

9 hours per week

Students completed anthology assignments and supplemental listening exercises, in addition to writing two formal papers and reviews of live events featuring music since 1900.

While the anthology assignments helped students hone their score-reading skills, the supplemental listening exercises, for which I did not provide scores, had purely to do with what students could get from listening alone.

— Emily Richmond Pollock

 

Semester Breakdown

WEEK M T W Th F
1 No classes throughout MIT. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled.
2 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled.
3 No classes throughout MIT. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session and listening quiz scheduled. No session scheduled.
4 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled.
5 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session and listening quiz scheduled. No session scheduled.
6 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled.
7 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled and writing requirement due. No session scheduled.
8 No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT.
9 No session scheduled. Class session and listening quiz scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled.
10 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled and writing requirement due. No session scheduled.
11 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session and listening quiz scheduled. No session scheduled.
12 No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled.
13 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session scheduled and writing requirement due. No session scheduled.
14 No session scheduled. Class session scheduled. No session scheduled. Class session and listening quiz scheduled. No session scheduled.
15 No session scheduled. Guest speaker session scheduled. No session scheduled. Student paper presentation scheduled and writing requirement due. No classes throughout MIT.
16 No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT. No classes throughout MIT.
Displays the color and pattern used on the preceding table to indicate dates when classes are not held at MIT. No classes throughout MIT
Displays the color used on the preceding table to indicate dates when class sessions are held. Class session
Displays the color used on the preceding table to indicate the date when a guest speaker teaches the session. Guest speaker
Displays the symbol used on the preceding table to indicate writing requirement due dates. Writing requirement due
Displays the color used on the preceding table to indicate dates when no class session is scheduled. No class session scheduled
Displays the color used on the preceding table to indicate dates when student paper presentations are held. Student paper presentations
Displays the symbol used on the preceding table to indicate listening quizzes are held. Listening quiz