Cost and Registration Information

Early Registration Price (by February 10): $160
Regular Price (after February 10): $176

Seminar Description

Music does not exist in a vacuum but lives and breathes inside cities, theaters, churches, educational institutions, and civic spaces. These social and political contexts can influence and, indeed, determine the nature of musical works and practices. Just as well, music can shape the spaces that it occupies. This course will give participants an overview of music history, but will also examine how music participates in networks of people, ideas, and places. Classes focus on Claudio Monteverde in seventeenth century Venice, John Gay and Christopher Pepusch in eighteenth century London, Bayreuth during the dynasty of Richard Wagner, and Dimitri Shostakovich in Soviet Russia. Four sessions.

Regina Compton holds a PhD in musicology from the Eastman School of Music. Her research includes primarily baroque music, especially Handel’s operas, on which she has recent articles in the Händel-Jahrbüch (2016) and the Journal of Musicological Research (2016).

Materials List

Required:

• All materials are available on the course website: www.music-and-place.com

First Readings:

• Rosand, Ellen. "Far recitare un'opera a Venezia: Origins and Sources," in Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre, 9-15. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
• "Il ritorno a Seneca." Cambridge Opera Journal 21 (2010): 119-23.
• Students should also listen to select excepts from Claudio Monteverdi's opera "L'incoronazione di Poppea."
• Both of these readings and the audio will be available on the class web page (link above, under "Materials List").

This class is part of the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminars Program. Learn more about our registration procedures.