UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology

This course is intended to provide an introduction to the aesthetics and music of the Western classical tradition. Through taking the form of an historical survey, the course will follow the development of music aesthetics from the classicism of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven through the rise of Romanticism and Wagnerian music drama to the development of a modernist aesthetic and the question of postmodernism in music, and will include exemplary musical examples. By inquiring into changing aesthetic attitudes and ideas, lectures and discussions will focus on the different musical styles and forms that have contributed to the historical foundations of Western art music. Related questions concerning the historical nature of value judgments and the significance of aesthetics for social, historical, and cultural criticism will also be given consideration.