Course Content and Outcomes Guides (CCOG)

CCOG for MUC 210 Winter 2025


Course Number:
MUC 210
Course Title:
Contemporary Music Theory IV: Analysis
Credit Hours:
3
Lecture Hours:
30
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Introduces analysis and its role in representing a deeper level understanding of harmonic motion and goals, performance decisions, small- and large-scale forms, processes, text/music relationships, and narratives. Includes two-voice counterpoint in contemporary modal and tonal languages as a means of understanding linear structure. Prerequisites: MUC 103 or MUS 113 or instructor permission. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  • Identify methods for music analysis in a variety of contemporary genres.

  • Apply a variety of analytical methods to contemporary music using historical, cultural, and technological contexts.

  • Examine research methodologies used in musical analysis.

  • Demonstrate an understanding of organizational patterns of music and their interaction, and employ this understanding through aural, verbal, and visual analyses.

  • Articulate emotional responses to music and identify the various musical parameters that elicit that response at a beginning level.

Course Activities and Design

  • Reading assignments

  • Writing assignments (analytical essays)

  • Contrapuntal exercises

  • Class participation, small group work, and discussion

Outcome Assessment Strategies

  • Instructor- and student-led discussion of readings

  • Essays

  • Homework assignments

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

  • Local and large-scale levels of musical structure

  • Two-voice counterpoint (imitative and non-imitative)

  • Text-music relationships

  • Musical narrative

  • Graphical analysis

  • Music, technology, and commerce