MUMH 5200 "Ritual and Alienation, Two Themes in the Music of Stravinsky and Its Reception"
Margaret Notley
Fall 2003
Throughout his life, Stravinsky showed a marked interest in overtly ritualistic subject matter, both sacred and secular, and a preference for an aura of distance and unnaturalness in his music. In his works for stage, he drew on such diverse sources as innovations in Russian theater and the masks of ancient Greek tragedy. Even in instrumental compositions, he achieved similar effects of alienation.
This course will cover a great deal of repertory, treating both the techniques employed in the service of an aesthetic that favored ritual and alienation and the cultural sources of that aesthetic. A larger goal, as always in seminars, will be to encourage students to think critically about their own ways of working.