Songs are effective mediums to tell stories, communicate ideas, and convey emotions. In this course we will explore the long and widespread practice of singing Spanish Songs. We will engage with a variety of sources and methodologies that trace different forms of preservation, transmission, and circulation from thirteenth-century cantigas to Billboard hits enjoyed today in personal portable devices. The song repertory will give you the opportunity to develop critical thinking and analytical writing as you engage with a variety of ideas including memory, love and desire, race and identity, power and propaganda, cultural resistance and protest. We will consider narratives of music, musicians, and musical instruments that illustrate transcultural musical encounters around the globe, covering topics from the Spanish Reconquista to the Latinx and Caribbean diasporas in the US. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: LACL 1018)

The term “experimental music” is broadly applied across a range of genres to indicate adventurous music that breaks with tradition and defies expectations. In this seminar, we discuss experimentation as a creative disposition and investigate why musicians and audiences might embrace or reject this approach. Our discussions will be informed by listening assignments, and by our own collective experiments with sound. We will also examine and practice writing about music by interrogating the term “experimental.” The way critics and musicians talk about experimental music not only reveals their preferences but also has important consequences for how music is understood and valued. Music does not speak for itself, and so what we say and write about music is essentially part of its meaning.

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

For the entry-level student. Explores the fundamental elements of music -- form, harmony, melody, pitch, rhythm, texture, timbre -- and teaches basic skills in reading and writing Western music notation for the purposes of reading, analyzing, and creating musical works.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Explores the role of music and sound as social practice, political catalyst, market commodity, site of nostalgia, environment regulator, identity tool, and technology of the self. Enables students to communicate about sound and music. Addresses music in relation to: mood manipulation; signification; taste and identity; race, class, gender, and sexuality codes; urban tribes and subcultures; economics and politics; power; authenticity; and technology. Emphasis will be on contemporary North American socio-musical contexts; however, cross-cultural and historical perspectives will also be introduced. Case studies may include gym, study, road trip, and party playlists; music in political campaigns; Muzak; advertising jingles; film music, and a variety of musical genres such as goth, funk, and hip hop.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

This course explores how music has been created, performed, and heard across the globe and throughout history. Through analytical listening and guided examination, we will explore specific musical works and traditions from diverse cultures and will provide opportunities for attentive listening, thoughtful discussion, and insightful critiques. We will focus on new trends in post-Eurocentric music history and will consider how dynamics of race, class, gender, sexuality, and indigeneity have shaped musical creativity and practices. Our studies will broaden musical horizons, build appreciation for unfamiliar genres, and expand awareness of lesser-known artists and styles outside the mainstream Western canon. This course offers a new approach to engaging with, thinking about, and learning from multifaceted musical histories and cultures. The goal is a more inclusive, enlightened view that values diversity and reciprocal learning between varied musical worlds, both past and present.

Introduces students to the rich and diverse musical traditions of sub-Saharan Africa. Covers traditional and modern musical practices from various regions, and explores their roles in social, cultural, and political contexts from historical and contemporary perspectives. Students learn to identify basic regional musical properties and characteristic musical styles. Case studies may include West African dance-drumming, Ghanaian highlife, musical oral historians, “African Ballets,” South African a cappella, the protest music of Nigerian Fela Kuti and Zimbabwean Thomas Mapfumo, as well as contemporary hip-hop and religious pop music. Based on lectures, readings, performances by visiting artists, discussions, and audio and video sources. No prior musical knowledge necessary. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 1211)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

From silent films (which were always accompanied with music and were therefore never really “Silent”) to today’s computer enhanced blockbusters, music has always been an integral part of cinema, allowing for suspension of disbelief, establishing mood and emotion, and cogenerating narrative. Through lectures and film viewings, discussion sections, small group projects, and readings (hyperlinked to movie clips), students in this course will gain the ability to critically analyze the musical language of cinema and understand how its related aesthetics, technology, and economics have changed over the last 100 years. Films studied will include works scored by Desplat, Herrmann, Junkie XL, Korngold, Ligeti, Public Enemy, Raskin, Simon, Tamar-Kali, Vangelis, and Williams. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 1161)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

This course is an opportunity to engage with the history, heritage, and culture of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latin American and Caribbean communities in the US through music. We will explore issues of race, identity, religion, and politics from a broad temporal span of around five hundred years—from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. We will cover a broad variety of regions, contexts, and musical genres from classical, folk, and popular traditions, such as salsa, Cuban son, hip-hop, Latin polyphony, rock, villancicos, protest song, chamber music, reggaeton, vallenato, and more. This course is not meant to be comprehensive but will reflect on the many ways in which music has been used in different cultural and historical contexts, offering a close examination of its characteristics, means, and meanings. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: AFRS 1271, LACL 1271)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Goddesses, murderesses, virtuosi, warrior queens: portrayals and performances of women-identifying characters in South Asian epics resonate across centuries and continents, shaping everyday embodied experience in South Asia and its diasporas. This course examines how epic women’s narratives shape aesthetic, domestic, and sociopolitical texts and contexts, from palm leaf manuscripts to pop culture and cinema to sexuality. Texts will be read in translation from a variety of South Asian epic traditions, including Buddhacharita, Mahabharata, Shahnameh. Oral-aural epic traditions from Dalit, Adivasi, and other South Asian ethnic groups will be examined in the course as well. An interdisciplinary approach draws on performance studies, gender and postcolonial theory, diaspora studies, literary study, and embodied practice. The class will collaboratively and critically respond to course texts and themes by developing a multimodal artistic work, culminating in an end-of-semester performance. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Classics; Theater. (Same as: ASNS 1272, CLAS 1272, THTR 1307)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

A socio-cultural, historical, and analytical introduction to jazz music from the turn of the twentieth century to around 1950. Includes some concert attendance. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 1581)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Explores how a marginalized and racially segregated genre (the so called 'Race Music' of the 1920s) developed into the world's most dominant popular music tradition. The history of rock, pop, and soul music and its descendants (including r&b, folk-rock, art-rock, punk, metal, and funk) will be considered through six often inter-related filters: race relations, commerce and the recording industry, politics, authenticity and image, technology, and, of course, the music itself. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 1591)

Traces the history of hip-hop culture (with a focus on rap music) from its beginnings in the Caribbean to its transformation into a global phenomenon by the early 1990s. Explores constructions of race, gender, class, and sexuality in hip-hop’s production, promotion, and consumption, as well as the ways in which changing media technology and corporate consolidation influenced the music. Artists/bands investigated include Grandmaster Flash, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, N.W.A., MC Lyte, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Dr. Dre. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: AFRS 1592, GSWS 1592)

Introduction to some major works and central issues in the canon of Western music, from the middle ages up to the present day. Includes some concert attendance and in-class demonstrations.

Students will explore different phases of the creative process that involve drama and music for the stage. We will study and compare recent productions of operas, musicals, and other theatrical and dance performances. Now that theaters, opera venues, and concert halls are closed, this course will serve as a reminder of the vibrant collaborative work between artists and the connections they establish with their audiences. We will discuss the different areas of design, such as scenography, costume, lighting, sound, and projection, and we will analyze in a cohesive way how they relate to the music score. We will engage with a variety of genres covering a wide time span, and we will analyze in-depth specific works, such as Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and Robert Lepage’s staging for Peter Gabriel’s The Secret World Tour. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Dance; Theater. (Same as: DANC 1304, THTR 1304)

Designed for students with some beginning experience in music theory and an ability to read music. Covers scales, keys, modes, intervals, and basic tonal harmony.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Explores the history of audio recording technology as it pertains to music, aesthetic function of recording technique, modern applications of multitrack recording, and digital editing of sound created and captured in the acoustic arena. Topics include the physics of sound, microphone design and function, audio mixing console topology, dynamic and modulation audio processors, studio design and construction, principles of analog to digital (ADA) conversion, and artistic choice as an engineer. Students create their own mix of music recorded during class time.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

A study of arranging and rehearsing a cappella music in recent styles, focusing on folk song arrangements, pop music in the collegiate a cappella tradition, and spirituals. Techniques of arranging include the use of chords, spacing and voice leading, textures, vocables, and adaptation of instrumental accompaniments to choral music. Also covered are conducting and vocal techniques; students are expected to sing.

This course explores the world of video game music and sound. Students will learn about the history of sound and music in games—from early arcade machines to today’s immersive digital environments. By playing, watching, listening, and analyzing a broad range of games, we’ll investigate how sound and music help tell stories, evoke emotion, and guide player experience. At the same time, students will begin designing their own audio for games. Through hands-on projects, they will practice composing, recording, synthesizing, and editing sound to bring virtual worlds to life. No prior experience is required—only a passion for games, music, and sound.

This course explores how musicians create and work in the digital age. Students will create video and audio recordings of performances (using Garageband and iMovie, which are available to all Bowdoin students) to be shared on multiple platforms. Topics include the basics of home audio and video recording, livestreaming, digital collaboration, songwriting/arranging and performing for social media, arranging pop/contemporary music, and a study of what other artists, producers, and creatives are doing on digital platforms. While there is no course prerequisite, familiarity with at least one musical instrument (voice and digital instrumentation/beat-making included) is necessary.

Provides students with the ways to ask questions about music by examining it from a number of perspectives – follow the music, follow the musicians, follow the audiences, follow the ways it is discussed, follow the ways it makes money or the technologies used to create and disseminate it; examine its history, the lives of its practitioners, the trajectories of the institutions that sustain it, the multiple musical influences that inform it, and the way it influences new hybrid musical forms. Case studies to be examined by students may include Bach or Beyonce, a rock concert or a ceremony of religious chant – or the recital of an on-campus a capella group. Using methods from cultural studies, the social sciences, ethnomusicology, and historical musicology, students carry out their own music research projects.

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Explores intersections between music studies and disability studies, and how social and medical constructions of disability may be interrogated through the study of musicians, musical audiences, and, more broadly, music as culture. Positioning disability as a facet of human diversity, rather than a deficit, the course examines how conditions of, and ideas about, ability and disability affect experiences with music and how musical sounds, practices, and discourses in turn shape ideas and values about dis/ability. Includes a variety of socio-musical contexts and musical genres (among them, popular and classical) and cross-cultural and historical perspectives, as well as considerations of gender and race. No prior musical knowledge is necessary.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

Bollywood, India's Hindi-language film industry, produces the most films in the world and has shaped popular musics and cultures throughout India and its diasporas. This course examines the history and present of the Bollywood film music industry, from its origins in the silent film era of the 1910s until today. The course will engage with Bollywood film music in an ethnomusicological context, looking at the social, political, historical, and artistic influences that shaped Bollywood's distinctive musical eras and lives of Bollywood songs through song and dance performance. Students will learn about the confluence of genres including jazz, rock, hip hop, and various Indian classical and folk music in Bollywood soundtracks, and will explore musical connections and divergences with other regional film industries in India. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Cinema Studies; Dance. (Same as: ASNS 2592, DANC 2208, CINE 2702)

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Seminar. Examines black sacred music from its earliest forms, fashioned by enslaved Africans, through current iterations produced by black global actors of a different sort. Explores questions such as: What does bondage sound like? What does emancipation sound like? Can we hear corresponding sounds generated by artists today? In what ways have creators of sacred music embraced, rejected, and re-envisioned the 'strange land' over time? Looks at musical and lyrical content and the context in which various music genres developed, such as Negro spirituals, gospel, and sacred blues. Contemporary artists such as Janelle Monáe, Beyoncé, Bob Marley, and Michael Jackson included as well. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Music. (Same as: AFRS 2261)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester

Provides a socio-cultural, historical, and analytical introduction to jazz music from around 1950 to the present. Students learn to understand the history of jazz in terms of changes in musical techniques and social values and to recognize music as a site of celebration and struggle over relationships and ideals. Students increase their ability to hear differences among performances and styles. They gain greater knowledge of US history as it affects and is affected by musical activities and learn to appreciate the stakes and motives behind the controversies and debates that have often surrounded various styles of African American music. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2281)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Seminar. Examines the convergence of politics and spirituality in the musical work of contemporary black women singer-songwriters in the United States. Analyzes material that interrogates and articulates the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality generated across a range of religious and spiritual terrains with African diasporic/black Atlantic spiritual moorings, including Christianity, Islam, and Yoruba. Focuses on material that reveals a womanist (black feminist) perspective by considering the ways resistant identities shape and are shaped by artistic production. Employs an interdisciplinary approach by incorporating ethnomusicology, anthropology, literature, history, and performance and social theory. Explores the work of Shirley Caesar, the Clark Sisters, Meshell Ndegeocello, Abby Lincoln, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Dianne Reeves, among others. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Music; Religion. (Same as: AFRS 2201, GSWS 2207, REL 2201)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Focuses on the ways black people have experienced twentieth-century events. Examines social, economic, and political catalysts for processes of protest music production across genres including gospel, blues, folk, soul, funk, rock, reggae, and rap. Analysis of musical and extra- musical elements includes style, form, production, lyrics, intent, reception, commodification, mass-media, and the Internet. Explores ways in which people experience, identify, and propose solutions to poverty, segregation, oppressive working conditions, incarceration, sexual exploitation, violence, and war. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology; Music. (Same as: AFRS 2228, ANTH 2227)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

Explores the significance of punk music from the 1970s to today. Addresses punk music in relation to transnational identity; the individual in late modernity; music vs. noise; sound and meaning; selling out; youth culture; subculture; genre trouble; music and fashion; rebellion and insurrection; the abject; constructions of the body and disease; and race, class, gender, and sexuality codes. Enables students to communicate about sound and music. Bands/artists discussed may include The Bags, The Germs, Nervous Gender, The Sex Pistols, The Bad Brains, Nirvana, The Runaways, Patti Smith, Television, X-Ray Spex, and The Clash.

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester

Traces the history of hip-hop culture (with a focus on rap music) from the 1990s to the present day. Explores how ideas of race, gender, class, and sexuality are constructed and maintained in hip-hop’s production, promotion, and consumption, and how these constructions have changed and/or coalesced over time. Investigates hip-hop as a global phenomenon and the strategies and practices of hip-hop artists outside of the United States. Artists investigated range from Iggy Azalea to Jay-Z, Miz Korona to Ibn Thabit. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: AFRS 2294, GSWS 2294)

This seminar explores diverse song traditions in Colonial Latin America. Attention will be given to manifestations of musical globalization and will incorporate the study of sources that reveal the circulation and transmission of Iberian and African musicoliterary genres in the vast transatlantic Spanish empire, including Portugal, Italy, the New World, and Asia. We will pay special attention to complex representations of ethnic and religious others (indigenous people of the Americas, African slaves, Muslims, Jews) in relation to literary conventions and early modern ideas about religious devotion and racial, gender, and class difference. We will approach these topics through a close engagement with materials in special collections and archives. This course is part of the following fields of study: Colonial Latin America, transatlantic studies, Spanish Golden Age Poetry, and early music. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: LACL 2330)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

How “African” is Latin American music? Although the size, nature, and significance of the Black population in Spanish America is often dismissed, the massive forced migration of African peoples to transatlantic Portuguese and Spanish dominions changed not only the soundscape but also tastes and musical practices in the entire Western Hemisphere. This course explores the legacies of Western African traditions in the music of Latin America. The scope and diversity of Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latinx musical traditions is immense, but we will explore specific historical narratives, regions, music genres, and sources and will engage with diverse scholarly approaches for the study of African roots in Latin American music(s). Some examples include seventeenth-century negrillas, eighteenth-century songs and dances for the Luso-Brazilian viola, Afro-Dominican salves, Mexican spirituals, Colombian vallenato, Brazilian samba, Cuban timba, Puerto Rican bomba, and Caribbean reggae, reggaetón, rap, and hip-hop. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2336, LACL 2336)

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester

This course examines hip-hop culture's vast array of expressive practices. Focusing primarily on hip-hop dance practices, our study will situate these dances within a larger hip-hop culture, acknowledging hip-hop as both inherently African diasporic and specific to the particular US historical, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts in which—and the communities from whom—these practices emerge. Exploring aesthetics and/as cultural values, we will pay particular attention to the roles of power and inequity, interrogating themes that may include racism, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, globalization, appropriation, community, joy, and agency. We will examine our own positionalities, asking what it can mean to engage responsibly in hip-hop as well as what it can mean to be responsible to the communities of folks who created and continue to create hip-hop culture. Primarily a reading-, writing-, and discussion-based course, our study will be supplemented with physical practice in the studio. This course originates in Theater and Dance and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Music. (Same as: DANC 2404, AFRS 2290)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

The Western canon -- the repertory of works and composers at the core of classical music -- may seem pretty immutable. But in fact works and composers continually fall in and out of it, or move up and down in its hierarchy. At the same time, it has been extraordinarily difficult for the canon to include works by women, people of color, and non-Western composers. Examines the processes of, and pressures on, canon formation from about 1780 until the present and a number of pillars of classical music, from Handel’s “Messiah” and Haydn’s “Creation” to the symphonies of Shostakovich and the works of Nadia Boulanger’s students.

In this course, students explore a variety of theatrical genres that use music as a central component, typically ranging from early Italian opera to current Broadway musicals. Each semester, the course is tailored to feature exciting productions that can be viewed on Live HD or streaming platforms or attended in person. The course has included works by Monteverdi, Mozart, Gershwin, Sondheim, Blanchard, Glass, Miranda, Mitchell, Aucoin, Caro, and others. It introduces historical conventions, genres, styles, and processes of artistic expression and collaboration, including staging and production design. We will engage in discussions about historical and social contexts, as well as issues of gender, race, identity, aesthetics, or politics. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Theater. (Same as: THTR 2309)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Introduces the music, the life, and the influence of Beethoven on the history of western music. The main objective is to broaden students’ familiarity with Beethoven’s work and to recognize and analyze the principal styles, forms, and genres used during this period. Expands students’ experience with research tools, methods, and sources that are useful for the study of music history. Provides a critical perspective on the social construction of genius and the ideologies that lead to the institutional origins of 'classical' music.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

This course explores the complex relationship between language, sound, and hearing in a myriad of religious traditions. Positioning sound and music as our primary lens of inquiry, we examine primary sources and ethnographic studies in our attempt to grapple with the variegated ways religious or mystical experiences are experienced and interpreted. A central component to this course is a focus on practices of listening and it will place in conversation relevant discourse from the fields of voice studies, ethnomusicology, religious studies, and sound studies. Students will engage in methods of vocal analyses and religious studies methodologies on performativity and embodiment. Weekly topics and their affiliated readings will include, but are not confined to Islam and El-Ghayb; spiritualism; African-American sermon traditions; Hindu mysticism; American evangelicalism; Jewish aniconism. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Religion. (Same as: REL 2305)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Through a survey of music from Bach to Chopin, the student learns to recognize the basic processes and forms of tonal music, to read a score fluently, and to identify chords and modulations.

An intensive project-oriented course in which students learn skills such as melodic and rhythmic writing, arranging, studio production, text-setting, and basic chromatic harmony, and how those elements combine to affect listeners on an emotional level. Repertoire studied largely chosen by students, but also includes songs by the Beatles, various Motown artists, Joni Mitchell, Prince, and Radiohead. Small-group and individual lab sessions scheduled separately.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An introduction to the art of combining the elements of melody, harmony, rhythm, form, and orchestration to create cohesive and engaging music. Students learn techniques for generating and developing musical ideas through exercises and four main compositional assignments: a work for solo instrument, a theme and variations for solo instrument and piano, a song for voice and piano, and a multi-movement work for three to five instruments. Students also learn ways to discuss and critique their own and one another’s work. Ends with a concert of student compositions.

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

The celebrated German film director Fatih Akin has stated, 'Film is a two dimensional thing—it goes up and down and left to right but if you put music into that two dimensional medium, it acquires a third, fourth, and fifth dimension.' This course will explore the myriad ways that music creates deeper meaning in film. This will be accomplished through both analysis of preexisting films scores and composing original music for five common filmic categories: establishing sequences, montage sequences, dialogue underscoring, and action and love scenes. Students will need to be able to read music notation. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2502)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Examination of the history and techniques of electronic and computer music. Topics include compositional aesthetics, recording technology, digital and analog synthesis, sampling, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), and computer-assisted composition. Ends with a concert of student compositions.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

A hands-on introduction to the creation of interactive art and digital media. Students construct programs to analyze data from physical sensors to characterize motion, proximity, and sound. Through experimental and project based studio work, students design and implement interactive applications for theater, dance, sculpture, installations, and video. Collaborative work focuses on problem solving at the intersections of creative arts and technology. Readings in media theory support the critical examination of contemporary interactive art. Note: This course does not serve as a prerequisite to 3000-level visual arts courses. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Visual Arts. (Same as: VART 1099)

Immersive and spatial media, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and interactive installations, are transforming how we interact with art and experiences. Immersive art refers to works that fully engage the audience by creating a surrounding environment, while spatial sound is sound that moves or exists in three-dimensional space, enhancing the sense of immersion. In this course, students will explore these forms of media, starting with existing immersive works then analyzing and breaking them down to understand how they are designed. They will learn techniques like sound spatialization and study immersive projection technologies, which are key to creating these environments. Combining technical and creative skills, students will develop their own augmented and mixed reality projects. Collaboration with peers on artistic projects will be a central component, giving students hands-on experience in applying these concepts.

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Performing classical music is different from performing many other sorts of music partly because it requires detailed attention to the musical score, and partly because it inevitably raises questions of history. Considers how score-analysis contributes to performance and investigates a wider variety of historical performance practices and attitudes. Projects include student performances with commentary and comparisons of recorded performances. Includes concert attendance and visits by professional performers.

Do we understand improvised and composed music differently, and if so how? Investigates musical syntax in improvised settings and its consequences for the organization of time in music. Also considers the social functions and meanings of improvisation. Analysis draws from recordings, interviews, and writings in ethnomusicology, semiotics, and music theory. At the same time, students participate in regular improvisation workshops exploring vernacular music, avant-garde open forms, and interactive electronics.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

A study of singing traditions, emphasizing American popular music, musical theater, and classical music. Topics comprise vocal color and production, the influence of language on singing, performing practices, improvisation, and aesthetic response. Projects include performances and analyses of recorded music.

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Explores how classical, folk, popular, and non-Western performance styles are transmitted by ear, notation, or instruction, and how performers contribute to traditions always in flux. Projects include student rehearsal and performance, listening to recordings and live performers, and study of scores and music history.

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester

Musical theater is a popular performance form that challenges students to work in multiple disciplines, combining dance, acting, music, and design. This course will give students with experience in acting, singing, and dancing an opportunity to hone their skills together through the performance of songs and scenes from a variety of musical theater styles. Students will do projects in ballad singing, choral numbers, group dances, and acting the song. Actors, singers, choreographers, and musicians will be encouraged to work together in class and in evening rehearsals toward a public performance and a cabaret performance at the end of the semester. Performances will be grounded in historical readings and research that contextualizes the origins of the pieces being performed. This course originates in Theater and Dance and is crosslisted with: Dance; Music. (Same as: THTR 2205, DANC 2205)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

When we perform music on stage, what are we performing? Is it only the “music” or is there something more? When we watch a live musical performance, what are we taking into our bodies? Are we learning lessons about which bodies go with which music or who is allowed on a particular stage and who is “different” in that context? This course investigates lineages of performance practice for what these lineages teach about bodies and genre. For example, how did jazz music created in African American communities and initially replete with women artists in the 1920s turn into a musical community dominated by white middle-class boys and men? We will examine how musical lineages are constructed with particular attention to the history of segregation in post-secondary education in the United States. The course includes a final performance of a musical and/or theatrical nature. Previous music experience is not necessary but is welcomed. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: AFRS 2606, GSWS 2208)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

This course approaches the creation and development of a repertoire of musical theater songs for the singer, actor, or dancer as well as the use of those pieces in an audition setting or performance setting. In addition, this workshop will address the history and development of the musical in terms of style and approach. Students engage with material from a wide variety of shows and eras in order to build a “book” of prepared material useful for auditions, showcases, or cabaret performances. They also develop and hone skills that combine elements of singing, acting, dance, and movement in a collaborative space with other artists in this medium. (Same as: THTR 2511, DANC 2511)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Beyond Borders Percussion Ensemble is an opportunity to study rhythm, drumming and ensemble skills from a global perspective. The ensemble’s repertoire focuses on Afro-Caribbean, North Indian, South American and West African traditions (usually learned without notation) with an emphasis on the creation of contemporary, cross-genre experimentation that includes improvisation and composition. Participants will have access to a variety of percussion instruments from around the world, found objects and will also use body percussion and vocalizations. Formal performances occur once per semester, with possible additional performance opportunities at College events. The ensemble is composed of students with varying backgrounds, including some with no prior music experience and advanced players. Students are welcome to contact director Brian Shankar Adler before registering. First Semester.

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Beyond Borders Percussion Ensemble is an opportunity to study rhythm, drumming and ensemble skills from a global perspective. The ensemble’s repertoire focuses on Afro-Caribbean, North Indian, South American and West African traditions (usually learned without notation) with an emphasis on the creation of contemporary, cross-genre experimentation that includes improvisation and composition. Participants will have access to a variety of percussion instruments from around the world, found objects and will also use body percussion and vocalizations. Formal performances occur once per semester, with possible additional performance opportunities at college events. The ensemble is composed of students with varying backgrounds, including some with no prior music experience and advanced players. Students are welcome to contact director Brian Shankar Adler before registering. This is for students who are enrolling in the second semester or beyond of this ensemble.

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

The Middle Eastern Ensemble's (MME) music ranges from the contemplative to the danceable. MEE is open to students who read music and who play string or wind instruments, piano, accordion, or who are willing to learn Middle Eastern percussion (the percussion section is limited, and is first come first serve). Bowdoin owns an oud, a qanun, some frame drums, riqqs, and tablas (dumbeks). Ensemble instruction is provided for all percussion instruments. Students wishing to play the oud or qanum must have prior experience.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Meets once a week on Monday evenings, and performs pieces from the Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, and Greek traditions. Coached by oud player Amos Libby and percussionist Eric La Perna, the group performs one concert per semester. No experience is required to join; students have the option of singing, learning new percussion instruments, or playing an instrument with which they are already familiar.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Ensemble members will learn, creatively collaborate on, and perform repertoire from South Asian classical and folk music and dance traditions. Rehearsals will: (a) build a working knowledge of North Indian music and improvisation techniques through traditional, aural methods, and (b) apply this knowledge to explore other regional traditions, culminating in a themed semesterly concert. No previous musical experience is required: the ensemble welcomes beginners, students with experience in any musical style/instrument/voice, and practitioners of different South Asian dance and music traditions. Please note: will not count in the Asian Studies major/minor. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 1070)

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Ensemble members will learn, creatively collaborate on, and perform repertoire from South Asian classical and folk music and dance traditions. Rehearsals will: (a) build a working knowledge of North Indian music and improvisation techniques through traditional, aural methods, and (b) apply this knowledge to explore other regional traditions, culminating in a themed semesterly concert. No previous musical experience is required: the ensemble welcomes beginners, students with experience in any musical style/instrument/voice, and practitioners of different South Asian dance and music traditions. Please note: will not count in the Asian Studies major/minor. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 1071)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Groups of four to six students, formed by audition, and performing both modern and classic standards, plus some original compositions by students and faculty. They perform one concert a semester on campus, and appear occasionally in other venues.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Groups of four to six students, formed by audition, and performing both modern and classic standards, plus some original compositions by students and faculty. They perform one concert a semester on campus, and appear occasionally in other venues.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Groups of three to six students, formed by audition. With the guidance of a faculty coach, these groups delve into and perform select pieces from the chamber music repertory of the the past four hundred years. Some of these groups will be standard chamber ensembles (e.g., string quartets, piano trios, brass quintets); others will be formed according to student and repertoire demand. Rehearsals are arranged to suit the players' and coach's schedules.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Groups of three to six students, formed by audition. With the guidance of a faculty coach, these groups delve into and perform select pieces from the chamber music repertory of the the past four hundred years. Some of these groups will be standard chamber ensembles (e.g., string quartets, piano trios, brass quintets); others will be formed according to student and repertoire demand. Rehearsals are arranged to suit the players' and coach's schedules.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An auditioned ensemble of about fifty student musicians playing woodwind, brass, percussion, and string instruments. Repertoire for the group varies widely from semester to semester and explores the vast body of orchestral literature from the past 250 years to today. Rehearsals are Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An auditioned ensemble of about fifty student musicians playing woodwind, brass, percussion, and string instruments. Repertoire for the group varies widely from semester to semester and explores the vast body of orchestral literature from the past 250 years to today. Rehearsals are Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An auditioned group of about thirty student singers. The choir performs at least three times a semester, and sometimes at festivals and society meetings in the US. Recent tours abroad, which occur about every three years during spring break, have taken the ensemble to Portugal, Germany, Ireland, England, Chile, Hungary, and Slovakia. Repertoires have included Gaelic folksongs sung in Ireland, a Jimi Hendrix festival, over a dozen works by Eric Whitacre, the music of Bartok sung in his native Hungary, songs of Violetta Parra sung in her native Chile, premieres of new American music for the Society of Composers, Messiah with the Portland Symphony, and the moresche of Lassus at an ACDA convention in Boston.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An auditioned group of about thirty student singers. The choir performs at least three times a semester, and sometimes at festivals and society meetings in the US. Recent tours abroad, which occur about every three years during spring break, have taken the ensemble to Portugal, Germany, Ireland, England, Chile, Hungary, and Slovakia. Repertoires have included Gaelic folksongs sung in Ireland, a Jimi Hendrix festival, over a dozen works by Eric Whitacre, the music of Bartok sung in his native Hungary, songs of Violetta Parra sung in her native Chile, premieres of new American music for the Society of Composers, Messiah with the Portland Symphony, and the moresche of Lassus at an ACDA convention in Boston.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An ensemble open to all students with wind and percussion experience that performs several major concerts each year on campus, along with performances at campus events and ceremonies. Repertoire consists of a variety of literature, from the finest of the wind band repertoire to light classics, show tunes, and marches. Students have been featured as soloists and conductors, and student compositions have been premiered by the ensemble. Rehearsals are Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An ensemble open to all students with wind and percussion experience that performs several major concerts each year on campus, along with performances at campus events and ceremonies. Repertoire consists of a variety of literature, from the finest of the wind band repertoire to light classics, show tunes, and marches. Students have been featured as soloists and conductors, and student compositions have been premiered by the ensemble. Rehearsals are Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

The Bowdoin Electro-Acoustic Ensemble (B.E.E.) is a collaborative group that thrives on the creation of experimental electroacoustic music and multimedia experiences, pushing the boundaries of musical expression. B.E.E's repertoire showcases a wide range of aesthetics, encompassing everything from improvisation, beat-making, and live-coding to the thought-provoking soundscapes of the avant-garde. The ensemble's performances are immersive experiences that blend the sonic with the visual. Multidisciplinary collaboration lies at the heart of B.E.E. The ensemble fosters an environment where artists can experiment, innovate, and explore creative possibilities without boundaries. Critical and independent thinking is encouraged, allowing members to contribute their unique perspectives and skills to shape distinctive performance experiences. This approach not only fuels creativity but also promotes personal growth and intellectual exchange. No prior experience in electronic music necessary.

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

The Bowdoin Electro-Acoustic Ensemble (B.E.E.) is a collaborative group that thrives on the creation of experimental electroacoustic music and multimedia experiences, pushing the boundaries of musical expression. B.E.E's repertoire showcases a wide range of aesthetics, encompassing everything from improvisation, beat-making, and live-coding to the thought-provoking soundscapes of the avant-garde. The ensemble's performances are immersive experiences that blend the sonic with the visual. Multidisciplinary collaboration lies at the heart of B.E.E. The ensemble fosters an environment where artists can experiment, innovate, and explore creative possibilities without boundaries. Critical and independent thinking is encouraged, allowing members to contribute their unique perspectives and skills to shape distinctive performance experiences. This approach not only fuels creativity but also promotes personal growth and intellectual exchange. No prior experience in electronic music necessary.

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Employs gender as a theoretical tool to investigate the production, consumption, and representation of popular music in the United States and around the world. Examines how gender and racial codes have been used historically, for example to describe music as “authentic” (rap, rock) or “commercial” (pop, new wave), and at how these codes may have traveled, changed, or re-appeared in new guises over the decades. Considers how gender and sexuality are inscribed at every level of popular music as well as how music-makers and consumers have manipulated these representations to transgress normative codes and open up new spaces in popular culture for a range of sexual and gender expressions. Juniors and seniors only; sophomores admitted with consent of the instructor during the add/drop period. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 3103)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Examines African American Music as a multi-genre phenomenon with a focus on music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Of central concern are issues of appropriation, romanticism, lineage, expressive culture, music and identity, and music as an archive. Genres may include soul, funk, disco, hip-hop, jazz, blues, and classical music. Course will culminate with a final capstone project that can have a creative component. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 3151)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Examines the politics and poetics of cultural hybridity in the context of select popular music genres in and from Africa, and critically engages with related scholarly, nationalist, and popular discourses. Musical genres covered range from early twentieth-century West African palm wine music to contemporary manifestations of hip hop across the African continent and include musical products of post-independence cultural policies and the transnational marketing niche of “Afropop.” The rise and popularity of these genres is historicized and analyzed in the context of major social, ideological, political, and economic forces that have shaped Africa over the past 100 years, including colonialism, modern urbanization, independence movements, and globalization. Course materials include writings from the fields of ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory, musical audio and video recordings, and journalistic and promotional sources, as well as film documentaries. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 3205)

Instrument-making traditions and industries shape and sustain musical practices across cultures, creating sounding bodies from components of natural environments and collaborations between suppliers, artisans, and musicians. This course examines histories of artisanship, labor, and ecology that sustain musical worlds with a focus on the interdisciplinary work of instrument making. Readings include political policies and white papers discussing resource governance, scientific papers on material qualities and sound, and scholarly research on histories and theories of labor, craft, and governance that shape the value and acoustics of instruments. Class members will construct an instrument throughout the course, engaging in workshops and processes that center embodied knowledges and understandings as a core element of the course. Students will be invited to draw on their disciplinary, musical, and making backgrounds to enrich interdisciplinary conversations and in the instrument-making process. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 3270)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

A study of the contrapuntal style of J.S. Bach, and the relationship between common practice harmony and polyphony. Assignments include the analysis and composition of chorale harmonizations, inventions, and fugues.

The practice of jazz improvisation and composition offers a tradition rich with innovations in harmony and rhythm. Many of these innovations have become integral to a wide variety of musical styles, including pop, soul, rock, and film music. Provides an opportunity to expand musical understanding and vocabulary for improvisation and composition in a variety of tonal contexts. Bridges analysis and practice, examining a variety of theoretical devices and applying them to performance, composition, and arranging. Exercises include keyboard harmony, solo transcription, improvisation practice, and composition projects. Topics include chromatic harmony, modal techniques, upper chord extensions, altered dominants, chord substitutions, song forms, and borrowed rhythmic divisions.

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

An in-depth examination of factors to consider when writing for the orchestra. Students will become familiar with the developmental histories and unique traits of all standard orchestral instruments, learn how to sonically paint with a wide variety of instrumental timbres and textures, and study instrumental techniques and tropes found in compositions ranging from the Classical era to Modern-day film scores. Projects for this course (all of which will be played by live musicians) will include writing for a string quartet, woodwind quintet, brass quintet, and full orchestra. In addition to regular class meetings, students will attend reading sessions for their projects and attend two orchestral concerts.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Although functional harmony is the central organizing principle of Western music, it is completely absent in other complex musical systems around the world. Considers other means of music organization and how to incorporate those concepts in students' compositions. Topics include traditional polymeter in Ewe drumming, scale construction and metric design in Indian raag and taal, Confucian philosophy in Chinese sizhu music, and colotomic organization in Javanese gamelan. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ASNS 3760)

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester

Covers advanced topics in computer music. Focuses on algorithmic composition and sound synthesis. Discusses the significance of these techniques with reference to information theory, cybernetics, and cultural critiques of media technology. Students design projects in computer-assisted composition, video sound tracks, and live (real time) media applications.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

All senior majors must take this course, which involves either a single semester of independent work or the second semester of an honors thesis. In addition to weekly individual meetings with a faculty advisor, students meet as a group with the entire faculty several times during the semester. Must be taken in the spring of the senior year. Open only to senior music majors.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester