MUSC 40505 - Women, Music, And Salons

This course is concerned with the contributions of women to the musical traditions of Western Europe and its cultural colonies. Beginning in the sixteenth century with the coteries of patronesses Isabella d’Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga, salons-physical and intellectual spaces for social interaction curated by a host-emerged as exclusive domains in which women could wield influence in the realms of literature, art, philosophy, politics, art, science, and music. Benefitting from the deluge of research published on women and musical salons in the last decade, students will develop cutting-edge tools to engage with the musical salons as spaces of sociability that shaped contemporary discourses and artistic movements. Meeting three times per week as a seminar, students will engage in active discussions based on readings, critical listening, and tactical experiences of the panoply of social activities and performances engendered by salons.

Cr. 3.
Student Learning Outcomes
1. Demonstrate precise knowledge of the ways in which histories of music have excluded women and how the study of musical salons has made historiographic interventions to rectify these exclusions.
2. Analyze how women used salons as proto-feminist and feminist spaces through which they could wield cultural influence and shape contemporary discourse, social mores, gender relationships, and artistic trends.
3. Reconstruct and reenact games, literary or poetic readings, musical performances, and other social experiences fostered at salons from the 16th through the 20th centuries.
4. Discover the immense power salon hosts embodied in shaping concert traditions.
5. Develop a topic, conduct academic research, and write a paper based on a theme related to the course material.