Music Portal (List View)

There are a lot of misconceptions and misrepresentations about African music. This module analyzes the complex linkages between the art of African music and its connections with culture, heritage, politics, and the environment. In this module you will learn about the different rhythms, multiple instruments used, their meaning, and the impact they have on social relations, identity, and politics. The course also touches on the use of song in folktales, meaning, and impact. [show less]

The Goldberg Variations is a keyboard work by J. S. Bach considered by many to be one of the greatest musical compositions of all time. In this module, we will listen, analyze and discuss our way through the piece. We will begin with the background to the composition, and study the initial aria and the ground bass that underlies the entire piece. We will then work our way through each of the thirty variations, listening to a couple of performances of each and studying the score. Along the way we will discuss the basics of harmony and counterpoint. Our goal is that you come away with a deeper understanding of this remarkable piece of music and a greater appreciation of the genius of Bach. Note: Ability to read music is not required for this module! [show less]

When a speaker feels grounded in their body, alive in their voice, and truly attentive to listeners, the whole room leans in. This participatory module helps you build those qualities through physical and embodied practice. Each session blends discussion, guided instruction, and hands-on exercises in movement, breath, and vocal exploration, so you learn how to inhabit what you want to say with greater ease and authenticity. You’ll cultivate comfort, dynamics, and empathy for audience-centered speaking, discovering how breath, posture, rhythm, and voice can make your ideas resonate. From the spine of this module—purpose, passion, perspective—you’ll come to anchor yourself in what matters and sustain your listeners’ attention without strain. This module is for anyone who speaks to groups online or in person—teachers, lecturers, scholars, writers, actors, facilitators, students, or community presenters. All you need is a familiar excerpt of your content, curiosity to investigate your presence, and a commitment to practice. By month’s end, you’ll leave with a reliable and grounding process you can use for any presentation, reading, or speaking engagement. [show less]

Discover the seasonal heartbeat of Japan through its annual celebrations in this 8-session journey, where you’ll explore the profound beauty of cherry blossom viewings, the exhilarating chaos of summer festivals with booming taiko drums, the quiet reverence of autumn moon gazing, and the cozy tradition of hot citrus baths at winter’s end, all while uncovering the deep cultural meanings and seasonal mindfulness woven into each timeless custom. This class is taught in English and is a perfect fit for curious travelers planning a trip who want to move beyond the guidebook and connect with the "why" behind the festivals; the cultural enthusiasts who find joy in understanding how traditions bind a community to its environment and history; and the anime, manga, or film fans who have seen these celebrations in stories and now want to explore them more. Ultimately, it's for anyone seeking to add a layer of mindful seasonality and structured beauty to their own year, discovering how Japan's annual rhythms of celebration, reflection, and renewal can resonate anywhere in the world. [show less]

The Midst podcast (which can be found at http://www.midst.co) is a strange and compelling space western horror science fantasy. . . hmmm. Let me start again. Midst is a planetoid revolving in a cosmos very unlike our own, one that contains strange creatures bred from The Fold, a supernatural phenomenon that. . . no that's not it either. This module will be a discussion guide to one of the most compellingly weird podcasts I've run across ever. I'm talking Welcome to Nightvale weird. The story is told by three anonymous and quite probably unreliable narrators, does not stick to usual story structures, veers off on tangents, and lands everything in a series of climactic episodes that are simply stunning. What we will be doing is experiencing season 1 of this podcast together and looking at how they are using various tools to tell this story, and whether they really are abandoning a lot of conventional storytelling wisdom. (Spoiler alert, I don't think they are.) You will listen to all nineteen episodes over the course of the class. In class, we will discuss the episodes you've heard, using the frame of questions I will give you ahead of time. Our goal will be to tease out the various storytelling tools the writers used in the creation of their remarkable story. Some of these will be familiar literary tools, others will involve how they use sound and effects to heighten their narration. As each episode is on the order of half an hour long, you will have heard nine to ten hours of audio by the time the class ends. I love this story and the way the writers have chosen to tell it. I would love to share that with you. [show less]

The goal of this course is to study Japanese by analyzing song lyrics. While there will be an initial list of songs, students will be invited to either choose or vote on songs they would like to analyze (depending on number of students), and then we will spend each class studying the vocabulary and grammar contained in those songs. [show less]

An in depth discussion and exploration of the various musical settings of Tolkien's poetry. Students are encouraged to write their own melodies for poems for discussion, as we listen through and discuss various other versions. We will discuss each poem and its surrounding prose, as it pertains to musical adaptation, before digging into the arrangements that have been recorded of the poem, and student's own contributions. [show less]

Bring your skills and passions to life with a hands-on, project-based tutorial in Music, Performance & Applied Skills. Whether you're composing, performing, researching music history, developing educational workshops, or exploring connections between music and literature, your preceptor will support your creative or academic goals. These tutorials may include performance coaching, guided practice, composition feedback, or structured reflection on process and technique. This space also supports interdisciplinary learners blending music with language, culture, or storytelling. Whatever your background, this tutorial celebrates your craft and helps you grow. [show less]

What makes a poem sing, or whisper, or chant, or curse—that is, make memorable speech? How do you craft that echo when one sound calls another to the surface—stress to stress, line to line? Sometimes the smallest beat, breath, or break can turn a poem’s ordinary sense into what Seamus Heaney called “the music of what happens.” Through the pulse of stress, or the line that ends at rest or breaks in tension, poetry, as James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “is the sound of language organized in lines.” The poetic line and its sonics are inextricably linked—to each other and to the other elements of the poem with which they are bound up. In this workshop, we’ll tune our ears to poetry’s music through a weekly craft focus, generative prompts, and a supportive workshop. We’ll read short excerpts from Robert Pinsky (The Sound of Poetry), James Longenbach (The Art of the Poetic Line), and Denise Levertov (“On the Function of the Line”). Together we’ll explore sonic patterns that stir and surprise; we’ll write poems that make sense through the senses. This course is for poets at all stages who want to deepen their craft in community. You’ll leave with new drafts, sharper ears, and a keener attention to the key quality that singles poetry out from prose: its complex of lines. [show less]

Language is never more concise and powerful than in the Art of Poetry. Sadly, this art is not consistently taught, nor even consistently admired, having become tainted with the mindset that it is archaic, useless, or unintelligible. Those who seek to learn to write or enjoy this art, are frequently rebuffed by conflicting definitions and daunting rules and rhyme schemes. In this module, students would be introduced to reading and writing basic poetry techniques and examples, learning how to “color” outside the lines with their own words, and to discover the unique power of concise language, empowering them to set out on their own individual poetry journey. (This course will utilize the Collaborative Feedback Method to better support all poetic explorers!) [show less]

This module will be a chronological listening tour of the history of the symphony after Beethoven. We will explore the symphony’s subsequent development in the romantic era, and its rethinking in the 20th century. We will listen to some key works together and discuss some of the innovations introduced in those particular works. [show less]

This module will be a chronological listening tour from the precursors of the symphony in the baroque era to the birth of the symphony in the classical era culminating in the works of Beethoven. We will listen to some key works together and discuss some of the innovations introduced in those particular works. No prior knowledge of music history or music theory is required. [show less]

In this module we will explore the musical storytelling of works related to the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. This discussion-based course is not targeted to musicians, and no prior musical knowledge or skill set is required. Rather, the course seeks to discuss how music can tell stories, and how music interacts with text, poetry, and adaptation. A familiarity with the work of Professor Tolkien is very helpful. This course will study three types of musical adaptation: music inspired by Tolkien’s writing, work that has taken Tolkien’s poetry and put it to music, and music written for adaptations of Tolkien’s work. Each of these types of composition comes with their own unique storytelling approaches and outcomes. Session 1: Johan de Meij, "Symphony No. 1: The Lord of the Rings" Session 2: Martin Romberg, "Symphonic Poem, Telperion and Laurelin" Session 3: Paul Corfield Godfrey: “The Tolkien Cycle” Session 4: John Sangster, "The Hobbit Suite" Session 5: The Tolkien Ensemble, "An Evening in Rivendell" Session 6: Donald Swann: “The Road Goes Ever On, a Song Cycle” Session 7: Howard Shore, "The Fellowship of the Ring" Session 8: Bear McCreary, "The Rings of Power, Season One" [show less]