This document outlines the 17 units of a course called "Discovering Music" that examines the interaction between Western music and culture over 300 years. The course uses the development of music history to provide insights into broader cultural and societal changes. It explores how music has been shaped by and has shaped technology, science, religion, politics and economics from the Reformation to World War I. The course aims to develop critical listening skills and cultural literacy by analyzing different historical periods and genres, including opera, oratorio and the works of composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner.

1. Discovering Music
300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, and Culture
What do you get when you cross the
history of Classical Music with the history
of everything else?
Look inside Professor Carol’s course.

2. Unit 1
Using Music History To Unlock Western Culture
Developing critical listening skills
while considering cultural context
and society are the goals in our
study of music history. Music
connects to everything. Analyzing
its history and mechanics will
unlock the values of a society.
Literacy in music and the arts gives
us a powerful key in any academic
discipline.

3. Unit 2
Music Entwined with Great Events in Western History
From Martin Luther’s Reformation and
Gutenberg’s printing press to the
gramophone and iTunes, musical style
responds to technology, science, religion,
and economics.

4. Unit 3
Technology, Terminology, and Cultural Perspective
Mastering terminology allows us
to understand music and its
connections to world events.
Examining the role of music in
Western history allows us to judge
the arts of our own times.

5. Unit 4
Fanfare and Power: The Court of Louis XIV
A chessboard for science, politics, and the
arts, Louis XIV’s sumptuous palace of
Versailles, court chapel, and royal theater
set the standards for fashion, etiquette,
and music across the Western world. Louis
XIV provides one of the best examples of
the way Dynastic Power joined with the
arts to influence Western Culture.

6. Unit 5
Sweeping Away the Renaissance into the Baroque
Literature and art reached the pinnacle of
development in the Renaissance with
Michelangelo and Shakespeare. But the
scientific era of the Baroque demanded a
modern, highly systematized
music. Critical changes are illustrated in
the music of a composer who straddled
both eras (Renaissance & Baroque):
Claudio Monteverdi, whose “L’Orfeo” in
1607 marks the beginning of opera.

7. Unit 6
Liturgical Calendar, Street Parties, and the New Church Music
What do Palm Sunday and Mardi
Gras have to do with each
other? The Liturgical Calendar
dictated social and artistic life in
ways that are unimaginable today.
The restrictions of the Lenten cycle
brought forth new forms of music,
including the birth of the oratorio.

8. Unit 7
A Lively Journey Through the Life of Johann Sebastian Bach
Bach’s jobs demanded ever-increasing
skills. He mastered acoustics and the
complex technology of the organ. His
duties at each place of employment (the
“stations of Bach”) reveal much about
court politics, economics, and religion in
the late Baroque era.

9. Unit 8
Enlightenment, Classicism, and the Astonishing Mozart
From Voltaire and Diderot to America’s
Founding Fathers, the Enlightenment
changed Western culture. Absolute
monarchs like Frederick the Great and the
paintings of Antoine Watteau set the
tone. The new thought, the principles of
absolutely monarchy, and lighter style
(rococo and stil gallant) all influenced the
rise of a genius named Mozart. Meanwhile,
Franz Joseph Haydn forged a successful
career that ultimately brought him
international success.

10. Unit 9
Into the Abyss: The Century Struggles with Unfettered Imagination
Nineteenth-century art clashed
with Enlightenment ideals. Artists
seeking individual expression
created a fascinating road map
through the challenges of the 19th
century.
Sentimentalism, the literary
precursor to Romanticism, and
the new sensitivity
(Empfindsamkeit) fostered the
works of Johann von Goethe, and
Casper David Friedrich brought
forth an era of Romanticism in the
arts.

11. Unit 10
Beethoven as Hero and Revolutionary
After the 1789 French Revolution, the
Napoleonic Wars changed Europe forever.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) met
the challenges of this unstable era,
discovering a new musical language for his
extraordinary music. Beethoven would
soon be treated as an Olympic diety and
his successors would live and work under
“the shadow of Beethoven.”

12. Unit 11
Salons, Poetry, and the Power of Song
From Schiller to Shelley, poetry
found its home in the aristocratic
drawing room as a new system of
patronage took hold. Words and
music became a mirror for
Romantic idealism and the quest
for individual expression. Poets
and composers combined to
create powerful new movements in
“song” (Lieder).

13. Unit 12
A Tale of Four Virtuosi and the Birth of the Tone Poem
Extraordinary playing skills caught
the imagination in the 19th century,
and the system of musical super-
stardom was born in the careers of
Paganini and Liszt. Chopin was the
beloved poet of the piano, and the
genius Mendelssohn set new
standards in orchestral music. Mid-
century, the highly imaginative Liszt
recast the art of conducting, and
created the Tone Poem—the
ancestor of the great film music we
hear today.

14. Unit 13
Nationalism and the Explosion of Romantic Opera
Audiences responded to opera the same
way they do to movies today. Cutting-edge
social issues increasingly filled the opera
stage. The singers became super-stars.
And especially in the 19th century, operas
stirred up a desire for national
independence and challenged society’s
values. But, perhaps surprisingly, one of
the best ways to begin studying the
development of 19th-century opera is with
a ballet named “Giselle” (1841).

15. Unit 14
The Absolutely New World of Wagner
Richard Wagner’s (1833-1883)
revolutionary ideas were either loved or
hated by his contemporaries. He spent his
colorful life in a tireless campaign to
change Western culture through a new
type of music drama. Even today his
operas stir up strong reactions, and their
vast scope and intense drama still serve
as a model for creative artists today.

16. Unit 15
Imperial Russia – A Cultural Odyssey
Were Moscow and St. Petersburg imitators
of Italian and French fashions? Or, were
they remote locations where unique styles
developed from the heart of native Russian
artists? In this Orthodox Christian country,
the Tsars decided every aspect of
culture. But when the 19th-century arrived,
Russian composers, painters, and writers
began to make new pathways for
themselves.

17. Unit 16
Load Up the Wagons: The Story of American Music
American music was born in the
Philadelphia concert hall and the Missouri
covered wagon. Thomas Jefferson’s
harpsichord, Puritan psalmody, Shaker
hymns, and Sacred Harp, Civil War
ballads, Minstrelsy and Vaudeville tunes all
celebrate the diverse origins of America’s
culture.

18. Unit 17
Turning the Page on Western Tradition with the Explosion of War
Artists have their ears to the ground and
sense cataclysmic events looming before
they explode in a culture. Artists
responded to the end of the 19th century
(fin de siècle) by creating radical new
works as Western culture catapulted
towards World War I.

19. Discovering Music
300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, and Culture
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