Chapters with Listening Guide Repertoire, CW Links, and Quizzes

Chapter 1

Musical Foundations

Chapter Goals

  • To introduce music as a social and scientific object of study.
  • To introduce various ways of understanding music.
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Chapter 2

Listening to Music

Chapter Goals

  • To develop tools for listening.
  • To understand the basic elements of music.
  • To develop a vocabulary of musical understanding.
  • To explore the relationships between musical sound and musical meaning.
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Chapter 3

Four Listening Examples

Chapter Goals

  • To demonstrate how the ideas introduced in Chapter Two apply to musical examples from three different musical traditions.
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Chapter 4

Music and the Life Cycle

Chapter Goals

  • To highlight our important and ever-changing relationship to music as we move through life’s stages.
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Chapter 5

Black American Music

Chapter Goals

  • To investigate the way in which music supports and reflects Black identity and values.
  • To explore the ways in which a sense of musical ethnicity crosses and bridges both cultural and social boundaries.
  • To become familiar with musical expressions of Black American music in select times and places.
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Chapter 6

Music and Gender and Sexuality

Chapter Goals

  • To understand relationships between gender, music, and culture.
  • To learn how music reflects and shapes cultural understandings about gender.
  • To become familiar with important trends, composers, and compositions that exemplify gender issues in music.
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Chapter 7

Music and Spirituality

Chapter Goals

  • To understand how humankind uses music to express spirituality.
  • To investigate musical relationships between the sacred and the secular.
  • To become familiar with select works that exemplify spiritual traditions in music.
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Chapter 8

Music and Politics

Chapter Goals

  • To explore overt and hidden political meanings in music.
  • To see how music has been used for political aims.
  • To examine how music helps to develop, form, reflect, and alter national identity.
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Chapter 9

Music and War

Chapter Goals

  • To explore the ways music supports, protests, mourns, and remembers war.
  • To understand how music reflects human responses to war and/or conflict.
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Chapter 10

Music and Love

Chapter Goals

  • To examine the expression of love in musical settings from various time periods and genres.
  • To hear how different aspects of love can be portrayed musically.
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Chapter 11

American Musical Theater

Chapter Goals

  • To demonstrate how social issues are reflected in musical theater.
  • To provide an overview of 20th-century American musical theater.
  • To explore three groundbreaking 20th-century musicals.
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Chapter 12

Music and Film

Chapter Goals

  • To explore ways in which music defines cinematic characters and communicates action, mood, and emotion.
  • To provide a brief overview of the history of music in film.
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Chapter 13

Music and Dance

Chapter Goals

  • To examine dance genres in different cultures and times.
  • To see how dance reflects regional/national histories and identities.
  • To understand the relationship between music and movement.
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Chapter 14

Music in the Concert Setting

Chapter Goals

  • To examine concert traditions of different genres and cultures.
  • To learn about different performing forces and styles of music.
  • To examine significant works from three concert traditions.
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Chapter 15

Music and Technology

Chapter Goals

  • To examine technology’s role in music past and present.
  • To think about technology’s potential future impact.
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