In this seminar, we consider the ways that western art music has been linked both to the presence of life or movement (animation, the possession of anima), and to automation and mechanism.

The first six weeks of the term will be devoted to units on Ovidian fables of animation and the creation of humans; early modern musical automata, mechanical orchestras and clocks; nineteenth-century horror-fiction on singing robots; and early vocal synthesizers or "voice machines."

In the second half of the term, we will consider the ways that these themes fed into the twentieth-century sound cartoon, with particular focus on the Silly Symphonies, and Disney's and Warner Brothers' mid-century fixation on Italian opera.