MUS1276H: Music and Material Culture

Despite music's often-discussed ephemerality, music practice and scholarship are both deeply entangled with the material. For example, where would musicians be without instruments (including their bodies)? What would music research be without analyzable items such as scores, recordings, transcriptions, images of music making, instruments, and the like? This seminar focuses on the many ways that musical sounds, practices, and meanings inform and are informed by relationships between musicking people and "things." We will examine how researchers have studied different types of musical objects as a means of understanding, not only the objects themselves, but also music, musicians, music cultures, and more. Finally, we will explore emergent directions and new possibilities for music research inspired by Actor-Network Theory, Thing Theory, Vital Materialism, and Posthumanism.

0.50
St. George
In Class