Music and Ideas, from Mozart to the Jazz Age
Fall 2011
T, Th 3:30-5:00
Professor James Johnson
This interdisciplinary seminar (HI 426) offered by Professor James Johnson of the History Department explores the cultural context of major works of music, from Don Giovanni and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Each week considers a musical work alongside fiction, philosophy, or criticism from the period, as well as contemporary scholarship.
Composers include: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Schoenberg, Ellington, Davis, and Coltrane.
Writers include: Schiller, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Cocteau, Ellison, and Baldwin.
For more information and permission to register, contact Professor Johnson at jhj@bu.edu.
