MUSC 385 Advanced Topics in the Critical Study of Music

Music and Food. This interdisciplinary research seminar will examine the relationship between music and food and thus hearing and taste in Europe and the United States beginning with the 16th-century category of musical composition called “table music” and culminating in the present-day gastropub. Along the way we will explore topics such as the 18th-century emergence of aesthetics as a branch of philosophy the rise of the restaurant and gastronomy Dandyism and Decadent literature and “fine dining” in the United States. We will read scholarly literature from the fields of philosophy history cognitive science sociology literature and music. Students will carve out an area of research early on and develop it over the course of the semester culminating in a research presentation and final argument-driven research paper. The course will conclude with the recreation of a historical banquet.