MHST 566 Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music
The eighteenth century saw a dramatic rise in the status of the keyboard instrument as a medium for expression and entertainment. Keyboards of various types - organs, harpsichords, clavichords, and pianos - were used widely in a variety of social contexts. This course will take a broad view of 18th-century keyboard repertoire, attempting to understand how various trends in music and social practice came together to produce some of the most important works of the Western art-music tradition. Although the figure of J.S. Bach will assume an important role in the course, with the Goldberg Variations forming the centerpiece of the semester, students will also come to understand the many influences upon which Bach drew in his keyboard writing. Likewise, Haydn and Mozart stand as towering figures at the end of the eighteenth century, but they did not exist in a vacuum: their music is significant in part for its engagement with, and deviation from, their predecessors.