THYG 564 Ambiguity in 18th & 19th Century Music
Focuses on various forms of musical ambiguity in the great repertoire of the 18th and 19th centuries, beginning with Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and ending with Mahler and Debussy. The course will look at various kinds of ambiguity: harmonic and tonal, rhythmic and metric, and formal (including phrase ambiguity). Short works (Lieder and miniature piano pieces) will model ambiguity types and larger works, such as single movements from larger multi-movement works, will demonstrate how the ambiguity is created and, in many but not all cases, resolved. Some repertory will be chosen based on class instrumentation and in-class performances will be encouraged as much as possible.