MUTH 268PT - Analyzing American Musicals

FC CNDP PT

4 credits
Students will analyze and discuss stage and film musicals from a range of periods, from Tin-Pan Alley to Broadway’s Golden Age to current day. Topics include music-text relationships, harmonic and melodic structures, rhythm and meter, metric dissonance, music and dance, issues related to the mixing and borrowing of genres and styles in musicals, and narrative/formal functions. Students will explore interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to musicals, including the different narrative zones of ”book time” and “number time”; issues with adaptation from stage to screen and vice versa; the “hidden work” of “backstage” musicals; and issues like dubbing in film musicals.

Prerequisites: MUTH 132.