Graduate Course List for Spring 2027

As part of their core degree requirements, MM and DMA students must take 9 credits (3 courses) consisting of:

Additionally, students enrolled in the Musicology, Music Education, and Composition degree pathways have unique requirements that may be fulfilled by the courses listed below (see your degree worksheet).

 

MUSICOLOGY

MUSIC 411 - Survey of Medieval Music

Mon/Wed/Fri 2:25-3:15 PM
Prof. Ilana Schroeder
20 seats (grad & undergrad)
No consent required

Major genres and composers of monophonic and polyphonic music, sacred and secular in Western Europe and England (ca. 7th-14th centuries).

MUSIC 418 - Music and The City

Mon/Wed 8:00-9:15 AM
Prof. John Walsh
20 seats (grad & undergrad)
No consent required

Examine the relationship between music and urban space, broadly conceived. Consider the proposition that music is central to how we understand the social life of cities.  Examine the entanglements of space, meaning, and aesthetics in cities across history and geography. Explore concepts of “music scenes,” urban planning and creative cities, the production of regional “sounds,” and how music produces senses of place. This course will draw from popular media - such as music magazines, music videos, and documentaries – as well as academic literature in ethnomusicology, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology. Our case studies will pull from genres such as punk, jazz, amapiano, and more. Students will complete an individual research project based on a topic of their choice.

MUSIC 497 - Musical Women

Section 012
Thurs 1:20-3:50 PM
Prof. Margaret Butler
20 seats (grad & undergrad)
No consent required

The course explores women’s musical activities and related issues by focusing on composers, performers, and audiences in a wide range of contexts, from Europe in the Medieval Era through 21st-century America. Themes include women’s roles in social, cultural, political, and economic spheres, and links between their activities in these milieus and those related to music. We will explore how women crafted their identities through their career choices, their responses to ideologies that influenced their participation, and their roles in performance, education, patronage, composition, and a range of other musical activities. We will examine how modes of sociability, communication, and reception influenced and continue to shape women’s musical lives.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Special Topics in Music"

MUSIC 497 - Sound Cultures, Sound Politics

Section 036
Mon/Wed 8:00-9:15 AM
Prof. Gabby Cornish
20 seats (grad & undergrad)
No consent required

How does sound shape the world around us? How have media technologies impacted musical creation and consumption—and vice versa? How have historical actors strategically deployed sound and media for political ends? And how can attention to sound change the way we understand racial, gender, and socio-economic distinctions? This course explores the audible world from a variety of (ethno)musicological and critical perspectives. Focusing on the intersections between music, culture, and technology, students will ask how sound and music impact identity, politics, and media cultures in everyday life. Our topics of inquiry will range across music history of the last millennia, with particular attention paid to developments in the last hundred years. By the end of the semester, students will have a broad understanding of recent trends in the fields of sound and media studies. Course work will consist of extensive readings, regular classroom discussion, writing assignments, and presentations.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Special Topics in Music"

MUSIC 497 - Everyday Life in the Soviet Union in Music, Film, and Media

Section 136
Mon/Wed 1:00-2:15 PM
Prof. Gabby Cornish
20 seats (grad & undergrad)
No consent required

What did it mean to live under communism? How did state politics shape the ways people loved, worked, laughed, had families, made art, and listened? What happened when the cultural ambitions of the state collided with the lived, everyday experiences of Soviet citizens? Explore the cultural history of the Soviet Union from its fiery birth in 1917 to its collapse in 1991. Explore how artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and ordinary citizens alike negotiated life and art under communism. Topics include avant-garde aesthetic politics, socialist realism, propaganda and mass media, religion and secularism, nationality and empire, gender, youth, censorship, and dissent. Work with a wide range of primary sources that include songs, novels, films, poetry, art, newspapers, and official documents in order to trace the changing Soviet experience over time. The ability to read music is not required.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Special Topics in Music"

MUSIC 497 - Tolkien, Music, and Middle-earth

Section 031
Tues/Thurs 1:00-2:15 PM
Prof. Ilana Schroeder
20 seats (grad & undergrad)
Respond to survey if interested

Regarded by many as the father of modern fantasy, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien have captured the imagination of readers and creators for generations. Not only have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings proven to be foundational fantasy reading for children and young adults for the past sixty years they have also, since their second printing in the 1960s, been actively referenced in various mediums throughout popular and alternative culture. From Joni Mitchell and Led Zeppelin to Rankin/Bass, Peter Jackson, and Amazon, to Giorgia Meloni, the world of Middle-earth provides a lens through which different people, over diverse places and times, view themselves and the world around them. The purpose of this class is to investigate how music in and about Middle-earth participates in that phenomenon. While Tolkien himself was not a musician, Middle-earth resonates with the musics and sounds that are informed both by Tolkien’s work as a medievalist and his experiences and knowledge of music and culture within a Romantic and post-industrial intellectual milieu. In this class we will investigate the relationship between music and Tolkien through three avenues. First, we will consider how Tolkien incorporates elements of medieval music practices into his medievalist narratives. Second, we will examine how Romantic conceptions of music and musical culture and post-industrial disillusionment with modernity impacted Tolkien’s thoughts on sound and music as well as representations of his various fantastical peoples. Finally, we will investigate how twentieth- and twenty-first-century musicians respond to and create sound worlds that represent Middle-earth.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Special Topics in Music"

MUSIC 915 - Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Indigenous Musics, Indigenous Theories 

Friday 12:00-2:30 PM
Prof. Nadia Chana
12 seats (grad only)
Instructor consent required

Approaches to Indigenous musics through ethnomusicological and critical Indigenous studies frameworks. 

THEORY

MUSIC 622 - Baroque Counterpoint

Tues/Thurs 1:00-2:15 PM
Prof. Michael Weinstein-Reiman
12 seats (grad only)
No consent required

Analysis and stylistic composition.

MUSIC 625 - Modal Harmony

Section 051
Wed 8:15-10:45 AM
Prof. Ruka Shironishi
12 seats (grad only)
No consent required

Explore concepts and practices of modality and modal harmony, with particular emphasis on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music. Examine the historical and theoretical foundations of mode, practices of Gregorian chant harmonization, and relationships between modal and tonal harmonic organization. Develop and critically evaluate analytical approaches to understanding modal harmony through analysis, listening, and harmonization.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Topics in Musical Form & Analysis"

MUSIC 625 - Methods of Tonal Analysis

Section 055
Fri 9:00-11:30 AM
Prof. Ed Klorman
12 seats (grad only)
No consent required

Theoretical topics and analytical applications in tonal music. Methods include reduction, prolongation, voice-leading/linear models, motive/Grundgestalt, schema, partimento, phrase rhythm/hypermeter, dualism, and extended tonality.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Topics in Musical Form & Analysis"

MUSIC 927 - Seminar in Composition: Contemporary Text Setting

Thurs 4:00-6:30 PM
Prof. Laura Schwendinger
12 seats (grad only)
Instructor consent required

This course is intended for composers but open to others with a basic knowledge of compositional technique. Email Prof. Schwendinger to request a seat in the class: lschwendinge@wisc.edu 

MUSIC EDUCATION

MUSIC 942 - The Art of Disability

Tues 2:25-4:55 PM
Prof. Jesse Rathgeber
10 seats (grad only)
No consent required

This seminar course provides a space and opportunity to consider art, artmaking, and life through the perspectives of disabled artmakers and through disability theory. Rejecting a deficit-based or totalizing conception of disability, we will develop interactional, intersectional, and context-specific understandings of disability and the lived experience of disabled people. Our work is meant to help us better understand how disabled artmakers embody creativity and challenge taken-for-granted perspectives about art, life, and society. Through this, we will critically (re)consider issues pertaining to art and everyday life, such as aesthetics, performance, identity, structure/agency, interdependence, intersectionality, access, inclusion, and community.

This is a topics course and will also appear under the heading "Special Topics in Contemporary Music Education"

MUSIC 948 - Cultures of Improvisation

Wed 4:30-7:00 PM
Prof. Amy Lewis
10 seats (grad only)
No consent required

Explore multiple improvisation techniques while learning about diversity issues within multiple music teaching contexts. Learn about diverse musical pedagogies and begin (or expand) your improvisation journey.


Keywords:
Graduate, Courses, Musicology, Theory 
Doc ID:
164739
Owned by:
James D. in Mead Witter School of Music
Created:
2026-10-12
Updated:
2026-10-12
Sites:
Mead Witter School of Music