YouTube Only Recording – Recorded Winter 2022 – You will receive a link to a private playlist

Traditionally, musicology has focused on great composers who wrote great works, and sometimes on great performers of those works. More recently, scholars are reframing their approach, examining the people who made the music we listen to, and broadening their analysis to include marginalized groups. In this course, we will explore the wide range of what “American music” means with a series of vignettes.

Topics will include music made by Native Americans and African Americans, as well as immigrants from all over Europe, like the Moravians. With the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, composers struggled to define “American” music, let alone compose it. We will evaluate attempts by composers from Charles Ives to Florence Price to Aaron Copland. Additionally, we will explore a variety of genres, from classical to blues, jazz, and even country (it’s not just tractors and beer!)

Class Fee: $30

Instructor: Sara McClure is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology and a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Kansas, where she is working on a dissertation about orchestral ensembles in nineteenth-century St. Louis. She earned a Master of Music in Musicology from UMKC, where she received the Graduate Teaching Assistant Superior Teaching Award, and an M.M. in Choral Conducting from East Carolina University. She serves as the Musicologist-in-Residence for the Midwest Chamber Ensemble and the Music Director at Prairie Baptist Church in Prairie Villag