The creation and the performance of music involves the structuring of time (now this movement, then that sound, but first a grand entrance!), and an aesthetic goal (how does one perform an 'I don't care!' attitude? with what sound can one express hunger?  Does one preclude the other?). In this program, we'll explore the performance of music, as mediated by what one can learn from poetry and theories of film.

We'll read and study the poetry of T.S. Eliot (his Four Quartets ) and Aime Cesaire (a 20 ^th century Caribbean poet) particularly his Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, and his version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. We will also read and study essays on film composition by Sergei Eisenstein (an early 20 ^th century Russian filmmaker and theoretician). From the work of these artists, we will create weekly performance assignments. Students, working in small groups will create responses to these assignments, and receive weekly feedback from the class and from the faculty.

The assignments will address issues of montage, aesthetics, sequence, dynamics and other structural considerations. Students will be challenged to create music works starting from the poetry and the structural relations we study. During the final week of the quarter, some of the assignments will be chosen by the class for public performance.