“And the times, they are a-changin’.” Yes. Bob Dylan’s lyrics nail our theme: society’s upheavals produce musical upheavals. Our course starts five hundred years pre-Dylan, when John Cooke composed in a plague-ridden, war-riven 14th century. He wrote music imploring spiritual help for earthly woes. Others wrote tunes blaming the (supposed) disease-causing culprits. Some music was laudatory, like the Agincourt Carol celebrating King Henry V’s victory in Normandy. Philippus de Caserta penned ballads lauding the anti-Pope in Avignon. Fast forward to another era that reshaped musical composition and participation: the Protestant Reformation’s tortuous divorce from the Catholic Church. William Byrd, a Catholic Englishman, wrote music with secret messages intended to keep the faith; Jean Calvin destroyed music not fit for “proper” worship. Then we’ll accelerate into the 20th century, two World Wars, and music used for solidarity and resistance, celebrating musical giants Paul Robeson and Fannie Lou Hamer. Popular instructor Karen Cook is our Pied Piper; she’ll supply melodious examples to prove her points and train your ears.
Karen M. Cook is associate professor and chair of music history at The Hartt School. She specializes in music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and also in medievalism in contemporary music & media, especially video games. Her book Music Theory in Late Medieval Avignon: Magister Johannes Pipardi was published in 2021 as part of Routledge’s RMA Monographs Series. She is currently co-editing two volumes: Gender, Sexuality, and Video Game Sound, with Michael Austin and Dana Plank for Routledge, and Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology, with William Gibbons and Fanny Rebillard for Brepols. She teaches and lectures on popular music topics at Hartt, conferences and symposia.
Wednesdays, April 1, 8, 15 | 10:30 a.m.–noon | KF Room/Harrison Libraries | $60
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