Sep 24, 2025

GRCC Curriculum Database (2025-2026 Academic Year)

MUS 253 - History of Music III

Description
This course is the study of music in the contemporary era. Additional units tracing the history of popular music in America and women in music are also included. Readings, listening, score study, and laboratory listening assignments are required. Introduction to music research and a research paper are also included.

Credit Hours: 3
Contact Hours: 3
Prerequisites/Other Requirements: MUS 252 (C or Higher)
English Prerequisite(s): None
Math Prerequisite(s): None
Course Corequisite(s): None
Academic Program Prerequisite: None
Consent to Enroll in Course: No Department Consent Required
Dual Enrollment Allowed?: Yes
Course Fees: $5.00
Number of Times Course can be taken for credit: 1
Programs Where This Course is a Requirement:
Associate of Music, A.M., Music, A.M. (Western Michigan University)

Other Courses Where This Course is a Prerequisite: None
Other Courses Where this Course is a Corequisite: None
Other Courses Where This course is included in within the Description: None

General Education Requirement:
None
General Education Learner Outcomes (GELO):
NA
Course Learning Outcomes:

Discuss important literary and visual works of art from the 20th and 21st centuries and their significance to music.
Summarize and discuss characteristics of the various styles of 20th and 21st century music using both written and oral communication.
Summarize and discuss the characteristics of American popular music using both written and oral communication.
Summarize and discuss women’s roles as creators, performers, and supporters of music.
Analyze aural examples and musical scores in order to conclude its style, period, and/or composer.
Use musical terms appropriately in written and oral communication.
Demonstrate research skills using the college library and the many online databases available through the library.
Explain music of the late 19th and 20th centuries from a historical, philosophical, and geographic context.
Use scholarly, credible, relevant sources to support writing.
Create and/or organize data and information into meaningful patterns in order to interpret and draw inferences from it.

Course Outline:
I. Introduction to Library Research

A. Library Resources

B. Online Resources, journal databases, professional publications

II. 20th Century Trends

A. Technology and its impact on the arts

B. Economic trends and its impact on the arts

C. Politics and Nations and their impact on the arts

III. Classical Modernism – Early 20^th Century in Europe

A. French composers Debussy and Ravel

B. Modernism and Nationalism. Discussion of composers to include the following

1. Russia: Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin

2. Spain: Manuel deFalla

3. England: Ralph Vaughan Williams

4. Czechoslovakia: Leos Janacek

5. Finland: Jean Sibelius

C. The Avant-Garde

1. France: Erik Satie

2. Futurism

IV. Vernacular Music in America – Early 20^th Century

A. Brass bands

B. Music of African Americans

C. Ragtime

D. Popular song

E. Musical theatre

F. Film music

G. Jazz

1. Origins

2. Blues

3. Early Jazz

4. New Orleans and Chicago Jazz

5. Big Bands and Swing

V. Radical Modernism (Early 20^th Century Europe and America)

A. Atonality and 12-tone music: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern

B. Stravinsky

1. Russian period

2. Neoclassical period

3. Serial period

4. Legacy

C. Bartok

1. Individual modernist idiom

2. Ethnomusicology

D. Charles Ives, founder of experimentalism in the United States

VI. Music Between the 2 World Wars

A. French neoclassicism and Les Six

B. Neue Sachlighkeit (new objectivity) and Gebrauchmusik (music for use) in Germany

1. Krenek, Weill, Hindemith

C. Music under the Nazis

1. Reich Chamber of Culture

2. Carl Orff

D. The Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin

1. Government control of the arts

2. Composers organizations

3. Socialist Realism and Formalism

4. Sergey Prokofiev

5. Dmitri Shostakovich

E. The Americas

1. Canada – Claude Champagne

2. Brazil – Heitor Villa-Lobos

3. Mexiso – Silvestre Reveueltas

F. The United States

1. Immigration

2. Ultramodernism – Edgard Varese, Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford Seeger

3. Americanism - George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, William Grant Still

VII. Music Post World War II

A. Topics: Music education, Classical traditions, Popular Music

B. Jazz since 1945

1. Bebop

2. Modern jazz (Cool, Free, Avant-garde, Third stream)

3. Jazz and classical music

C. Composers continuing in the classical tradition

1. France: Olivier Messiaen

2. England: Benjamin Britten

3. America: Samuel Barber

D. Composers rejecting the classical tradition

1. America: chance music and indeterminacy

a. John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown

2. Serialism

a. Darmstadt

b. Milton Babbitt and composition as research

c. Karlheinz Stockhausen

d. Pierre Boulez

3. New Virtuosity

a. Luciano Berio

b. Elliott Carter

4. New Sounds and Textures: Harry Partch and George Crumb

5. Non-Western styles and instruments

6. Electronic Music

a. Musique concrete

b. Electronic music studios and composition

c. Synthesizers

d. Changing role of performers

7. New ways of composing music: process music

a. Varese and sound masses

b. Xenakis and mathematic complexity

c. Penderecki and texture and process

VIII. Digital Technologies

A. New inventions

B. Sampling

C. Computer music

IX. Minimalism

A. Early minimalism

1. LaMonte Young

2. Terry Riley

B. New popularity of minimalism – Steve Reich

C. Postminimalism

1. Phillip Glass and John Adams

X. Postmodernism

A. The postmodern audience

B. Accessible modernism

1. Gyorgy Ligeti and Arvo Part

C. Quotation, collage, polystylism

D. Neoromanticism

E. Extramusical imagery and meanings

F. Popular music and postmodernism

Approved for Online and Hybrid Delivery?:
No
Instructional Strategies:
Lecture: 20-30%

Listening and score analysis: 20-40%

Assignments and group work: 20-30%

Discussion: 20-40%
Mandatory Course Components:
Students will synthesize research into a coherent and sound research paper on a topic in music history.
Equivalent Courses:
None

Accepted GRCC Advanced Placement (AP) Exam Credit: None
AP Min. Score: NA
Name of Industry Recognize Credentials: None

Course prepares students to seek the following external certification:
No
Course-Specific Placement Test: None
Course Aligned with ARW/IRW Pairing: N/A

Mandatory Department Assessment Measures:
None

Course Type:
Program Requirement- Offering designed to meet the learning needs of students in a specific GRCC program.
Course Format:
Lecture - 1:1
Total Lecture Hours Per Week: 3
People Soft Course ID Number: 100322
Course CIP Code: 50.09
Maximum Course Enrollment: 25
General Room Request: None

High School Articulation Agreements exist?: No
If yes, with which high schools?: NA
Non-Credit GRCC Articulation Agreement With What Area: No
Identify the Non Credit Programs this Course is Accepted: NA

School: School of Liberal Arts
Department: Music
Discipline: MUS
Faculty Credential Requirements:
18 graduate credit hours in discipline being taught (HLC Requirement), Master’s Degree (GRCC general requirement)
Faculty Credential Requirement Details:
Instructors who teach MUS 253 must have a thorough knowledge of the music, composers and stylistic concepts of Western music, especially the late 19th century through the present day. The instructor must be able to demonstrate musical examples at the keyboard and have an excellent knowledge of the available recorded musical examples from the identified periods. The instructor must also have excellent knowledge of the art, architecture, and religions of the Late 19th to the present throughout Europe. The instructor must be very familiar with the cultural aspects of diverse European populations during these time periods. In addition, the instructor must be familiar with women’s roles in music and American music. The instructor should have attained at least a Master’s Degree in Music with emphasis in musicology.

Major Course Revisions: N/A
Last Revision Date Effective: 20250302T19:47:35
Course Review & Revision Year: 2029-2030