2/6 – Music in convents II: The Renaissance and early Baroque eras in Italy

Reading: Craig Monson, Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy, pp. 8-18 (and optional, but recommended reading: all of Chapter 2, “Dangerous Enchantments: What the Inquisitor Found”)

Listening: Lucrezia Vizzana, selections from Componimenti musicali
Caterina Assandra, Duo Seraphim
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Kyrie

Tasks:

• Mini-lecture on convent life [participation]

Did women have a Renaissance? – Using iconography

**Meet at back entrance of the Cleveland Museum of Art**

Reading: Karin Pendle, “Musical Women in Early Modern Europe,” in Women & Music: A History, pp. 57¬–69.

See Also: Ross W. Duffin, CWRU Early instruments Database: http://music.cwru.edu/medren/

Tasks:

• Female musicians in Renaissance art [research]

Gender in Medieval song lyrics – Trobairitz, jougleresses, and other secular musicians

Reading: Packet of medieval song lyrics
Sarah McNamer, “Lyrics and Romances,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, pp. 195–201.

Optional Reading: Anne Klinck, “Poetic Markers of Gender in Medieval ‘Woman’s Song’: Was Anonymous a Woman?”

Listening: Comtessa de Dia, “A Chantar”
“Bele Yolanz en ses chambres seoit”

Tasks:

• Gender in Medieval lyrics paper [critical writing]

Music in Convents I: The Middle Ages – Hildegard of Bingen

Reading: Rebecca R.L. Garber, excerpt from “Where Is the Body? Imitability in Hildegard’s Images of Eve and Mary” pp. 33-37
Excerpts from Hildegard’s writings and lyrics

Listening:
“O Viridissima Virga,”
Ordo Virtutem (excerpts)

Tasks:

• Search Hildegard’s writings [research]

Listening workshop: Can music have a gender?

Reading: Aaron Copland, Excerpt of “Sonata Form” from What to Listen for in Music (pp. 179–89)
Highlight/underline any gendered terms as you read.

Listening: Beethoven, Symphony No. 5, first movement [sonata form example]
Mozart, Quartet in D Major, KV 285, Adagio
Ella Fitzgerald, “Someone to Watch Over Me”
Mötley Crüe, “Shout at the Devil”
Make a list ordering these selections from most to least “feminine.”

Tasks:

• Listening and Gender [critical writing]

Cross-Cultural Perspectives – Can a woman beat the drums?

Reading:
Excerpts packet on Blackboard
[Taken from: Ovaborhene I. Idamoyibo, “Let a Woman Beat the Drums: Gender Concepts in African Musical Practice,” African Musicology Online 2, no. 1 (2008), pp. 19–24; Amanda Villepastour, “Amelia Pedroso: The Voice of a Cuban Priestess Leading from the Inside” in Women Singers in Global Context, ed. Hellier, pp. 58-59; Sylvia A. Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Baakisimba: Gender in the Music and Dance of the Baganda People of Uganda, pp. 1 & 33–36; Elizabeth Sayre, “Cuban Batá Drumming and Women Musicians: An Open Question,” Center for Black Music Research Digest 13, no. 1 (2000).]

Listening/viewing:
Emilio Barreto and Amelia Pedroso, “”Yemayá Reso”
(http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/womensingers/chapter2_Pedroso.shtml)
Ara, “Yanke”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfG0P0Uh8oE

Tasks:

• Bring examples of women in African drumming to class [participation]
• Cross-cultural perspectives paper [critical writing]

Historiography: Why aren’t women musicians better represented in the history books?

Reading: Excerpt from Sherrie Tucker, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t in the History Books,” from Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s (pp. 1-7 & 27-29)

Listening: International Sweethearts of Rhythm, “Swing Shift”
Ada Leonard’s All-American Girls, ca. 1943

Tasks:

• Historiography paper [critical writing]

Introduction: What can we learn from listening to women’s musical history?

Reading: Please read through the syllabus, schedule, and course website carefully.

Tasks: