Handbook

This course is about music at the edge of, for example: noise; violence; comprehensibility; sound; organization; politics; seeing; good taste; the mainstream. It is therefore a course about musical limits and the limits of the musical.

What, for example, is the line between enjoying loud music and the weaponization of sound? How can opera and music video both inform our understanding of music in relation to seeing? At what point does music become sonic arts? To what is alternative music an alternative? When do musical aesthetics become musical politics? Is noise art ever musical? What happens when music threatens no longer to be musical?

In this course you will learn about music at its extremes. You will discover the role that critics, fans, and artists play in policing music at its limits. You will develop your own study of music at the edge...