This course examines European music from the early Middle Ages until the end of the Renaissance. It includes a chronological survey and intensive study of three topics: chant and its development, music in Italy 1340-1420, and music in Elizabethan England. Instruction focuses on methods and pitfalls in studying music of the distant past. Students' papers, problem sets, and presentations explore lives, genres, and works in depth. Works are studied in facsimile of original notation, and from original manuscripts at MIT, where possible.

This is not a metallurgy class! Learn everything you ever wanted to know about Heavy Metal music. Topics of this video lecture series include musicology, history, metal culture, music theory, songwriting tropes, harsh vocal techniques, extreme metal, tech-based instruments, and how the genre tackles some of today's biggest sociopolitical challenges. You’ll find out why metal bands exist in every country on Earth, and why you're probably already a metalhead without even knowing it. This course has been rockin' MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP)* since 2006!
2023 Video Lectures:

Heavy Metal 101: Music and Culture
The Guts of Metal - Music Theory and Songwriting with Colin Brumley
All About Harsh Vocals – History, Application, and Technique with Paul Buckley
History of Heavy Metal, Part I
Connections Between Metal and Literature with Dean Swinford
History of Heavy Metal: Part II
GeoShred and Technology-Based Expressive Musical Instruments with Jordan Rudess
History of Heavy Metal: Part III

The 2021 and 2022 class video lectures are also available on the site.
*IAP is a 4-week term at MIT in January that provides members of the MIT community with an opportunity to organize, sponsor, and participate in activities and topics that are often outside of the regular MIT curriculum.

A history of popular music in the United States from the 1930's to early 2000's - A text in 7 modules with links to selected representative recordings and performances.

Through a progressive series of composition projects, students investigate the sonic organization of musical works and performances, focusing on fundamental questions of unity and variety. Aesthetic issues are considered in the pragmatic context of the instructions that composers provide to achieve a desired musical result, whether these instructions are notated in prose, as graphic images, or in symbolic notation. No formal training is required. Weekly listening, reading, and composition assignments draw on a broad range of musical styles and intellectual traditions, from various cultures and historical periods.

In this video from the American Masters film Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, scholars discuss the author’s ideas about jazz music. Ellison recognized jazz as an art form that represented the complexity of America’s multicultural democratic society. This resource may be used alongside Ellison’s Invisible Man, but is also well suited for use in a lesson, unit, or course on African American literature.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.

Blues and Soul music intersect in Memphis Tennessee.  Southern Soul as it is usually called, originated in Memphis and was greatly influenced by the blues of the city and the Mississippi Delta.  

A Look at Memphis Jazz Piano before James Williams, Donald Brown, and Mulgrew Miller made their significant contributions.  In addition to the great Phineas Newborn jr., Charles Thomas and Harold Mabern also made a tremendous impact.  Live music at local venues provided informal educational opportunities for students of all ages.   

This is a project that is helpful for students to develop a mixtape of sorts without the burden of an essay style submission. If it is done correctly, students will have 1000+ words submitted for a homework or proiect. 

This subject covers a specific branch of music history: Western concert music of first sixty years of the twentieth century. Although we will be listening to and studying many pieces (most of the highest caliber) the goal of the course is not solely to build up a repertory of works in our memory (though that is indeed a goal). We will be most concerned with larger questions of continuity and change in music. We will also consider questions of reception, or historiography - that is, the creation of history and our perception of it. Why do we perceive much of this music, so much closer in time to us than Mozart or Beethoven, to be so foreign? Is this music aloof and separate from popular music of the twentieth century or is there a real connection (perhaps hidden)? The subject will continue to follow some topics of central interest to music before 1960, such as serialism and aleatory, beyond the 1960 cutoff. Conversely a few topics which get their start just before 1960 but which flourish later (minimalism, computer music) will be covered only in 21M.263.

In this syllabus from Spring 2023, Dr. Michelle McQuade Dewhirst provides bibliographic citations for open education resources used in place of a traditional textbook. This course examines Western art music from the end of the Classical era to the present. The topics covered in this course include: Beethoven: The Man, the Myth, the Legend; Romanticism and Art Song; Romanticism in Instrumental Genres; Romanticism in Opera; Diverging Traditions in the Later 19th Century; Late Romanticism; The Early Twentieth Century; Modernism; Now What? -Isms; The Twenty-First Century

These materials, created by Dr. Adam Gaines in Summer 2023, feature a syllabus, video lectures, bibliographic references, assignment prompts, discussion questions, and links to library resources, like Ken Burns' film, Jazz.
The topics covered in this course include: Background through 1910s: Jazz Heritage and Early Styles; 1920s Through 1940s: The Jazz Age and The Swing Era; 1950s Through 1980s: Breakthroughs, Fusions and Reexaminations; 1990s Through Today: An Evolving Artform.

This course is an interactive discussion of music through the ages and how we as a people from various walks of life can appreciate it.

This course examines the history, techniques, and aesthetics of mechanical and computer-aided approaches to algorithmic music composition and generative music systems. Through creative hands-on projects, readings, listening assignments, and lectures, students will explore a variety of historical and contemporary approaches. Diverse tools and systems will be employed, including applications in Python, MIDI, Csound, SuperCollider, and Pure Data.

This course is an investigation into the history and aesthetics of music and technology as deployed in experimental and popular musics from the 19th century to the present. Through original research, creative hands-on projects, readings, and lectures, the following topics will be explored. The history of radio, audio recording, and the recording studio, as well as the development of musique concrète and early electronic instruments. The creation and extension of musical interfaces by composers such as Harry Partch, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, and others. The exploration of electromagnetic technologies in pickups, and the development of dub, hip-hop, and turntablism. The history and application of the analog synthesizer, from the Moog modular to the Roland TR-808. The history of computer music, including music synthesis and representation languages. Contemporary practices in circuit bending, live electronics, and electro-acoustic music, as well as issues in copyright and intellectual property, will also be examined. No prerequisites.

This course is a creative, hands-on exploration of contemporary and historical approaches to live electronics performance and improvisation, including basic analog instrument design, computer synthesis programming, and hardware and software interface design.

This course provides an overview of the musical styles and techniques developed over the past 115 years. The anthology and supplemental listening will present a range of art music aesthetics in a variety of genres such as chamber music, symphonic and choral music, and opera. While tuning your ears to novel sounds, you will hone your own preferences and aim to understand the motivations behind and importance of a wide diversity of compositional orientations, including Expressionism, Impressionism, atonality, neo-Classicism, serialism, nationalism, the influence of jazz and popular idioms, post-tonality, electronic music, aleatory, performance art, post-modernism, minimalism, spectralism, the New Complexity, neo-Romanticism, and post-minimalism.

About the Arts, Care & Connection Lesson Pilot Series: Arts for Learning Northwest collaborated with Oregon teaching artists on the development of this series of four arts courses designed for K-5 students, with integrated social emotional learning content in the areas of dance, visual arts, theater, and music. This lesson is part of a pilot project, and will be shared in its final version in an Oregon Open Learning Lesson Collection. 

About the Arts, Care & Connection Lesson Pilot Series:Arts for Learning Northwest collaborated with Oregon teaching artists on the development of this series of four arts courses designed for K-5 students, with integrated social emotional learning content in the areas of dance, visual arts, theater, and music. This lesson is part of a pilot project, and will be shared in its final version in an Oregon Open Learning Lesson Collection. 

An introduction to the infinite universe of music from its origins to the present, this course investigates the role of instruments, culture, myth and science in the evolution of music. Illustrations through the medium of the World Wide Web present the concept of music as both communication of ideas and expression of feelings in diverse musical traditions of the world.

Learn about Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, a Yankton Sioux author, composer, and indigenous rights activist in this video from the Unladylike2020 series.

Taken from her community at age 8 to attend a boarding school as part of the assimilationist policy of the U.S. government to educate Native American youth under the motto: "Kill the Indian to save the man," she used her education to advocate for American Indian rights. She trained as a violinist at the New England Conservatory of Music, and in 1913 wrote the libretto for what is considered the first Native American opera, The Sun Dance Opera. As an author, she published in prestigious national magazines such as Harper’s and The Atlantic, writing about American Indian struggles to retain tribal identities amid pressures to assimilate into European American culture.

She joined the Society of American Indians, edited its publication American Indian Magazine, and in 1926 co-founded the National Council of American Indians to lobby for voting rights, sovereignty rights, and the preservation of Native American heritage and ways of life. Support materials include discussion questions, research project ideas, and primary source analysis.