OSH B65 - Art & Music, A Shared History of Development

Course Description

In this class collaboratively taught by Dr. Alan Mason, Professor of Music History, and Peggy Flanagan, Professor of Art History, we will explore a historic Era, revealing styles and methods of creating art and composing music that emerged at similar times, and in similar styles, designs, and aesthetics.  Great works of art and great masterpieces of music will be examined, with attention to content, form, structure, expression, and impact on society.

Week 1:  Medieval and Renaissance, 400 to 1600 AD:  the darkness and mysteriousness of the Medieval Era showed itself in similar ways in the paintings and musical works of the period.  The clarity and intellectual aspect of the Renaissance also revealed itself in the new, smooth, orderly design of the art and music.

Week 2:  Baroque, 1600-1750:  religiosity, drama, unbalance, and complexity are revealed in contrapuntal music and ornate, audacious art that spills off of the canvas.

Week 3: Classicism, 1750-1820:  orderliness, restraint, balance, sensibility, and clean lines are revealed in simple harmonies and melodies, and artwork based on formal design, and accessibility to a new middle-class audience.

Week 4: Romanticism, 1825-1890: emergence of the individual artist as creative hero, the individual against the world, the individual shown in their full self-expression, in a world not ready for them. The rules are bent, design is freer, and each composer and painter shares their individual expressive voice.

Week 5: Late Romanticism, Early 20th Century, 1890-1930:  the "isms:" post-romanticism, exoticism, nationalism, Neo-classicism, Impressionism, and primitivism, as shown in the creation of constantly changing new styles, with little attention to the past.

Week 6: The Modern Era:  music and art of the 20th century: atonality, chromaticism, the breaking down of formal structures, the creation of new methodologies, revealed in great masterpieces of symphonic music, and great modern masterpieces of visual art.  

Instructor: Dr. Alan Mason and Ms. Peggy Falagan