MUSI 258 - Music from Outer Space

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

Across many musical traditions, music and its inspiration are other worldly. From the music of the spheres in early Europe to Chinese philosopher Ji Kang using music to connect heaven and earth, theory and analysis of musical creativity often includes the celestial. “Music from Outer Space” examines several of these traditions. It begins with an investigation of Medieval cosmology and the “music of the spheres” in early and modern European concert music, Chinese depictions of heavenly and divine harmonies, Samuel Delaney’s “The Ballad of Beta 2”, a science fiction novel about song catching in outer space, and ends with the Voyager Space probe sending earth sounds into space. Each of these traditions is examined in historical context, and outer space is analyzed as a receptacle for the hopes, fears, anxieties and aspirations of the time in which the music was produced and disseminated.

Assessments are two large projects. The first involves a re-assessment of the “Golden Record” from the Voyager space probe, which was designed to be an encyclopedia of the sounds of earth. Throughout the course the students make a “new” version of the Golden Record that was initially sent with the space probe that designed to represent the sounds of earth. They collectively design and curate a new voyager record and produce a set of individual essays, like Carl Sagan’s “Murmurs of Earth”, that explains their choices aesthetically, historically, culturally, and philosophically, as well as laying out their methodology. This is done as a class. The second project is a new musical setting of the lyrics from “The Ballad of Beta 2”, a science fiction novella by Samuel Delaney. This is undertaken as an individual or small-group project. Justin Patch.

First six-week course.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: INT