From the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol to Disney’s Frozen to video games such as The Witcher and Skyrim, fictionalized allusions to the Middle Ages loom large in contemporary cultural and political landscapes. How are the Middles Ages presented and understood, and what is the role of sound and music in the “invention” of the Middle Ages? This course explores the slippery distinction between the “real” and the “made” musical Middle Ages (roughly defined as the fifth to the fifteenth centuries) through several case studies from the last two hundred years and spanning across a variety of genres and media: video games, television, cinema, popular and folk musics, manuscript and print scores, and opera. We will consider the musical strategies that performers, composers, and scholars have adopted to imagine the sound of the Middle Ages, as well as the historical, political, and ideological motivations prompting them in doing so.
- Teacher: Siel Agugliaro
- Teacher: James Blasina