Music Humanities
Chair of Music Humanities:
Associate Prof. Benjamin A. Steege, 621 Dodge Hall; (212) 854-8191; bas39@columbia.edu
Since 1947, Music Humanities has focused on the many forms of the Western musical imagination in art music, through works studied in their historical and cultural contexts. The specific goals of the course are to awaken and encourage active, critical, and comparative listening practices, to provide tools to respond verbally to a variety of musical idioms, and to create engagement with the debates about the character and purposes of music that have occupied composers and musical thinkers since ancient times. Like Art Humanities, Music Humanities evolved from the Humanities B optional music and fine arts requirement of 1937.