Music in Western Cultures In this course we will develop skills for assessing music’s social, economic, and political importance in Western societies. Through a series of units focusing on various aspects of music (such as composition, performance, dissemination, and reception) and on various eras from ancient Greece to the present, students will engage with the principal questions and methods of historical musicology. Students will learn to interpret musical works’ formal, stylistic, and performative characteristics through close engagement with scores and recordings, and draw connections between musical works and the institutions and wider socio-cultural conditions that have shaped and continue to shape music-making.

Introduction to Music In this course we will develop critical listening skills through guided study of selected works of Western classical, popular, and folk music, as well as a sampling of music from non-Western cultures, from the Middle Ages to the present. Students will learn to listen actively, to identify how music uses basic sound materials— such as rhythm, melody, timbre, texture, and harmony—to create meaning and expression, and to draw connections between music and its social and historical context. Previous musical training is not required.

Opera and Media This course considers opera both as a medium in itself and as it has been remediated in radio, television, and film. We will examine contemporary and canonic works and ask how the multiple media forms that constitute opera, including libretti, music, stage design, architecture, and recording technologies, have shaped opera’s composition and consumption over the last four centuries. Our journey will take us from Monteverdi to Mazzoli, and will cover many of the most important Italian, German, French, Slavic, and English-language operas from the eighteenth-century to the present. Through active listening, reading and discussion, we will study how opera has been translated, exported and remade and how it has been charged with commenting on and disseminating political, cultural, and racial identities.

Danielle Simon

Reviews and ratings for Danielle Simon at Middlebury College.Danielle Simon teaches Music in Western Cultures, Introduction to Music, Topics in Music:Music in Films and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Danielle Simon good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

This course would have been good if there where 20 people in the class not 50. There is not any room to really talk about music because of this. I felt like there wasn't much engagement with the material and days blended into each other. However, I you are looking for an easy class to fill out an art requirement look no further.

This class was very much out of my comfort zone but the professor made all the material digestible and easy to understand. I loved the listening projects and the concert reports, because it made the learning very personal. 

Danielle is great! Currently one of the best professors in the music department. This class it pretty easy, but you have to stay on top of the daily readings to participate in class discussions. A few research presentations, but they are evaluated fairly and it is easy to do well.