Humanities Seminars Course: The Music of Mozart I

Monday, November 2, 2015 - 1:00pm to Monday, November 30, 2015 - 3:00pm
Rubel Room, Poetry Center 1508 E. Helen Street Tucson, AZ 85721

MONDAYS 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. November 2 - 30, 2015. No class on November 23, 2015. Register here.

Tuition: $85

Few composers have been as prolific in so many genres as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In this course we will survey a portion of this vast output from the unique perspective of specialists in the field, all professors at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music. The first session will be led by Jay Rosenblatt and will offer an overview of Mozart’s life, covering such topics as his years as a child prodigy, his difficulties with the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, and his final decade in Vienna. He will also introduce the class to the stylistic characteristics of Mozart’s music. For the subsequent sessions, Kristin Dauphinais, Professor of Voice, will discuss the three operas Mozart wrote with Lorenzo da Ponte; Bruce Chamberlain, Director of Choral Activities, will examine Mozart’s sacred music; and Tannis Gibson, Professor of Piano, will introduce us to Mozart’s piano concertos and works for solo piano.

Required Reading: 

Cowdery, William and Neal Zaslaw. The Complete Mozart: A Guide to the Musical Works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. W.W. Norton, 1990. ISBN: 0-393-02886-0.

Recommended Reading: 

Solomon, Maynard. Mozart: A Life. Harper, 2005. ISBN: 0-060-88344-8.  

JAY ROSENBLATT is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Arizona, where he has taught since 1995. He has led four Humanities Seminars, covering the operas of Verdi and Wagner, the life and works of Franz Liszt, and the string quartets of Beethoven. His scholarly research focuses on music of the nineteenth century, particularly that of Liszt.