Midterm Guide for Music 100 (Fall 2022) The midterm (60 points total) for this semester consists of the following parts:   Part 1: Investigation of a Big Idea (15 points) Part 2: Creative Project (15 points) Part 3: For/Against (15 points} Part 4: Imaginative Writing (15 points) Instructions for Part 1: Confronting Modernism and Technology   Country music is an “invented tradition

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Midterm Guide for Music 100 (Fall 2022)

The midterm (60 points total) for this semester consists of the following parts:

 

Part 1: Investigation of a Big Idea (15 points)

Part 2: Creative Project (15 points)

Part 3: For/Against (15 points}

Part 4: Imaginative Writing (15 points)

Instructions for Part 1: Confronting Modernism and Technology

 

Country music is an “invented tradition.” It draws on the past but amplifies and distorts it through exaggerated accents, silly costumes, and modern musical innovations. And yet it presents a musical expericnce that purports to be old, even timeless. Early country music’s nostalgia for a time that never existed was fueled in part by that gencration’s concerns and anxicties about modernity.

 

There is no single definition of modernity, but you may find this brief description useful:

 

“(Modernity derives from] the stresses and strains brought about... by the loss of belief in religion, the rise of our dependence on science and technology, the expansion of markets and the commodification brought about by capitalism, the growth of mass culture and its influence, the invasion of bureaucracy into private life, and changing belicfs about relationships between the sexes” (Christopher Butler,

Modernism: A Very Short Introduction, 1).

You may also find the Wikipedia page on Modernism useful as a reference.

Write a one- or two-page paper (with double-spaced text) or record a ten to fifteen-minute video essay exploring a specific case of popular music confronting modernity. You should draw from a single track, or at most a few related tracks. You are not required to use the description of modernity I’ve excerpted above; indeed, I encourage you to explore the topic and use whatever characterization of modernity appeals to you. You must cite your sources—direct quotes in a written paper should be in quotation marks and cited; direct quotes in a video essay should be prefaced with the word “quote” and followed by the words “end quote.” You should describe how the music engages with specific parameters of

modernism—technological, psychological, cultural, and so on—and provide examples of how it reconciles/works out those confrontations. If writing a paper, you should usc time stamps when specifying moments in a song (“at 2:35” instead of “at two minutes and thirty-five seconds”); if recording a video essay, ideally you should use an audio excerpt, or sing and/or play the excerpt.

 

Criteria for Grading: 1) Addressing a specific modernist issue; 2) Clarity with which musical examples confront the issue; 3) using specific timestamps 4) Plausibility of interpretation

 

Instructions for Part 2: Transformative Composition Assignment

Purpose: This assignment is designed to encourage students to transform old material into something new. The student will adapt folk music to a more modern idiom by using a model from popular music