Music 3039: Research Paper Due: Tuesday, 4/25, in class. Worth 20% of your course grade; must be completed to pass the course. Late papers graded down one letter grade per day late. Basic Requirements • Thesis linking two pieces of music to relevant historical context • Title referring to paper’s thesis • 6-8 pages of text (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1-inch margins) • At least five secondary sources, three or more located through RILM (citation style is your choice) • Appendix citing online recordings (URL) and containing any printed lyrics (not part of page-count) Assignment You will construct and support a thesis (a controlling idea) that connects music by a significant musician with one or more contexts from American history and culture. You will consult relevant primary and secondary sources in doing so. Below is a list of proposed musicians. Some are prominent performers, but most have been highly creative composers as well. We will study none of them in depth in class. Classical Steve Reich John Corigliano Meredith Monk Jazz Miles Davis Wynton Marsalis Maria Schneider Singer-Songwriter Paul Simon Joni Mitchell Ani DiFranco Musical Theater Richard Rodgers Leonard Bernstein Stephen Sondheim Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop Jimi Hendrix Prince Queen Latifah To request approval for an unlisted musician, you must submit a preliminary bibliography and a list of musical pieces to me by Thursday, 3/30. It cannot be a musician we’re covering in class. You must be able to secure audio recordings, transcriptions of lyrics, and enough high-quality scholarship to write a well-supported paper. Contexts Which contexts are most relevant to a historical understanding of your musician’s work? Contexts may be: ● artistic (musical genre, personal artistic goals, connections to broader artistic trends) ● biographical (significant personal events that decisively shaped artistic outlook) ● religious or philosophical (deeply held beliefs that influenced artistic approach) ● social or political (broader realities that motivated artistic choices) The musician’s artistic context must be discussed. As for the other contexts, pursue those that seem particularly important, and stay focused. You will also address the sphere of musical activity in which your musician was/is centrally active. Sometimes, values from multiple spheres are present. If so, discuss which values belong to which sphere and anything interesting about the resulting mixture. Music Select two pieces of music created by this person that exemplify the contexts you are investigating, and highlight these connections in your paper. When approaching each piece of music, consider these questions: ● To which sphere of musical activity does this piece belong, and why? If a piece draws from more than one sphere, how and why does it do so? ● If the piece has words or a story being conveyed, what are they about, and how may they be relevant to the piece’s musical genre, its historical context, and its creator’s artistic goals? ● Given the genre and sphere of activity to which a piece belongs, its words/story, and the goals of its creator, what are the most interesting and relevant features of its musical style? For each piece you discuss, select two or three portions of it that relate to your thesis and describe them in some musical detail. Use the musical vocabulary we’ve been developing; show what you are learning in class! Use audio timings to identify the portions of the piece being discussed (“At 2:05, DiFranco’s voice leaps up an octave and becomes rough and edgy, which reinforces the words . . . .”). In songs, quote the words at those points. Primary Sources Your main primary sources will be recordings. Secure these from an online source such as YouTube or Spotify. For songs with lyrics, you will need to provide an accurate transcription (check websites, books and articles, CD booklets, or carefully make your own). For classical pieces, cite the date of composition. For non-classical pieces in which the date of the recording is most important, cite that date. At the end of your paper, cite the URL of each recording discussed. For pieces with lyrics, supply those in an appendix. Secondary Sources Your paper should draw from at least five secondary sources. Some useful reference tools and overviews: • CSUB Library Catalog (do a subject or keyword search) • Grove Music Online (go to the Music subject guide, then the Articles and Databases tab) • RILM (Articles and Databases tab); use in conjunction with our library’s collection and Interlibrary Loan (order ILL materials right away!) • JSTOR (scholarly journal articles; Articles and Databases tab) • The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (in the Library’s reference section, ML102.P66 G84 1998) • The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 5: The Late Twentieth Century, by Richard Taruskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) (on reserve, ML160.T18 2009 v.5) • Jazz, by Gary Giddens and Scott DeVeaux (New York: Norton, 2009) (on reserve, ML3508.G54 2009) • American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, 2nd ed., by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman (New York: Oxford, 2007) (on reserve, ML3477.S73 2007) • What’s that Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History, by John Covach (New York: Norton, 2006) (on reserve, personal copy) At least three secondary sources need to be located through the RILM database. Provide the RILM accession number (located near the end of the item record in RILM) at the end of the bibliographical citation. Be on your guard against plagiarism—the unacknowledged use, either in direct quotation or otherwise, of specific ideas originating with someone else. Always cite your sources! In addition to the basic requirements listed above, your paper will be graded on its thesis (is one present? is it clear?), development of context and musical observations, syntax (word choice, spelling, sentence structure), and organization (of the entire paper and within paragraphs). Do not submit a first draft; revise and polish all your written work. 2
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