Undergraduate Development of Coursework in Musicology

Abstract

In 1960, W.W. Norton published Donald J. Grout’s first edition of A History of Western Music. It proved to be an epochal book, not only in sales but in influence over the field of musicology pedagogy as well as, since that time, it (and its subsequent revisions) has come to define what US undergraduate music students learn. In the 1990s, however, musicology pedagogy entered an evolutionary period as trends in higher education and American society buffeted its coursework. The result has been five areas of intense concentration and change that have defined musicological coursework since that time: canons and content, engagement, technology, information literacy, and contexts. This essay explores how those five areas have shifted the experience of music history for undergraduate music students as well as how pedagogues have responded to them in innovative ways.