Course Schedule

3.10 Return of Unreason: The Rise of the Fantastic

Assign In-Class Presentations and Reading Responses

Works covered: Mozart, Don Giovanni, Act I, scenes 5, 9, and 10 and Act II, scene 15

10.10 Unreason, Cont’d

Reading Response due: Todorov, “Definition of the Fantastic,” in The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1975.

17.10 Music and Unreason: The Sublime

Reading Response due: Burke, “Part II: On the Sublime” (pp. 53-79; 113-14) in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: OUP, 1990.

Works covered: Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, iv

24.10 The Sublime and Music Scholarship

Reading due:Hoffmann, “Councilor Krespel,” The Best Tales of Hoffmann, ed. E.F. Bleier. New York: Dover, 1967.

Works covered: Beethoven, cont’d

31.10 Musico-Fantastic Forms: CPE Bach Fantasias

Reading due:Hoffman, “Musico-Poetic Club,” in FPCM.

Works covered: CPE Bach, Fantasia in C Minor, H. 75; Fantasia in G Minor, H. 225, Fantasia in E-flat, H. 227.

7.11 Musico-Fantastic Forms: Mendelssohn’s “Fairy Music”

Works covered: Mendelssohn, Midsummer Night’s Dream, overture

14.11 Musico-Fantastic Forms: Schumann and Fragments

Reading Response due:Rosen, “Fragments,” The Romantic Generation. Harvard: HUP.

Works covered: Schumann, Carnaval, No. 1, “Préambule”, No. 5, “Eusebius”, No. 6, “Florestan”

21.11 The Fantastic and the Uncanny

Reading Response due:Freud, “The Uncanny,” New York: Penguin, 1998, pp. 123-159.

Works covered: Settings of Goethe’s Erlkönig by Schubert, Tomášek and Spohr

28.11 The Uncanny and the Virtuoso

Works covered: Settings of Goethe’s Erlkönig by Loewe and Reichardt; Paganini, 24 Caprices