Class Introduction: Music
General Education Courses | Group II Humanities and Social Sciences, Music
From Orchestra to Contemporary Music. Discover Your Potential.
Most of the General Education Courses offered at the Hiyoshi Campus, including the "Music" course I teach, are open to students from all faculties of the university. Students from the geographically distant Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) also actively participate. This is one of the major features of the General Education Courses. (Incidentally, in foreign language and specialized courses, there are few opportunities to interact with students from other faculties.) Furthermore, the General Education Courses offer a large number and variety of classes, each with its own unique characteristics, to allow you to experience a wide range of subjects.
The curriculum for the "Music" General Education Courses offered at the Hiyoshi Campus is primarily designed by the Hiyoshi Department of Musicology, which includes faculty members not only from the Faculty of Economics but also from other faculties. To accommodate the academic directions and interests of each student, we offer a diverse program ranging from introductory lectures to small-group seminar-style classes that delve into quite profound content. The topics covered are also varied, including not only classical Western music but also folk music, contemporary music, and more.
Furthermore, we offer music classes that include practical training, performance, and workshops, which are rarely seen at other general universities. These classes range from those where students learn music theory in a practical way to those where they master the history of choral music by actually singing. Among the "Music" classes I teach, there is one such class. It is titled "18th-Century Orchestra and Performance Practice." In this class, about 30 students with orchestral performance experience gather. Using their usual instruments, they aim to deeply understand 18th-century music by studying and practically applying the performance practices of that era, rather than modern conventional methods, to 18th-century orchestral music typified by the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart.
I hope that all of you will not only take the "Music" classes but also make good use of the many General Education Courses available to explore all the possibilities you possess.
(Professor Akira Ishii)