“Art is not our attempt to capture experience and give it a form but to let form itself discover experience, to let form become experience.” - André Aciman
“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.” – Walter Pater
“…I always think of my books as music before I write them.” Virginia Woolf
In this program our study of music and literature will focus on the ways authors, from antiquity to the present, engage with musical devices and structures in an effort to capture the “condition of music”. Our work will include approaches to progressive skill development in the practices of close reading and close listening and the development of a common working vocabulary for analysis and writing projects. Curricular work will be structured for students at all levels of experience, whether new to deciphering musical and literary symbols and structures or looking for opportunities to gain greater fluency and depth of understanding by building on work of previous programs.
Weekly activities will include readings, lectures and seminars. The program will also offer regular interactive workshops that provide opportunities for students to share individual and/or small group projects in their areas of interest (music and/or creative writing). Students will be encouraged to develop new ways of understanding artistic works that enhance their own creative and scholarly interests.
Fall Anticipated Credit Equivalencies
4 - Studies in Creativity: Analysis
4 - Studies in Creativity: Applied
4 - Music Fundamentals
4 - Seminar: Music in Myth
Winter Anticipated Credit Equivalencies
4 - Studies in Creativity: Analysis
4 - Studies in Creativity: Applied
4 - Music Fundamentals
4 - Seminar: Literature as Music
Registration
Students interested in joining Music in Myth and Literature during the winter quarter should contact program faculty (gullicka@evergreen.edu). Approval will be provided to students who provide evidence of foundational studies in music and myth and demonstrate a willingness to become familiar with readings from fall quarter.