Selected Course Offerings:
Shen Curriculum for Musical Theater
A number of electives in Musical Theater are offered on a regular basis. They include:
MUSI 1185: American Musical Theater History
Professor Daniel Egan.
Critical examination of relevance and context in the history of the American musical theater. Historical survey combined with text and musical analysis; non-musical historical trends and how they interact in the musical theater of a given era.
MUSI 2228: Musical Theater Performance I
The structure and meaning of traditional and contemporary musical theater repertoire. Focus on ways to “read” a work, decipher compositional cues for character and action, facilitate internalization of material, and elicit lucid interpretations. For singers, pianists and directors.
MUSI 2229: Musical Theater Performance II
A guided exploration of central elements in musical theater performance. Discussion of specific aspects of musical theater including choreography, music direction and originating new works, will be followed by their application in performance.
MUSI 2230: Composing for Musical Theater.
Professor Joshua Rosenblum.
Introduction to elements of music- and lyric-writing for theater songs. Focus on the development of compositional proficiency in the musical theater idiom and on the refinement of each student’s compositional voice.
MUSI 3330: Musical Theatre Composition II.
Intermediate and advanced projected-oriented studies in composition of musical theater.
MUSI 4372: Stephen Sondheim and the American Musical Theater Tradition
Professor Daniel Egan.
The musical theater of Stephen Sondheim, both as a popular phenomenon of the contemporary Broadway stage and in relation to models and forms employed in the past.