This course (INF430H1 — The Material and Information Cultures of Music) embraces the sonic, material, embodied, technical, informational, legal, historical and affective lives and cultures of music. Through a comparative approach that considers music made at home, on stage, or in studios, places of worship, and digital spaces, students will be encouraged to consider music holistically, and its complex routes of circulation, reproduction, censorship, revival and remix. To focus our curiosity and develop a methodology for inquiry, we will begin with the material artifacts of music – instruments, sheet music, recording media, players – and follow their routes to interdisciplinary inquiry that sees, hears, remembers, feels and understands music in multifaceted ways.
