This course concerns the relationship between music and the environment, broadly construed. The key question this course asks is, how can we understand music as an ecological phenomenon? The course aspires to answer this question in several ways: firstly, the course will introduce ecological models of musical and cultural analysis; secondly, we will discuss the concept of nature in various music traditions, including Western art music and Japanese traditional music, among others; and thirdly, the course will attend to the role of music in the ongoing global environmental crisis. Components of the course will cover soundscape studies, ecocriticism, as well as the more recent field of ecomusicology.
‍