Modeling Propositional Music in Art-Sci

Propositional music is a point of view about
composing that emerges from a unique philosophy,
framework, and method for compositional practice
in experimental music that proceeds from proposing
models informed by pandisciplinary interests, and
then proceeding to make work consistent with those
models. In this practice, composers might build
proposed models of worlds, universes, evolution,
brains, consciousness, or whole domains of thought
and life, and then proceed to make dynamical
musical embodiments of these models, inviting
audiences to experience them in spontaneously
emerging sonic forms. Such a practice fuels
creative music methodologies when energized in
composition, improvisation, analysis, and adjacent
areas of interdisciplinary thought, including
self-organizing forms, complex adaptive systems,
and interactive networks. According to this view,
composing involves proposing models for whole
musical realities. Their correspondence to
proposed realities navigates a profound and rich
meeting place for creative license and scientific
verification. In science, one brings an idea to
the world mostly by proving it. Artists,
musicians, and engineers manifest their ideas
through making. The concept of propositional music
unifies the two in an area where music, science,
and philosophy can meet in shared creative
investigations, one in which distinctions may
collapse into a new kind of artscience. The course
will proceed in lecture/discussion format. Through
lectures, readings, and listening assignments,
students will be exposed to detailed examples of
compositional methods and musical works that can
be analyzed with ideas from propositional music
thinking. Students will be asked to present brief
written and verbal responses for class discussion
weekly. They will then be given choices for
culminating class projects that may include
analyzing extant or original works within the
framework of propositional music, writing
analytical and/or philosophical texts in response
to ideas discussed in class, or composing and
presenting new works in which they develop their
own ways to experiment with propositional music
thinking and methods.