Greening the Curriculum: Beyond a Short Music History in Ecomusicology

  • Aaron S Allen University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Keywords: environment, sustainability, liberal arts

Abstract

Most of the ecomusicology literature deals either with music of and, especially, after the nineteenth century or with music/sound of non-Western cultures.  What about the historical music of the Western tradition before the nineteenth century?  This essay provides a few tentative possibilities. After providing a conspectus of ecomusicology and a brief conspectus of work in this field, I emphasize the problem of this "short music history" in ecomusicology. After presenting a syllabus and overview of my own music and environment class, which represents that problem, I critique that class and propose ideas for revising it and for incorporating ecomusicology topics into a typical Western music history survey course. I conclude by reflecting on the place of ecomusicology in the general greening of the liberal arts curriculum.

Author Biography

Aaron S Allen, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Aaron S. Allen is director of the Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program and Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2006 with a dissertation on the nineteenth-century Italian reception of Beethoven. His B.A. in music and B.S. in environmental studies are from Tulane University.
Published
2017-04-26