Music Humanities

Music Humanities is a one-semester survey course, part of the Core Curriculum. The official name of the course is Masterpieces of Western Music, but it is usually just called Music Humanities or Music Hum. It is normally taken by Columbia College students at some point after their freshman year.

The course covers one or two composers per week. At the instructors' discretion, composers may include Palestrina, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and Ligeti.

Like most Core classes, Music Hum has been accused of being overly focused on the West. For students interested in non-Western music, there is an Asian Music Humanities course.