Students in this major will study the performing arts of music, theater, and performing arts in general.
The musicology curriculum covers a wide range of topics, including art music, traditional music, and popular music around the world. We investigate not only the musical sound itself but also its cultural and intellectual contexts that informed the specific musical practice.
The theater studies curriculum not only covers Japanese classical plays and modern Western theater, works which are considered “theater” in the narrow sense of the term, but also goes beyond that definition to explore cinema, opera, musicals, dance, and performing arts from around the world. Students will learn about the aesthetic qualities and artistic and ethnic characteristics of these different forms of performing arts through inductive, theoretical reasoning, as well as the principles and essence of performance.
As the literary departments at many other universities do not cover this subject, Osaka University is one of the few places where students can study musicology and theater within a school of letters.
While students do not need performing experience to study musicology or theater, as the curriculum is research-based, the department also welcomes students who are actually involved in these art forms.
Professors
- ITO, Nobuhiro (Ph.D.)
- Musical Folklore of Central Europe; Music History in Central Europe, Study on Vienna-Budapest Operattas
- WAJIMA, Yusuke (Ph.D.)
- Popular Music Studies; Ethnomusicology, History of Japanese Popular Music
Associate Professors
- NAKAO, Kaoru (Ph.D.)
- Theatre Studies; History of Noh Theatre, Theory of Noh Text Analysis
- KOGO, Naoko (MA)
- Dance Studies; History of German stage dance, Theory of Dance and Performance