Generals Questions, finally

I promised a long time ago to post my generals questions. Before I do that, some info on the basic format:

1. We had to choose eight topics total. 
2. Six were meant to correspond to six broadly defined periods in music history (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th Century). 
3. Of the other two, one was supposed to be a theory/methods/historiography topic, and one was supposed to be a popular music/ethnomusicology topic. 
4. After choosing our eight topics, we were instructed to choose six on which we would be tested through a series of two-hour essays. 
5. Another topic would be turned into a syllabus for a graduate seminar, and the last topic would become a 10-minute oral presentation, to be given at orals (where the faculty question us "live" about our previous answers on the essays, our work on the syllabus, and an analytical portion of the test taken halfway through the summer).
   

Here are the questions I chose to answer for each topic, the titles of which follow the historical period designation.  (I've omitted the questions I chose not to answer, which tended to be the "harder" ones.)

Topic 1: Medieval: Trouveres

Long Essay: Is trouvere music modal? (You may interpret "modal" in the rhythmic as well as melodic sense.)

Short Essays: 1) Sources of trouvere music; 2) Major works of scholarship on trouveres

Topic 2: Renaissance: Cantus Firmus Masses in the 15th Century

Long Essay: Discuss connections among the complex of fifteenth-century masses based on L'homme arme. Do these masses support the claim that "emulation" and "competition" were operative concepts for composers in this period? How else might one characterize these composers' engagements with one another's works?

Topic 3: Baroque: The Italian Sonata

Long Essay: Discuss the European influence of Corelli as teacher and composer, until 1800.

(I have to include the question I didn't answer, just because it's so ridiculous: "Discuss the aesthetic issues involved in the repertory of early solo sonatas (e.g., Marini and Castello), including today's revival among performers (e.g., Manze)." I hadn't studied any of those people, and I still have no idea what "aesthetic issues" means.)

Topic 4: Classical: London in the 1790s

Long essay: Discuss the impact foreign performers, composers and impresarios had on musical life in London in the 1790s. In what ways did the situation in this decade differ from what it had been earlier in the century?

Topic 5: Methods/historiography: Historiography of French Musical Nationalism After 1793

Long Essay: "What is a [musical] nation?" (<-- This is actually how the question was written, quotation marks and brackets and all. It's an allusion to an important speech given on nationalism in 1882 by Ernst Renan.)

Short Essay: Wagner as Other

Topic 6: Rock: The British Invasion of the 1960s

Long Essay: The "British Invasion" is a term used to describe the overwhelming popularity of rock and roll groups from the United Kingdom in the 1960s United States. Groups such as teh Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Who were so much a part of everyday American cultural life that they became almost American in the eyes of their audiences. Why were the British Invasion groups so appealing to American audiences in the 1960s? How were the British Invasion groups themselves influenced by American popular genres (R&B, Motown, Rock) and vice veresa? In what ways did musicians and their music become icons of larger social, political, and cultural trends?

I created my graduate seminar syllabus on my Romantic topic, "The Piano Miniature. "

My oral presentation was on my 20th-century topic - and the main contender for a dissertation topic - "Patronage in Interwar France."

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Good times, eh?