Giuseppe Gerbino

Gerbino seems like a professor who really knows his material. I found myself quite fascinated by some of his various insights that he imparted onto us. I will say though classes can get really boring at times because he LOVES to talk, both a good and a bad thing. However, he does provide opportunities for student involvement so take them when you can. Overall a really good choice for Lit Hum. I learned a lot, and it was really interesting while being pretty light.

It's pretty obvious I guess that classes will be more interesting if you do the work and are willing to pursue the subject a bit. On that view of things, I probably didn't do Giuseppe justice, and especially after reading his other reviews, I'm a little hesitant to pin my experience of his class solely on him. But I really hated the class. I listened (mostly), I did the readings (sometimes after the classes, I'll admit), and I got solid grades. Despite all that, I just couldn't get into it. There were glimmers of something interesting which poked through occasionally (like when he talked about Greek musical philosophy), but we mostly moved excruciatingly slowly and focused on fairly banal structural points. It felt like we were learning obscure historical terms by rote rather than actually engaging with the ideas. My fault, perhaps, but it seems fair to say: it was unbearably god-damn boring. That said, Guiseppe is one of the nicest people I've had the good fortune to spend time with. He's flexible, friendly, thoughtful—great all around.

Professor Gerbino is WONDERFUL and the class is very, very interesting. Get ready for a crash course in counterpoint if you are a music theory novice (as I was, but I picked it up really quickly thanks to "real life" examples)... however, as this is an upper-level elective, it is not a class for a non-music major (or for those without extensive musical background -- it is necessary for the level of analysis that is done). The syllabus is packed with beautiful music and some interesting reading (some more dense than others, obviously). Prof. Gerbino is so passionate about Bach that it is almost impossible not to love it as much as he does. He is very concerned that his students are learning and understanding the material and is very eager to answer/leave time for questions in class. Overall, this was a wonderful experience; I learned so much and had a great professor. I would highly recommend this course, and I personally look forward to hopefully taking another class with Prof. Gerbino before I graduate.

at first, i thought the class would be a bit boring because we were moving through the material at a slow pace. but prof. gerbino is so nice, smart, and interesting that the class wasn't boring at all. he is such a likeable person! what made the class so interesting, though, is that he always connected the music we were studying with the relevant time period in terms of historical events and the philosophy around at that time and place. two thumbs up!

A really nice guy with a good sense of humor and a kick-ass accent. He always makes himself available for office hours, responds to emails in a timely manner, does his best to answer all of your questions, and never gets angry or impatient. The subject can be a bit dry, but he keeps it interesting with lots of musical and a/v examples and historical anecdotes. I'd take another class with him (if the music department were *ahem!* making any electives available ... )

This class was fantastic, and Professor Gerbino is the nicest teacher I've had in all my 4 years at Columbia. He's so enthusiastic in his teaching of the course, and it's really interesting. He's such a sweet person, and very fair with the grading. His lectures are so fun and enjoyable, and you get to watch parts of the operas in class.

Giuseppe's average score should definitely be at least above a 4. He is a very kind teacher, and his class is probably one of the easier LitHums. There's usually no homework except reading. There are 2 tests, which are just close readings of a passage, 1 midterm and a final, and 1 "essay". The "essay" was just writing a page long response to several images depicting what we saw in the books. The class discussions are very interesting, and Giuseppe is really knowledgeable. Make sure to talk every class though as he implied that he notes who is talking and who is not. He is an easy grader: as long as you can find rhetorical elements or stuff related to the given passage and use that to extract information, you are good. He does not care too much about writing style or quality. Honestly, I read like 45% of the books, and the class was pretty calm. I think Giuseppe is extremely underrated, so take him if you can.

Giuseppe is just a really great guy. The class is quite straightforward, but there are occasional moments that are just straight-up fun. I also have to give him a great deal of credit for learning the name of everyone in a 35 person LECTURE. The very beginning of the class was kind of slow due to the material, Ancient Greek perceptions of music; the problem is that only a few fragments of Greek music survive, so the majority of this section was devoted to Plato's writings on the subject, plus a few more ancients. We then moved on to the medieval period, which is more my style than most students, so in my opinion this material plus the Renaissance could have easily occupied a full semester. In the middle of this, we took a slight detour forward to Monteverdi, as the department brought the stellar Baroque ensemble Tenet to St. Paul's Chapel to be the subject for our class's concert reports. We jumped back and forth once or twice because of this, ending with Bach. The material is presented in a straightforward manner, more or less like Music Hum, but with some time devoted to looking at scores and discussing smaller details. But anyway, Giuseppe is just awesome.

Prof. Gerbino's class is more about opera as theater than on the musical specifics of opera. I would have liked to see more of a focus on the music and less studying of plot summaries and memorization of characters. The readings are heavy, but if you do the minimum, exams won't be too hard. There are a lot of operas to cover, too many infact. That's my main complaint. You can't really analyze an opera with any depth when you spend two classes on it and one class focuses totally on plot summary. If you like opera though, you'll like this class.

Professor Gerbino is an excellent teacher. He knows a lot, especially about the romantic period. He is extremely nice as well. It was a positive experience to be in his class.