MusM Music (Musicology) / Course details

This course introduces current issues and approaches within musicology and cognate disciplines. For the purposes of this module, 'musicology' is conceived in the broadest possible sense, encompassing historical, analytical, systematic, performative and cultural approaches with regard to musics of all styles, periods and cultures, including popular and non-Western traditions. 

The unit offers a wide-ranging exploration of concepts, theories and problems within current music studies. It probes some of the key debates and trends shaping the discipline and considers how the contemporary study of music and music-making has responded to broader developments in the arts, humanities and social sciences. 

•To introduce students to current and recent debates about musicological methods, theories and approaches 

• To stimulate engagement with broader debates and problems in the arts and humanities 

•To promote critical assessment of the problems and benefits of specific musicological approaches 

•To encourage awareness of historical trends in musicology and their long-term legacy 

•To provide students with a foundation for critical assessment of the theories and methods that inform their own research 

• Weekly interactive classes  
• Dedicated weekly consultation hours

By the end of the course-unit students will be able to: 

• Demonstrate an awareness and understanding of a range of current issues in music studies  
• Show a knowledge of the nature of musicological debate relating to methodology and approach 
• Show an awareness of ethical issues in all areas of musicological research

• Demonstrate a grasp of key concepts in musicology and cognate disciplines 
• Show the ability to situate a variety of musicological texts within the contexts of current and past musicological methods and approaches 
• Demonstrate the ability to discuss and critically assess the problems and benefits of particular methods and approaches to musicological research 

• Demonstrate skills in close reading and comparative textual analysis 
• Demonstrate skills in oral presentation 
• Write effective research and funding proposals

• Demonstrate the ability to communicate complex ideas and information in academic and non-academic contexts, using both written and spoken word. 
• Demonstrate the ability to synthesize and evaluate material systematically to produce arguments and solutions that are communicated clearly in both written and oral form. 
• Show an ability to produce written work of high quality independently with critical self-awareness and within a self-directed environment.

• Formative: In-class presentations (individual or small-group) (0%).
• Summative: Essay (100%)

• Oral feedback on presentations 
• Written feedback on the assignment 
• Additional one-to-one feedback (during consultation hour or by making an appointment

• Beard, David and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology: The Key Concepts (London, 2005). 
• Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh (ed.), Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000). 
• Clayton, Martin, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton (ed.), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (New York and London, 2003). 
• Cook, Nicholas and Mark Everist (ed.), Rethinking Music (Oxford, 1999). 
• Crist, Stephen A. and Roberta Montemorra Marvin, eds., Historical Musicology: Sources, Methods, Interpretations (Rochester, NY, 2004). 
• Currie, James, ‘Music After All’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 62/1 (2009), 145–204. 
• Hooper, Giles, The Discourse of Musicology (Aldershot, 2006). 
• Korsyn, Kevin, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research (Oxford, 2003). 
• Nettl, Bruno, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts (2nd edn Champaign, IL, 2005).