BA Music and Drama

Advanced Study options offer the opportunity for in-depth study around specific subjects relating to the research of the academic teaching each of the options. Each of the options are designed to support develop and refine the historical and critical approaches in musicology covered in previous years of the programme to a higher level.

Students taking MUSC30510 take one of the options on offer. The topics for 2022-23 are:

Semester 1
Restoration Music in the Afterlife: Purcell and the Politics of Reception History (Prof. Rebecca Herissone)

Semester 2
Music in Bollywood (Dr Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh) 

Beethoven: Life, Works, and Cultural Context (Prof. Barry Cooper)

This course-unit aims to enable students to study a particular topic within a current branch of musicology in depth.

• demonstrate detailed knowledge and conceptual understanding of the selected topic and related issues
• demonstrate a good command of the available secondary literature

• synthesize and evaluate a wide range of material relating to the topic
• interpret primary texts, engage with secondary literature, and formulate their own arguments

• articulate, discuss and support findings coherently in both written and verbal form
• work effectively both independently and in groups towards clearly delineated goals

• produce high-quality work independently with self-motivation and critical self-awareness
• demonstrate well-developed skills in the use of library and resources

• oral feedback on presentations
• formative feedback on essays and/or mock examinations
• written feedback on examination
• additional one-to-one feedback (during the consultation hour or by making an appointment, or by email)

Reading lists for each of the topics are provided by the lecturer concerned.  Titles of general support include:

• Beard, David, and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology: the Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005)
• Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh (eds.), Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music (Berkeley and London, 2000)
• Cook, Nicholas and Mark Everist (eds.), Rethinking Music (Oxford, 1999)
• Clayton, Martin, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton (eds.), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (New York and London, 2003)
• Crist, Stephen A. and Roberta Montemorra Marvin (eds.), Historical Musicology: Sources, Methods, Interpretations (Rochester, NY, 2004)
• Herbert, Trevor, Music in Words: A Guide to Researching and Writing about Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
• Korsyn, Kevin, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research (Oxford, 2003)
• Taylor, Timothy D., Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World (Durham, NC, 2007)
• Williams, Alastair, Constructing Musicology (London, 2001)

Attendance at Musicology Forum (normally 2hrs every fortnight)