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 is 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 2025-26 are:  

Semester 1:

Jazz Historiography and Criticism (Dr Alexander Gagatsis)

Traditional Music in Georgia (Prof. Caroline Bithell) 

 

Semester 2:

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

 

MUSC30510 and MUSC30520 cannot be chosen together.

Available as free choice - Yes, 'Prerequisite in a relevant Level 2 Music course, or by agreement with the Course Director'

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

 

Traditional Music in Georgia (Prof. Caroline Bithell)

This option focuses on traditional music and dance in Georgia (Caucasus) and its journey from national folklore to world heritage.

We will examine the intersections between (a) forms of national folklore assumed to have their roots in an ancient past, (b) musical transformations and modes of cultural production that emerged in the Soviet period, (c) the post-Soviet renaissance of traditional musical practices in Georgia itself, fuelled by UNESCO’s 2001 proclamation of Georgian polyphonic singing as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, and (d) the ever-growing international network of Georgian choirs and singing enthusiasts.

With attention paid to the parallel realms of performance aesthetics, cultural policy and scholarly discourse, these trends will be brought into dialogue with contemporary concerns in ethnomusicology, heritage studies, post-Soviet studies, intercultural performance and the anthropology of tourism.

Topical themes include the dynamics of music revivals, the interplay between government-funded interventions and grass-roots initiatives, the impact of safeguarding policies on musical sustainability, and the potency of participatory music-making in shaping national identity and facilitating intercultural encounters.

Jazz Historiography and Criticism (Dr Alexander Gagatsis)

The purpose of this course is twofold. First, ‘Jazz Historiography and Criticism’ explores a wide range of jazz styles in their social and political contexts. Jazz offers a unique lens onto the modern history of the United States and this course views the development of jazz as a chronicle of North America's social, political, cultural and intellectual history. We will interrogate jazz’s position at the intersection of avant-garde and popular, modern and traditional, and investigate its complex interactions with the wider world. Along the way, we will explore issues of gender, sexuality, class, geography, race and ethnicity in the history of jazz, where they have frequently been masked. Second, in exploring successive transformations of the music, its performance, consumption and cultural status, we will engage with the ‘New Jazz Studies’, a discipline proclaimed sometime in the early 1990s, which signalled the flowering of interdisciplinary research on jazz. Until then musicologists had spoken of jazz in terms appropriate for the analysis of European art music, making jazz an imperfect version of classical music rather than something examinable in its own right. Since then, scholars have broadened the horizon by emphasising the roles of culture but have focused exclusively on the role of jazz as a social medium. In recent years, ‘the music itself’ has more often been the premises of scholars working within the field of performance rather than jazz studies. Where does this leave jazz? 

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

Everyone knows that Beethoven was a great composer, but few are aware just how great he was, transcending the conventions of the time and changing the course of music history. Why did he compose what he did, when he did, and how did he go about it? How far did his deafness affect his personal life and output, and what were the social, political, economic and musical conditions in early 19th-century Vienna that enabled him to thrive? This course will explore both this cultural context and his remarkable composing methods, which still provide useful instruction for composers today. We shall also examine a representative selection of his compositions, including the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, to find out what makes them so original and innovative. His music covers the entire gamut of human emotion and can even rescue some people from depression, yet it shows incredible sophistication of compositional technique. The more you study it, the more you will get out of it, a

Seminars, including individual presentations by each student, and offering formative feedback on the presentations and on ongoing work. 

Additional one-to-one feedback available through consultation hours, or by making an appointment. 

By the end of this course students will be able to:

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

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Synthesize and evaluate a wide range of material relating to the topic;
• Interpret primary texts, engage with secondary literature, and formulate their own arguments.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Articulate, discuss and support findings coherently in both written and verbal form;
• Work effectively both independently and in groups towards clearly delineated goals.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Produce high-quality work independently with self-motivation and critical self-awareness;
• Demonstrate well-developed skills in the use of library and resources.

Assessment Task	Formative or Summative	Weighting
Written Exam	Summative	100%

 

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)