- UCAS course code
- PW30
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Course unit details:
Music and Its Contexts
Unit code | MUSC10512 |
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Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 1 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 2 |
Available as a free choice unit? | Yes |
Overview
This course explores three different musical cultures/repertories and their contexts, focusing on such themes as ‘Making History: Progress and Tradition’, or ‘Music and Society’. Each block of lectures examines a discrete aspect of music history within specific historical and geographical boundaries. The precise content of the blocks changes from year to year, but previous topics have included the New German School (Liszt and Wagner), Schubert’s late symphonies, Bob Dylan and protest song in the 1960s, and Shostakovich’s programme music.
Pre/co-requisites
Available as free choice, but note prerequisite of A Level Music or Grade VIII Theory or equivalent.
Aims
- To promote active and critical engagement with different musics and cultures
- To introduce a range of skills relating to researching, thinking and writing about music and its artistic, cultural and social contexts
- To provide a foundation for further study in the fields of musicology and/or ethnomusicology
Knowledge and understanding
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Engage intellectually with a wide range of music and its stylistic, aesthetic, cultural, social and political contexts
- Demonstrate an understanding of a range of different ways of approaching musicological study, and of the inherent problems in constructing a historical narrative
- Define and apply the appropriate skills required for University-level study, including research gathering, note-taking, critical reading and writing
Intellectual skills
By the end of this course students will be able to:
• Research and write about a range of music and cultures and relevant critical issues
• Analyse and evaluate historical methods as used in musicological discourse
• Reflect critically on music’s interaction with aesthetic, cultural and political context
Practical skills
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Show that they can access scholarly writings and resources in a range of media, including electronic resources
- Draw together ideas from a range of sources, with developing skills in the organization, interpretation and synthesis of information
- Develop and sustain a coherent argument in both written and verbal forms
Transferable skills and personal qualities
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Show a burgeoning ability to produce good-quality work independently with developing critical self-awareness
- Demonstrate a growing ability to communicate ideas and information clearly in written and verbal form
- Demonstrate increasing levels of intellectual curiosity and the potential to approach tasks in a systematic and creative way
Employability skills
- Analytical skills
- Analytical skills (analysing texts, musical scores and other materials)
- Group/team working
- Working in a team (seminar discussions)
- Oral communication
- Communication skills (oral and written)
- Problem solving
- Creative problem-solving (fulfilling a set task with the resources available)
- Research
- Digital skills (information searches in databases, catalogues and other online environments; maintaining an online journal)
- Written communication
- Communication skills (oral and written)
- Other
- Time management skills (submitting material to fixed deadlines)
Assessment methods
Informal preparatory tasks | 0% |
Essay | 50% |
Exam | 50% |
Feedback methods
Feedback method | Formative or Summative |
Oral feedback on seminar contributions, and general advice given in seminar | Formative |
Group feedback on seminar tasks | Formative |
Written feedback on essay and examination | Summative |
Additional one-to-one feedback (during consultation hour or by making an appointment) | Formative |
Recommended reading
Each block of the course unit has its own reading and listening lists. The following titles provide overall support for all three blocks:
- Beard, David and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology: The Key Concepts, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2016)
- Citron, Marcia, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
- Garratt, James, Music and Politics: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
- Harper-Scott, J.P.E. and Jim Samson (eds.), An Introduction to Music Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
- Herbert, Trevor, Music in Words: A Guide to Researching and Writing about Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
- Taruskin, Richard, The Oxford History of Western Music, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
- Treitler, Leo, ‘The Historiography of Music: Issues of Past and Present’, in Nicolas Cook and Mark Everist (eds.), Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 356–377
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
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Lectures | 20 |
Seminars | 6 |
Independent study hours | |
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Independent study | 174 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
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Caroline Bithell | Unit coordinator |