Module overview
This module is based on a selection of recent and innovative scholarly writings on music, which challenge the reader to examine their assumptions about the nature of both scholarship and music as cultural practices.
Aims and Objectives
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding
Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- some of the current critical practices in musicology
- the applicability of different critical practices to different repertories
- the methodological and ideological frameworks of a range of recent scholarly writings on music
Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- explain the essential features of a specific piece of musical criticism
- read and understand scholarly literature on music that employs terms derived from cultural theory
- explain the range of critical approaches to Western music employed since the late 18th century
- describe and evaluate critical practices employed in musicology following the discipline’s intense period of self-critique in the 1980s and 1990s
- understand and employ terms derived from cultural theory in discussions of the arts
- use a critical vocabulary derived from cultural studies as part of a detailed study of a musical work and its existing literature
- discuss critically the political affiliations and impact of various musicological methods, conventions, and discourses
Transferable and Generic Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- actively participate in debate about scholarly practices
Syllabus
This module is based on a selection of recent and innovative scholarly writings on music, which challenge the reader to examine their assumptions about the nature of both scholarship and music as cultural practices.
Learning and Teaching
Teaching and learning methods
Teaching methods include
- formal teaching in seminars
- structured discussion seminars, in which course tutor acts as moderator.
Learning activities include
- reading about the discipline of musicology
- following, in a step-by-step fashion, some innovative writings on music
- preparing oral summaries and evaluations of critical writings
- weekly study diary, published on class blog
The seminars are designed to clarify the principles underlying critical approaches, and to show how they may be applied to specific contexts. The background reading will enable you to study in greater depth matters that are introduced in the seminars but not explored in detail. The week-to-week study of critical methods, together with the longer-term application of these methods in formal assessment, will give you the competence to undertake critical acts of your own, and the confidence to share your insights into music with your tutors, your peers, and your own students.
| Type | Hours |
|---|---|
| Independent Study | 276 |
| Teaching | 24 |
| Total study time | 300 |
Resources & Reading list
Journal Articles
Cook, Nicholas (1999). Analysing Performance and Performing Analysis. Rethinking Music, pp. 424-51.
Nettl, Bruno (1999). The Institutionalization of Musicology: Perspectives of a North American Ethnomusicologist. Rethinking Music, pp. 287-310.
Potter, Pamela (2007). The Concept of Race in German Musical Discourse. Western Music and Race, pp. 49-62.
Burke, Peter (2005). Performing History: The Importance of Occasions. Rethinking History, 9, pp. 35-52.
Gabbard, Krin (1995). The Jazz Canon and Its Consequences. Jazz Among the Discourses, pp. 1—28.
Bowen, José (1999). Finding the Music in Musicology. Rethinking Music, pp. 424-51.
Smith, Bruce R. (2004). Listening to the Wild Blue Yonder: The Challenges of Acoustic Ecology. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity, pp. 21-41.
Duckles, Vincent and Jann Pasler. Musicology §I: The nature of musicology. Grove Music Online.
Treitler, Leo (1989). Music Analysis in a Historical Context. Music and the Historical Imagination, pp. 67-78.
Everist, Mark (1999). Reception Theories, Canonic Discourses, and Musical Value. Rethinking Music, pp. 378-402.
Tomlinson, Gary (1984). The Web of Culture: A Context for Musicology. 19th Century Music, 7(3), pp. 350-62.
Solie, Ruth (1997). Defining Feminism: Conundrums, Contexts, Communities. Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 1, pp. 1—11.
Small, Christopher (1998). Prelude. The Meanings of Performing and Listening, pp. 1—18.
Kerman, Joseph (1985). “Introduction” and “Musicology and Positivism: The Postwar Years.”. Musicology, pp. 11—59.
Solie, Ruth (1993). Introduction: On 'Difference'. Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, pp. 1—20.
Levy, Beth E (2001). ’The White Hope of American Music,’ Or, How Roy Harris Became Western. American Music, 19(2), pp. 131-67.
Dahlhaus, Carl (1983). The Significance of Art: Historical of Aesthetic?. Foundations of Music History, pp. 19-33.
Taruskin, Richard (2005). Introduction: The History of What?. The Oxford History of Western Music.
Pinch, Trevor and Karin Bijsterveld (2004). Sound Studies: New Technologies and Music. Social Studies of Science, pp. 635-648.
Cusick, Suzanne G (1999). Gender, Musicology, and Feminism. Rethinking Music, pp. 471-98.
Middleton, Richard (2000). Introduction. Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music, pp. 1—19.
Guck, Marion A (1994). Analytical Fictions. Music Theory Spectrum, 16(2), pp. 217–30.
Frith, Simon (2004). What is Bad Music?. Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate, pp. 16-36.
Treitler, Leo (1999). The Historiography of Music: Issues of Past and Present. Rethinking Music, pp. 356-77.
Samson, Jim. Canon (iii). Grove Music Online.
Fink, Robert (1998). Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies At the Twilight of the Canon. American Music, pp. 135-79.
Agawu, Kofi (1997). Analyzing Music Under the New Musicological Regime. The Journal of Musicology, 15(3), pp. 297-307.
Subotnik, Rose Rosengard (1996). Toward a Deconstruction of Structural Listening: A Critique of Schoenberg, Adorno, and Stravinsky. Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society, pp. 148-252.
Covach, John (1999). Popular Music, Unpopular Musicology. Rethinking Music, pp. 452-470.
Geertz, Clifford (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. The Interpretation of Cultures.
Samuels, David W., et al. (2010). Soundscapes: Toward a Sounded Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, pp. 329-45.
Claude Palisca (1963). The Scope of American Musicology. Musicology, pp. 89-121.
Dreyfus, Laurence (1993). Musical Analysis and the Historical Imperative. Revista de musicologia, 16, pp. 407- 19.
Davies, James (2006). Julia’s Gift: The Social Life of Scores, c.1830. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, pp. 287–309.
Citron, Marcia (1993). Introduction. Gender and the Musical Canon, pp. 1—14.
Middleton, Richard (2000). Musical Belongings: Western Music and Its Low-Other. Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, pp. 59-85.
Taruskin, Richard (1995). “The Modern Sound of Early Music” and “Tradition and Authority.”. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance, pp. 164-97.
Tucker, Sherrie (2008). When Did Jazz Go Straight? A Queer Question for Jazz Studies. Critical studies in improvisation, 4(2).
Jenkins, Keith, and Alun Munslow (2004). Introduction. The Nature of History Reader, pp. 1—18.
Brett, Philip (1993). Britten's Dream. Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, pp. 259-79.
Taruskin, Richard. Nationalism. Grove Music Online.
Assessment
Assessment strategy
- one position paper, critically engaging with one of the topics covered during the module
- one essay summarising the major themes and debates surrounding one topic in the musicological literature covered during the semester
Summative
This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Essay | 60% |
| Position Paper | 40% |
Referral
This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Coursework | 100% |
Repeat
An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Position Paper | 40% |
| Essay | 60% |
Repeat Information
Repeat type: Internal & External