Course finder

<< return to browsing

Semester 2

Understanding Music History 2: The Idea of Western Art Music from Romanticism to the Late Twentieth Century (MUSI08082)

Subject

Music

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

2

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

**Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

This course explores the history of western art music in Europe and elsewhere from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. It explores the emergence and development of "western art music" as a discursive and critical category in the nineteenth century, and how this influenced, and was influenced by, music historiography, criticism and theory. Students will gain an understanding of major aesthetic movements including romanticism, modernism and post-modernism. They will learn to recognise and discuss the key characteristics of representative compositions, and place them in historical context.

Course Description

This course takes a critical and historiographical approach to the study of western art music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores the emergence and development of an aesthetic category of "art music" as distinct from "folk" and "popular" music in the nineteenth century, and looks at the value systems which accompanied these distinctions. Combining close study of a range of representative compositions with readings from primary and secondary literature, it explores how the norms and standards now associated with western art music were adopted, adapted or rejected - or simply ignored - by composers, critics and others. The course contextualises the history of western art music - understood not just as the history of composition, but also of music criticism and scholarship - in terms of wider cultural and philosophical trends, including the aesthetic movements known as romanticism, modernism and post-modernism. It explores how music history intersects with political, social and technological history in a period of enormous transformation and change that remains definitive for how we live and think today. The course is taught through lecture videos and other online learning material (approx. 2 hours in total per week, asynchronous), one one-hour tutorial per week (online, live/synchronous), and set reading/listening each week. Please note: basic score-reading skills are a prerequisite for this course.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Enrolment in this course is via the CAHSS Visiting Student Office only. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course