Module overview
This module introduces you to diverse topics in music from around 1750 to the late twentieth century. It challenges widespread notions and distinctions regarding “art" and “popular" music, it explores tensions and overlaps between public and private, it engages with the relationship between musical texts and performance, and it explores virtuosity and the rise of the star performer. Lectures provide ‘snapshots’ of major phenomena and trends in European and American musics of the period, including the development of musical instruments, private and public venues and institutions, professional musics, publishing and recording, music in the theatre, and the rise of modern music business models, while follow-up open discussion sessions offer opportunities to have a detailed look at individual pieces of music and to explore issues of gender, race, and sustainability and to foster the decolonisation of repertoires and historiographical approaches.