Adventures in Musical Research

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

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• understand and employ terms derived from a variety of critical perspectives in discussions of the arts
• actively participate in debates about scholarly practices

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• use vocabulary derived from a range of critical approaches as part of a detailed study of a musical work and its contexts
• explain the essential methodological features of a specific piece of musical scholarship

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• explain a range of critical approaches to the academic study of music employed since the late eighteenth century
• read and understand a variety of scholarly literature on music from diverse critical perspectives, for example reception theory, cultural studies, critical theory, gender studies, sound studies, Science and Technology Studies, postcolonial studies, critical race theory and global history

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.

Indicative topics might include:

Musicology Now (Identities, Genders, Race, the Body)

Music and History (Narrative and Difference)

Ethnomusicology

Value(s) (From Reception Theory to Public Policy)

Ecomusicology

Analysis, Dead or Alive?

Culture Transfer

Global Music History

Music and Artificial Intelligence

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching:

formal teaching in seminars

structured discussion seminars, in which course tutor acts as moderator

Learning:

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

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.

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

Indicative Reading List. Abbate, Carolyn. ‘Music: Drastic or Gnostic?’ Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 505–36. Agawu, K. ‘Contesting Difference : A Critique of Africanist Ethnomusicology’. In The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, 227-. Routledge, 2003. Agawu, Kofi. ‘Analyzing Music under the New Musicological Regime’. The Journal of Musicology 15, no. 3 (July 1997): 297–307. https://doi.org/10.2307/763911. Allen, Aaron S. ‘Ecomusicology’. In The Grove Dictionary of American Music, edited by Charles Garrett, forthcoming. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. http://www.ams-esg.org. Born, Georgina. ‘For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 135, no. 2 (2010): 205–43. Clarke, David. ‘Elvis and Darmstadt, or: Twentieth-Century Music and the Politics of Cultural Pluralism’. Twentieth-Century Music 4, no. 1 (19 October 2007): 3–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572207000515. Cook, Nicholas. ‘We Are All (Ethno)Musicologists Now’. In The New (Ethno)Musicologies, edited by Henry Sobart, 48–70. New York: Scarecrow Press, 2008. Dahlhaus, Carl. Foundations of Music History. Translated by J. Bradford Robinson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Guy, Nancy. ‘Flowing Down Taiwan’s Tamsui River: Towards an Ecomusicology of the Environmental Imagination’. Ethnomusicology 53, no. 2 (2009): 218–48. Harper-Scott, J. P. E. (John Paul Edward). The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism: Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton. (Music in Context). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Irving, D. R. M. Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Johnson, Julian. Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Oxford University Press, 2002. Levitz, Tamara. ‘Musicology Beyond Borders?’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 65, no. 3 (2012): 821–61. Mazlish, Bruce. ‘Comparing Global History to World History’. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28, no. 3 (1 January 1998): 385–95. https://doi.org/10.2307/205420. Ogborn, Miles. Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680-1780. New York: Guilford Press, 1998. Pegg, Carole, Helen Myers, Philip V. Bohlman, and Martin Stokes. ‘Ethnomusicology’. In Grove Music Online, n.d. Peraino, Judith, and Suzanne G. Cusick. ‘Music and Sexuality’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 66, no. 3 (1 December 2013): 825–72. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2013.66.3.825. Pinnock, Andrew. ‘Public Value or Intrinsic Value? The Arts-Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes’. Accessed 27 January 2014. http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=902147. Rehding, Alexander. ‘Ecomusicology between Apocalypse and Nostalgia’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (2011): 409–14. Republic, The New. ‘The Musical Mystique’. The New Republic, 22 October 2007. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/the-musical-mystique. Solie, Ruth A. Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship. University of California Press, 1995. Taruskin, Richard. Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. (The Oxford History of Western Music ; 1), n.d. Taylor, Hollis. ‘Zoömusicology’. Accessed 21 December 2011. http://www.zoomusicology.com/Site_1/Zo%C3%B6musicology.html. Toliver, Brooks. ‘Eco-Ing in the Canyon: Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite and the Transformation of Wilderness’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 57, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 325–67. Tomlinson, Gary. ‘Musicology, Anthropology, History’. Il Saggiatore Musicale: Rivista Semestrale Di Musicologia 8, no. 1 (2001): 21–37. ———. ‘Vico’s Songs: Detours at the Origins of (Ethno) Musicology’. The Musical Quarterly 83, no. 3 (1999): 344–77. Wegman, Rob. ‘Historical Musicology: Is It Still Possible?’ In The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, 136–45. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Assessment strategy

The module is assessed through two 2000-word review essays based on content from the module reading list.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

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.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External