Unit information: Intersections of Elite and Popular Music 1850-1920 in 2011/12

Unit name	Intersections of Elite and Popular Music 1850-1920
Unit code	MUSI39014
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Hornby
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of Music
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

'Intersections of élite and popular music: 1850-1920' The nineteenth century witnessed important changes in musical life, with the growth of a mass market for sheet music, the creation of large concert halls, the fossilisation of the now-familiar musical canon and the arrival of newly empowered middle-class audiences. It also witnessed the expansion of commercialised popular music, the emergence of the music hall, the arrival of the popular ballad and performances of bitingly satirical comic operas by Offenbach, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. In the twentieth century, popular music became wickedly contentious, with the arrival of ragtime, jazz, and music that seemed to be of doubtful racial origin, and an encouragement to sexual impropriety. How did these developments affect audiences and musical society? In this course, we will examine questions of power and social class and try to understand attempts to divide society into highbrows, middlebrows and lowbrows. We will trace the winding path of musical categorisation, asking ourselves why we separate music into different categories, who forced us to do it, and what happened when we tried.

This unit aims:

• to give students an opportunity to expand the breadth of their historical knowledge through the study of optional subjects
• to expand their knowledge of the associated musical repertoire and to be able to comment accurately and perceptively on matters of style and structure
• to develop their ability to assemble and assimilate information from a wide variety of sources
• to engage in critical evaluation of texts about music
• to develop effective and detailed arguments, both aurally and in writing
• to display competence in the practices, processes, techniques and methodologies that underpin musicological practice

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, students are expected to (1) have a good knowledge of the changing musical culture of the period 1850-1920 (2) be able to assess how the political, economic and social situation influenced the categorisation of western art music, and the way that different musics became associated with different social classes (3) write critically and perceptively about a variety of western musical cultures 1850-1920, using appropriate language and terminology And additionally (specific to Level H) to: (4) display to a high level skills in describing and evaluating various kinds of music from this era (5) engage with, and perhaps critique, the theoretical constructs that have underpinned scholarly interpretation of music of this period (and that have prioritised certain types of music making in scholarly writing)

Teaching Information

10x2 hour classes

Assessment Information

At both levels: 1x 2-hour exam (50%). At level I: 1x2500 word essay (50%). At level H: 1x3,000-word essay (50%). Both the essay and the exam will demonstrate (1) and (2) through (3). Additionally at level H,, the essay will demonstrate (4) and (5).

Reading and References

Christina Bashford, The Pursuit of High Culture. John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London (The Boydell Press, 2007) Dagmar Kift, The Victorian music hall : culture, class, and conflict (Cambridge University Press, 1996) Catherine Parsonage, The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880-1935 (Ashgate, 2005) Michael Talbot (ed), The Business of Music (Liverpool University Press, 2002) Peter Van Der Merwe, Roots of the Classical: the Popular Origins of Western Music (Oxford University Press, 2004) William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste (Cambridge University Press, 2008)