| Unit name | Readings and Repertoires 1 |
|---|---|
| Unit code | MUSIM0058 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Professor. Farwell |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
None |
| School/department | Department of Music |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Why is this unit important?
Every discipline has its ‘state of the art’. The intellectual positions, debates and contentions, creative and interpretive practices of today are founded both on primary sources – which might come from a wide range of historical and cultural origins – and on the cumulative network of understandings and responses leading to the present day. This unit, and Readings and Repertoires 2 which follows in the second term, build your knowledge and understanding and engagement in that state of the art. Crucially for postgraduate students, you will also be developing perspectives on the future of your discipline. Interdisciplinarity is also a key aspect of today’s scholarly and artistic practice, so the unit is framed to bring together students from the different pathways in the MA programme, and to draw in ideas from other disciplines when relevant. Teaching strands and coursework are addressed to the particular needs of musicologists, composers, and performers, while involving you intellectually and creatively across each other’s domains.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
Complementing MUSIM0035 Research Skills for Musicians in Teaching Block 1, this unit immerses you in key literatures, repertoires and interpretive thinking, organised into thematic blocks or areas, to expand your knowledge and understanding in breadth and depth, and apply your growing skillset. This continues with Readings and Repertoires 2 in TB2, enhanced by your other mandatory and option units and leading towards your individual dissertation research, recital programmes or composition portfolio.
An overview of content
Musicologist, composers and performers all ask questions about music, but with different motivations and methodologies. By separating the strands we aim also to draw attention to their relationships. In the musicology strand, we build disciplinary self-awareness: key categories of thinking about music, such as autonomy, context, and modernity; the thorny relationship between history and aesthetics; the appropriation of ideas from other disciplines (philosophy, critical theory, literary theory); the discussion of musics or aspects of music ignored or suppressed by traditional musicology (gender, non-Western music, popular and functional music). Such investigations help to understand how and why musicology developed the way it did, and the nature of current debates. In composition, we build awareness of the musical questions, issues, concepts, techniques, contexts, notation and more, that have driven and been explored by composers through the 20th Century and leading especially to the present day. We will avoid any claim of a single linear narrative: multiplicity is a feature of our time. We will also avoid general claims of one approach being ‘better’ than another, though the repertoire we will study belongs in the now-broad spectrum of Western ‘art music’. You will make work responding to a series of themes, studied in relation to multiple examples by other composers. Performers draw on both sides to study both the doing and the contexts of ‘musicking’, to work critically with different kinds of editions, new processes of musical origination, and different styles of performance.
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit
You will have an increasing knowledge of the multiple sources, writings and repertoires that inform and situate your work as musicologist, composer or performer. You will understand the key debates, techniques, intellectual and creative agendas, and appreciate their often-complex interactions. You will be able to develop well-founded arguments and insights and demonstrate them in appropriate formats.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the unit, a successful student will:
Seminars for the whole cohort will introduce key themes, topics, and routes for collaboration. A pattern of seminars for each pathway will typically alternative weekly or bi-weekly, mandatory for students on that pathway with attendance encouraged from students of the other pathways. The composition strand includes at least one workshop to perform work in progress, usually held outside of normal class time. These include performance students as participants where appropriate to the topic. Seminars may include in-class exercises, student presentations and demonstrations, supported by a combination of structured preparatory tasks and independent study. Tutorials support individual project-work. Students are also encouraged to attend the Department of Music research seminar and concert series, to gain a dynamic picture of work by current researchers, composers and performers.
Tasks which do not count towards your unit mark but are required for credit (zero-weighted):
Musicologists:
Composers:
Performers:
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
A hybrid portfolio may be submitted by agreement with the unit director.
When assessment does not go to plan
When required by the Board of Examiners, you will normally complete reassessments in the same formats as those outlined above. However, the Board reserves the right to modify the form or number of reassessments required. Details of reassessments are normally confirmed by the School shortly after the notification of your results at the end of the academic year.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. MUSIM0058).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The assessment methods listed in this unit specification are designed to enable students to demonstrate the named learning outcomes (LOs). Where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, schools will make reasonable adjustments to support a student to demonstrate the LO by an alternative method or with additional resources.
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
