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This course provides a topic-based approach to music history, focusing on issues including cultures of print, authenticity, technological change, the relationship of the past to the present, and the patronage and funding of music.
The discipline of musicology explores the role of music in history, society, and culture. At its broadest, it encompasses all genres of music, and draws upon varied approaches to history, as well as exploring the intersection of music and other topics (such as social and political change, revolution, and colonisation). This course provides an introduction to a series of topics in music history, and an overview of the music of different historical periods. It focuses on Western cultures but also ventures into other traditions. It includes a study of the history of music notation, instruments, performance techniques, genre development, and the notion of a music ‘industry’. Course AimsThe course takes the approach of a theme-based overview of socio-cultural topics in music history. It provides the foundation knowledge and skills that are further developed in the second and third-year music history, world music, and popular music studies, and is a foundation and prerequisite course for 200-level MUSA history courses (MUSA231, MUSA232, MUSA233, and MUSA234).Topics covered in this course:• Telling a story through music: music theatre• From Herrmann to “Hype”: Music and moving image• Opera as music theatre• Organum to Autotune: The voice and the word in music• The virtuoso: performance and display• Recording, from cylinders to samples• Authenticity in music old and new• Music: organised sound?• Notation and improvisation• Music and oral history• Paying the piper: Muses and markets, patrons and pop music• ‘Modern’ Music?: Avant-gardes from Ars-Nova to Darmstadt
Students who pass this course will:Be able to write effectively about music and its relationship to culture, technology, history, and societyBe able to research a topic related to music and present arguments and/or findings in academic EnglishHave acquired information literacy skills relevant to the study of music
MUSI131
Student workload (150 hours) will be allocated to:• 23 hours attending lectures• 11 hours attending tutorials• 21 hours preparing and writing the research assignment• 35 hours researching and writing the essay• 25 hours researching and writing discussion forum posts • 10 hours preparing for the listening test• 25 hours of self-directed study
Francis Yapp
Mark Menzies
Please check the course LEARN page for further details and updates.
Domestic fee $867.00
International fee $4,000.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
For further information see Humanities .