Music

Music Special Topic

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Music Special Topic MUSC 0700 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

It is sometimes possible to arrange teaching in Music beyond the tutorials listed. This provides the opportunity to explore a subject in Music in depth, through one-to-one tutorials and writing weekly essays.

This will usually be of interest to students who have already taken classes in Music, and have a specific interest that they wish to pursue, and/or a specific requirement that they need to fulfil.

Please note that this is subject to agreement by both the programme and the applicant’s home institution. Applicants interested in this possibility should contact the Senior Tutor directly.

Composition and 20th Century Innovations

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Composition and 20th Century Innovations MUSC 0160 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

Please note that this tutorial is usually available only to music majors and minors.

This course combines an introduction to twentieth and twenty-first century compositional techniques with the opportunity to work on a portfolio of compositions. You will be introduced to a number of techniques in music from the early 20th century to the present day. Compositional skills will be developed in the context of stylistic and historical study of key repertory from 20th- and 21st-century Western art music (from the avant-garde and experimentalist to the modernist and post-modernist traditions). You will look at a range of approaches and techniques, while set works will provide technical and aesthetic models to enable you to develop a wider vocabulary of compositional techniques. The contextual issues around contemporary composition will also be addressed. You will have the opportunity to create compositions for a range of instruments or voices - from solo to chamber and orchestra. This course will encourage personal creative development but also the ability to evaluate your own compositional process. Those who do not identify as composers should not be dissauded from taking this course – it will enable those interested in performance to gain a greater appreciation of the issues relating to the performance of contemporary music and will also be relevant to those interested in music analysis.

Techniques of Composition

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Techniques of Composition MUSC 0150 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

Please note that this tutorial is usually available only to music majors and minors.

This course explores what are typically referred to as ‘the building blocks of Western ‘classical’ music’. You will learn about the basic components of composition in the Western classical tradition. Through close study of repertory from 1500 to 1900 you will become familiar with both modal and tonal harmony; notation and style. From mastering 16^th-century imitative polyphony to 17th and 18th century fugal style and nineteenth-century idioms, you will gain the ability to write a fugue; string quartet or piano accompaniment of a song. Learning to write in these styles will develop your understanding of the principles of counterpoint and harmony, voice leading, polyphonic and contrapuntal textures, consonance and dissonance. You will also be able to distinguish between instrumental and vocal idioms. This course will equip you with a high level of skill in the techniques of musical composition, which will aid your other studies of music in the western classical tradition.

The String Quartet

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

The String Quartet MUSC 0140 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

The string quartet enjoys a reputation as the most prominent and prestigious item of chamber music. Much of this is due to the lofty figures who turned their hand to string-quartet composition (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert to name but a few). This course will look at the string quartet’s origins (trio sonata and divertimenti) and its development under Haydn and Mozart. You will then examine why Beethoven is seen as such an important figure. Beethoven’s influence will be examined by looking at his works and how their motivic relationships, tonality and structure dominate the genre. Beethoven’s influence on Schubert will be explored as well as the turn away from the string quartet in the nineteenth century and its resurgence in the twentieth century with figures such as Shostakovich and Bartok. There will also be an option to look at the forgotten female composers of the genre (Fanny Mendelssohn; Ethel Smyth; Elizabeth Lutyens and Gloria Coates amongst others) as well as other largely bypassed items of chamber music, notably the string trio; piano trio and string quintet. This course will enable you to document how the string quartet arrived at its classical four-movement form, how its form and motivic relationships have been transformed throughout its history and how, today, in the 21st century, it still remains an important and sophisticated musical form.

The Nineteenth-Century Symphony

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

The Nineteenth-Century Symphony MUSC 0130 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

The symphony is one of the most important genres of Western art music and the nineteenth-century symphonies of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler and Sibelius dominate the genre. This course offers the opportunity to examine core works from critical historical and analytical perspectives but you will also be encouraged to reach outside the central canon, exploring works by lesser known composers such as Franz Berwald, Amy Beach and C V Stanford. You will explore the symphony as an object of musical-cultural practice, examining ideas and critical concepts such as gender, accessibility, identity and nationalism. You will also explore contemporary debates about performance and interpretation. By the end of the course, you will have an essential grounding in the analysis and historical context of the nineteenth-century symphony and some of the cultures that it encompasses.

Opera in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Opera in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries MUSC 0120 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

This course will examine the earliest operas, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, looking at the social contexts, cities and personalities behind their creation. You will look at opera’s initial dependence on courtly environments and patrons, as well as the musical forms that influenced the beginnings of opera, such as the madrigal. The journey from courtly opera in Florence and Mantua to ticket-paying operas in Venice from 1637 will then be explored. The rise of a paying audience brought great change to musical culture, and you will see how the audience’s demand for portrayals of madness and love created very different librettos. You will trace the rise of star singers, noticeably castrati and female singers (the prima donna) from the mid-seventeenth century. Opera’s dissemination to other countries, notably France and England, and the composers Lully, Handel and Purcell, will all feature. Opera was regarded as an elite and prestigious cultural form from its outset, a conception that was cemented during its rapid spread across Europe in the eighteenth century. Opera grew to reflect cultural, social and political interests in forms as varied as the opera seria and opera buffa (opéra comique). Recent musicological thinking on themes such as national identity; gender; cultural prominence and the power of the human voice will guide your understanding of this important form.

Tudor Music

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Tudor Music MUSC 0110 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Music Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

English music enjoyed an unprecedented rise in popularity in the fifteenth century, only to be subject to dramatic change at the hands of Henry VIII and his descendants in the sixteenth century. This course will explore the rise of the English style (‘contenance angloise’) in the early fifteenth century, the flowering of English polyphony, with the virtuosic music of the Eton Choirbook in the second half of the fifteenth century and, furthermore, the towering polyphonic music of Tye, Sheppard and Tallis in the early sixteenth century. The dramatic change in musical style, beginning with Henry VIII and continuing with Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I throughout the sixteenth century, will then be examined. New research will show how Elizabeth I cultivated music to aid her image as a female monarch. You will focus on the music of William Byrd, looking at how he managed to combine his role as the Queen’s favourite, while writing music secretly for the catholic community he so adored. You will also observe how the emergence of new styles of Anglican music are still present in Evensong and choral practice today. Oxford is a wonderful place to study this course as much of what you will discuss took place in this very city. By the end of the course, you will be able to discuss change and continuity, religion and politics and the influence of continental musical practices.

Europe and the World

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Europe and the World CLAS / ENAM / HIST / GSFS / HARC / LITS / MUSC / PHIL / PSCI / RELI 2499 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Research English & American Literature History History of Art & Architecture Literary Studies Music Philosophy Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

The spring semester Research Course takes place after the term’s tutorials and seminars are complete, in the last month of the semester. This course is an opportunity to explore western European encounters with the rest of the world: historical and imaginative, understandings and misunderstandings. You will identify a text or image, object or building that you wish to explore (or a small group: for instance a selection of poems by a given author). These sources must have been produced between the classical era and c. 1800. You will formulate a question and write a 6,000 word essay. Lectures and field trips will help to get you thinking. Once you have identified the area you wish to work on, you will have weekly one-to-one meetings with an individual supervisor, who will also read and comment on your final draft. This project will help you develop the research and writing skills needed for senior theses, graduate work, and similar challenges ahead. Working with texts in translation is expected: many students work with translations from Latin and other languages. If you do wish to work in a language other than English that is welcome, but this will not automatically receive a higher grade. There is no textbook for this course, and you will not be under any obligation to purchase any volumes (although you may wish to do so). The resources of the Bodleian Library, Keble College Library, and the Feneley Library will almost always suffice.

Your research might touch on topics such as the crusades, conversion, gender, exploration, colonialism, Orientalism, or the ‘noble savage’. The concepts of ‘Europe’ and ‘western Europe’ are themselves historically contingent, and had little resonance within most of the period of study. This course also provides an opportunity to look at the construction of ‘outsiders’ within the area that would become regarded as Europe, including classical ‘barbarians’ (in Herodotus or Tacitus, for example), medieval ‘heathens’ and ‘savages’ (such as the vikings), and those who fell outside the mainstream of western Europe: Muslims, Greeks, and Jews and heretics. Note that projects which focus exclusively on elite culture in Anglophone North America might not fall within the parameters of this course.