Postgraduate Course: Music, Philosophy and Politics (MUSI11052)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces students to the various philosophical meanings and political uses attached to Western art music since the Enlightenment. |
| Course description |
Topics covered in the course will include:
- Genius and the Imperative of Originality
- The Musical Work and its Ontology
- Musical Autonomy
- Music as Metaphysics
- Music as a Philosophy of Time
- Music as Subjectivity
- Music/ology as Politics
- Music as Revolution
- Music and Ethics
This course introduces students to the various philosophical meanings and political uses attached to Western art music since the Enlightenment, drawing on a range of important writings by prominent philosophers, aestheticians and musicologists.
Topics covered in the course will include: the Musical Work and its Ontology, the idea of Musical Autonomy, Musics Meanings, Music and Sociology, Music and Politics. Classes will normally take place weekly, and will comprise staff- and student-led seminars organised around set readings.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One 5000-word essay on a topic agreed with the course organiser (100%). |
| Feedback |
Formative feedback will be provided verbally on an informal class presentation on the proposed essay topic by the course convenor/s and peers in the penultimate week of the course. Opportunity is also given for more extensive individual feedback in an optional tutorial meeting with the course convenor/s during the last week of the course. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of certain key concepts and theories in the philosophy of music.
- Recognise the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of earlier musical discourse.
- Appraise in concrete instances how music has operated as a social and political force.
- Evaluate critically the problems in mediating between music and society.
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Reading List
Kant, Immanuel: Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meridith (Oxford, 1978).
Bonds, Mark Evan: ¿Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century¿, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50 (1997), 387-420.
Hoffmann, E.T.A.: Musical Writings: ¿Kreisleriana¿, ¿The Poet and the Composer¿, Music Criticism, trans. Martyn Clarke, ed. David Charlton (Cambridge, 1989).
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1975).
Schopenhauer, Arthur: The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York, 1966).
Hanslick, Eduard: On the Beautiful in Music, trans. Geoffrey Payzant (Indianapolis, 1986).
Bloch, Ernst: Essays on the Philosophy of Music, trans. Peter Palmer (Cambridge
1985).
Adorno, Theodor W.: Essays on Music, ed. Richard D. Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2002).
Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne Mitchell & Wesley Blomster (New York, 1973).
Dahlhaus, Carl: Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin (Cambridge, 1982).
Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett & Alfred Clayton (Cambridge, 1987).
Subotnik, Rose Rosengard: Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society (Minnesota, 1995).
Goehr, Lydia: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford, 1992).
Scruton, Roger: Aesthetics of Music (Oxford, 1997).
Chua, Daniel K.L.: Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 1999).
Bowie, Andrew: Music, Philosophy and Modernity (Cambridge, 2007).
Kramer, Lawrence: Interpreting Music (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2011).
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Benedict Taylor
Tel: (0131 6)50 4155
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Lyndsay Hagon
Tel: (0131 6)51 5735
Email: |
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