Undergraduate Course: Special History in Music: Music in the Weimar Republic (MUSI10078)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Music |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | The 'Weimar Republic' years in Germany (1918-33) are often viewed as an unusually exciting and vibrant period in the history of music: a Golden Age of unconstrained experimentation and innovation that saw the forging of new attitudes toward the music of the past, 'low' musical styles, and the relationship between composer and audience.
This course aims to address these developments critically, focusing on how they were driven by technological advances - the advent of film and radio, for example - and the peculiar political and institutional bases of the Republic. The biographies, aesthetics, and politics of central Weimar-era composers - including Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, Weill, Eisler, and Pfitzner - will be crucial to the investigation.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
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WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| Central | Seminar | | 1-5 AND 7-11 | | 14:00 - 15:50 | | | |
| First Class |
Week 1, Tuesday, 14:00 - 15:50, Zone: Central. Lecture Room B, Alison House |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with the lives, works, and aesthetics of several central Weimar-era composers. Furthermore, they will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the Weimar Republic as a period in Germany&©s history, and its musical and cultural connections with the Wilhelmine and National Socialist regimes.
2. Students should also have a detailed knowledge of the Weimar Republic and its surrounding regimes in Germany, particularly in terms of dominant political and cultural trends.
Students should have examined numerous scores and essays from the period in detail, should be aware of the aesthetic issues arising from them, and should be able to situate them within the Weimar years&© broader cultural trends. |
Assessment Information
Presentation (20%) to be scheduled by the Course Organiser.
One essay c.3,000 words (40%) submitted by 16.00 on Wednesday 14 March 2012 (week 8).
One c.3,000 word essay (40%) to be submitted by 16.00 on Wednesday 25 April 2012.
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Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
The central aim of this course is to give students a historical and cultural sense of the Weimar years, and in particular their importance in German (and European) twentieth-century history. Students will gain knowledge of composers, repertoire, and aesthetics that will complement their studies of late-nineteenth century and post-WWII music. |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
GENERAL HISTORICAL STUDIES
Kaes, Anton et al. (eds), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley, 1994)
Kolb, Eberhard, The Weimar Republic, tr. P. S. Falla and R. J. Park (2nd edn, London, 2005)
GENERAL CULTURAL STUDIES
Gay, Peter, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (London, 1968)
Laqueur, Walter, Weimar: A Cultural History (New York, 1974)
Willett, John, The New Sobriety 1917-1933: Art and Politics in the Weimar Period (London, 1978)
MUSICAL STUDIES
Cook, Susan C., Opera for a New Republic: The Zeitopern of Krenek, Weill, and
Hindemith (Rochester, NY, 1988)
Gilliam, Bryan (ed.), Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1994)
Grabs, Manfred (ed.), Hanns Eisler, A Rebel in Music: Selected Writings (London, 1978)
Levi, Erik, Music in the Third Reich (Basingstoke, 1994)
Potter, Pamela M., Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler's Reich (New Haven, 1998)
Rehding, Alexander, $ùMagic Boxes and Volksempfänger: Music on the Radio in Weimar Germany&©, in Nikolaus Bacht (ed.), Music, Theatre, and Politics in Germany: 1848 to the Third Reich (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 255-71
Williamson, John, The Music of Hans Pfitzner (Oxford, 1992)
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| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Music, History, Weimar, Germany |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Nicholas Attfield
Tel:
Email: n.attfield@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Brad Herbert
Tel: (0131 6)50 2422
Email: brad.herbert@ed.ac.uk |
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© Copyright 2011 The University of Edinburgh - 16 January 2012 6:28 am
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