Undergraduate Course: Special History in Music: Mendelssohn and the making of 19th-century Musical Culture (MUSI10083)
Course Outline
School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | Felix Mendelssohn is a central figure in nineteenth-century musical life and one of the founders of the modern institution of art music; his elder sister, Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn), was equally remarkable and forms the focus of renewed attention today. The Mendelssohns' lives, music and reception form an invaluable prism through which many of the crucial debates in music from the last two hundred years may be critically examined. These include the relation between musical meaning and social function; programme and absolute music; organicism; the reciprocal notions of classicism and Romanticism, modernism and historicism; music and gender; and the role political ideology, racism and musical ignorance may play in a composer's reception. And last but not least, Mendelssohn's music still forms a fascinating cornerstone of the classical repertoire, one which is richly rewarding of careful study. |
Course description |
1. Wunderkind
2. Modernist
3. Historian
4. Traveller
5. Society
6. Classicist
7. Late Style
8. Reception
9. Student Presentations
10. Student Presentations
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Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least three Music courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 20 |
Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
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Lecture 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) |
1) One 3,000-word essay, worth 45% of total course mark, due in Week 7 of the course.
2) One class presentation on specific work of student's choice, worth 10% of total course mark, given in Weeks 9-10 of the course.
2) One 3,000-word essay, worth 45% of total course mark, due at the end of Semester 1.
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Feedback |
Not entered |
No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Discuss specific important compositions of Mendelssohn in appropriate detail.
- Explain the historical provenance of several key themes in music aesthetics.
- Evaluate the role of political and racial ideology in altering a composer's reception.
- Assess and revise narratives of modern music historiography.
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Reading List
Botstein, Leon: 'The Aesthetics of Assimilation and Affirmation: Reconstructing the Career of Felix Mendelssohn', in Mendelssohn and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 5-42.
Brown, Clive: A Portrait of Mendelssohn (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003).
Cooper, John Michael: Heathen Muse: The Walpurgis Night, Goethe, and Mendelssohn (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007).
Garratt, James: 'Mendelssohn's Babel: Romanticism and the Poetics of Translation', Music & Letters, 80 (1999), 23-49.
Grey, Thomas: 'Tableaux vivants: Landscape, History Painting, and the Visual Imagination in Mendelssohn's Orchestral Music', 19th-Century Music, 21 (1997), 38-76.
Kimber, Marian Wilson: 'The 'Suppression' of Fanny Mendelssohn: Rethinking Feminist Biography', 19th-Century Music, 26 (2002), 113-29.
Kramer, Lawrence: 'Felix culpa: Goethe and the image of Mendelssohn', in R. Larry Todd (ed.), Mendelssohn Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 64-79.
Sposato, Jeffrey S.: 'Creative Writing: The [Self-] Identification of Mendelssohn as Jew', The Musical Quarterly, 82 (1998), 190-209.
Taylor, Benedict: Mendelssohn, Time and Memory: The Romantic Conception of Cyclic Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Taylor, Benedict (ed.): Rethinking Mendelssohn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Todd, R. Larry: Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Todd, R. Larry: Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Vitercik, Gregory: 'Mendelssohn the Progressive', The Journal of Musicological Research, 8 (1989), 333-74.
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Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Additional Class Delivery Information |
Seminar: Weeks 1-10 |
Keywords | Mendelssohn,19th-century music,musical canon,historicism,Classicism and Romanticism,absolute mu |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Benedict Taylor
Tel: (0131 6)50 4155
Email: B.Taylor@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Hugh Black
Tel: (0131 6)51 5926
Email: hugh.black@ed.ac.uk |
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