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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : Music

Postgraduate Course: Music, Philosophy and Politics (MUSI11052)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis 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.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  10
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 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
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:
  1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of certain key concepts and theories in the philosophy of music.
  2. Recognise the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of earlier musical discourse.
  3. Appraise in concrete instances how music has operated as a social and political force.
  4. Evaluate critically the problems in mediating between music and society.
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).
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Benedict Taylor
Tel: (0131 6)50 4155
Email: B.Taylor@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Carrie Parker
Tel: (0131 6)50 2422
Email: Carrie.Parker@ed.ac.uk
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