This course is designed to introduce students to the challenges of listening critically to music in all styles and media, and expressing a considered argument about its cultural significance, aesthetic quality and ideological implications using non-specialist, accessible language. By indicating and exemplifying an appropriate scholarly recourse to today's multi-media resources for musical study and research, it lays the groundwork for on-going investigations of music both as a distinct discipline and an integral component of diverse cultural practices.

Lectures over 10 weeks as scheduled on MyCampus:

Monday at 1pm and Wednesday at 9am

Or

Monday at 1pm and Friday at 3pm

Or

Tuesday at 12 noon and Wednesday at 9am

Or

Tuesday at 12 noon and Friday at 3pm

One hour seminar (choice of times) over 10 weeks as scheduled on MyCampus.

MUSIC 1001, MUSIC 1015, MUSIC 1016

None

Essay (1,500 words) - 40%

Essay (2,500 words) - 60%

This course will provide the opportunity to:

■ foster an engaged, critical approach to listening to music of all genres and styles

■ show effective, up-to-date research strategies that will enable students to express considered opinions about the value and significance of any given musical phenomenon

■ encourage a reflective approach to the various cultural and social factors that impinge upon musical creation and reception in a wide range of contexts and media.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ recognise a diversity of musical forms, genres and styles

■ deploy, in purposeful argument, central musical concepts such as form, texture and expression

■ write confidently about their listening experience, giving due recognition to informing cultural concerns

■ show, through written essay and in-class discussion, a sensitivity to the ideological questions attendant upon listening to music in an age of digital recording and dissemination

■ communicate experiences of close, critical musical listening in terms accessible to a diverse non-specialist readership

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.