Music BA (Hons)

This module aims to ensure that you will be equipped with employability-related skills appropriate to graduates of History and associated degrees. The module adapts to your interests, whether you choose to pursue postgraduate study, enter the job market seeking graduate level employment, or establish your own enterprise. One of the purposes of Your Graduate Future is to raise your awareness of the wide range of possibilities, and to equip you with the knowledge, the skills and the experiences that may enable you to respond effectively to future opportunities. This module now includes a “Standard Pathway” and a “Law Pathway”, delivered in collaboration with Northumbria School of Law. For the Standard Pathway, in semester 1 you will attend lectures and participate in seminars that will present the intricacies of contemporary job seeking in different sectors. These will include guest lectures. You will then work with a group of your peers on an outward-looking project that will enable you to display your specific skills, to establish and nurture internal and external contacts, and to express your interests in a public outcome of your choice. In semester 2, you will develop your CV and further explore your evolving skillsets by means of engaging on your choice of work experience, volunteering, enterprise planning or a placement abroad. These will take the shape of supported independent activities. Assessment consists of a group project with a public outcome, an individual report reflecting on the scholarly basis of your project and your assessment of the process, and a placement report (at the end of semester 2). Students in the Law Pathway will also attend the lectures, and will follow a bespoke schedule of workshops, seminars, a field visit to The National Archives in London including archival training and a private tour of the archives. They will also undergo two specialised training sessions in Newcastle. Students in both pathways will follow the same assessment pattern, but those in the Law Pathway will work alongside students from the Law School to investigate a historical legal case using original archival material from The National Archives and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, and their group project will see them produce public facing history outputs for these external clients, including exhibitions, website blogs, and contributions to their official social media channels. In Semester 2, the ‘Placement’ element will work with Law students to design and stage a reconstruction of the trial itself.

In this module, you will consider how histories of music are constructed. Who decides what should be included within the narrative and what is the significance of what is left out? To what extent are we constrained by the available evidence? To what extent do the music histories we write reflect our present-day concerns?

You will engage critically with different approaches to writing music history, from the development of musical styles to in-depth socio-cultural studies, and to strategies for structuring our conception of music history. You will also consider how and why particular composers and repertory become dominant in our understanding of music history, and what the consequences of this might be.

You will also explore the different kinds of sources that music historians use – not only scores or recordings, but iconographical, archival or other historical material – exploring what they can reveal about the creation, consumption and functions of music in the past, and their limitations.

Within this module, you will develop a critical capacity to scrutinise sources and evaluate the way they have been interpreted in the creation of music history whilst engaging with a range of music from a variety of periods.

This module is designed to equip you with the research skills you need in order to carry out original, independent research in Music. It serves as a preparation for the dissertation you will write in your final year of study. You will have the opportunity to frame a question, plan your research, and write an extended essay on a theme of your choice related to a topic introduced at the start of the module. In doing so, you will gain an understanding of how to frame research questions and arrive at a title, how to manage a project working independently, how to find primary and secondary sources, how to present your work and develop your academic writing.

This module is focused on your individual, one-to-one instrumental or vocal tuition. You will develop your technique while enhancing skills in performing music which will enable you to communicate effectively with an audience. The course will cover areas such as effective practising, performance contexts and how to manage nerves. You will continue to expand your repertoire, gaining an awareness of performing traditions associated with the music you are playing or singing . You will continue to engage critically with musical performance through attendance at concerts, recitals and open rehearsals.

This module is focused on your individual, one-to-one instrumental or vocal tuition. You will develop your technique while enhancing skills in performing music which will enable you to communicate effectively with an audience in a recital open to the general public. The seminars will focus on how to structure a recital programme and how to write effective programme notes. You will continue to engage critically with musical performance through attendance at concerts, recitals and open rehearsals, focusing especially on programme structure.

Having been introduced to music’s place in the classroom curriculum in your first year, this course pays closer attention to music pedagogy in general, and gives you the opportunity to experience genuine teaching situations outside the university lectures, reflecting on what you learn from the observation of others and discussion with your peers. You will also think about teaching advanced repertoire on your instrument, encouraging you to familarise yourself with the UK exam boards and work towards establishing your own professional opinions on repertoire choice and supporting technical requirements.

This module will introduce you to the history and historiography of the musical, both in and beyond the West, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. While focusing primarily on the USA and the UK, we will also develop case studies centred on other countries, such as China or South Korea. Throughout the module, our aim will be to understand the social, cultural and political forces that have shaped musicals as multicultural forms of theatre (albeit ones often denied the status of ‘art’) and, increasingly, as a global industry. In the weekly lectures, we will retrace the emergence and transformations of the genre from operetta and vaudeville to the latest livestreamed blockbusters, by researching and analysing a wide range of literary, musical and visual materials. In the weekly seminars, we will take selected readings and shows as springboards for discussing how issues of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, social justice and equality, among others, are treated or reflected in specific scholarly texts, specific productions and/or in broader critical and public discourses. Further themes that we will cover include staging technologies, dance and choreography, and musicals’ encounters with twentieth-century media such as film and television.

How do we know what music sounded like in the past? Do early recordings give us an accurate representation? What about music composed before the advent of recording technology? This module examines what we can find out from the historical record about performing music. We will be assessing how useful different types of primary source material are for informing our own interpretation of music: these include early recordings, musical scores, treatises and archival records. We will be considering what they can tell us about all aspects of performing music, including instrumental/vocal technique and style (or, to use an eighteenth-century term, ‘good taste’). The module covers the performance of music from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.

In this module, you will build on the core first-year course, Techniques of Composition, Harmonic Analysis and Improvisation. The module focuses on more advanced harmonic progressions including the use of dominant 13th, diminished 7th, Neapolitan 6th and Augmented 6th chords, and on broader tonal structures. As well as covering chromatic harmony, there will be opportunities in the module to explore other techniques of composition, such as chorale-based composition (especially chorale harmonisation) and twentieth-century idioms.

Students produce weekly harmony assignments which may include analytical exercises, harmony exercises and pastiche composition. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the distinctions between composer, improviser and performer were much less distinct than today, and we may explore repertoire through improvisation.

This module is designed for students entering at Level 5 (the second year of the degree), especially those wishing to take the second semester music education module, ‘Preparation for Music Teaching’. All musicians are music teachers of their instrument or voice at some point, and it is vital that their experience of teaching is based on a solid foundation of pedagogical research and a knowledge of the context in which their work is taking place. Those entering directly into second year who have previous experience in music teaching and have completed modules elsewhere in the world will benefit from a thorough introduction to teaching music in a UK context.

This module offers an introduction to music education, covering early years, primary, secondary and special schools, so that your music teaching will be informed by your knowledge of pupils’ broader educational experience. This will also open up other possible career paths in music education, both in the UK and internationally. The module will also cover specialist academic writing required for the later stages of a Music degree and the education culture of music teaching in UK universities.

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.