Module MUSI3541: MUSICAL BORROWING: PAST AND PRESENT

Department: Music

MUSI3541: MUSICAL BORROWING: PAST AND PRESENT

Prerequisites

• Historical Trends and Issues in the 19th and 20th Centuries (MUSI2591) OR Theory and Musicology (MUSI2561) OR Understanding and Performing Early Music (MUSI2571).

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To explore the concept of musical borrowing as it has been practised in Western Music from the beginnings of notated polyphony to the present day.
• to acquaint students with the diversity of contexts within which musical borrowing has been practiced by composers through the centuries.
• to focus on specific pieces from many periods in a seminar context, allowing students to study pieces at a level commensurate with final-year studies.
• to instil a critical awareness of the methodologies and analytical tools appropriate to the study of the different repertories and works concerned.

Content

• This seminar-based course explores the conception and practice of musical borrowing throughout the history of Western Music.
• The concept itself is neither historically nor stylistically delimited, and may include anything from the beginnings of polyphony (plainchant borrowing), the late Middle Ages and Renaissance (sacred and secular polyphonic models), the High Baroque (the 're-workings' of Handel or Telemann) and Classical (use of popular tunes), and modernist and post-modern approaches as well (Finnissy, Donatoni, Schnittke, etc.).
• Not all of these periods will be broached in a single year.
• instead, students may choose to focus on a specific period or problematic.
• Students will also be expected to engage with the analytical methods appropriate to the different periods under examination.
• Composers and topics to be studied may include: Fourteenth century Tenor motets (Machaut).
• Fifteenth-Century Cantus-firmus Masses from Dufay to Josquin.
• Sixteenth-Century Parody Masses (Palestrina and Lassus).
• Monteverdi's '1610 Vespers'.
• Frescobaldi's Capricci.
• Re-workings in the music of Bach.
• Re-workings and Borrowings in the works of Wolfgang Rihm, Michael Finnissy, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be expected to have: acquired a grasp of the evolving concept of musical borrowing in its various manifestation through the history of Western music.
• gained a critical awareness of the methodologies appropriate to the study of musical borrowing across a range of historical periods.
• analyzed in detail specific works from a range of different periods from the perspective of the use of borrowed material, and to have presented their findings on at least one of these in seminar.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• The seminar basis of the course is appropriate to the students' level of study (final-year undergraduate).
• To further the students' sense of 'course ownership', each student will be allowed input into the periods (or given works) studied in the module.
• Thus, the content is designed to be flexible.
• The method of assessment is designed to re-enforce this sense of flexibility and student input.
• Of the two summative essays, the first will be on a piece or topic chosen by the course tutor, but for the second, heavier-weighted component, students will be offered a range of options, including that of proposing a topic themselves, subject to the course tutor's approval.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Two 500 word reports each on a set text or texts relative to the analysis of a given work, to be presented in tutorial and subsequently graded (termly in terms 1 and 2).

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University