Module FOUD0017: Foundations of Music

Department: Foundation Year (Durham)

FOUD0017: Foundations of Music

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To enable students to extend the skills, knowledge and understanding needed to communicate through music.
• To help students to recognise the interdependence of musical skills, knowledge and understanding, and the links between performing, composing and appraising.
• To provide a framework within which analytical skills may be developed.

Content

• Performance: Students will prepare a performance in the genre of their choice.
• Composition: Students will develop composition skills leading to the creation of a three minute piece in response to a chosen brief.
• Musical Understanding and analysis: Students will learn to compare and contrast excerpts, contextualise music and identify harmonic and tonal features.

Learning Outcomes

• By the end of the module students will:
• Have acquired the ability to relate a range of methodologies to important issues in musical structure, performance and context.
• Gain a basic knowledge of harmony and counterpoint and how they function within a range of musical styles.

• Skills to use the acquired knowledge appropriately when listening to or performing music.
• Enhanced performance skills.
• Students will develop skills of musical grammar and syntax, putting these skills to practical use through composition exercises.

• Communicate effectively in writing.
• Critical evaluation of performance and compositional techniques.

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

• Teaching will be by seminars and tutorials. These instil and reinforce the awareness of relevant issues and methodologies
• Much of the learning, understanding and consolidation will take place through the use of structured workshop activities, groupwork and discussion. Practical exercises give “hands-on” experience of musicological expertise.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

weekly exercises

■ 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