A&H 295 Music in Context

Content

Music does not exist in a vacuum, but interacts with its surroundings. In order to properly understand it, one has to be aware of extra-musical determining factors. Each culture has its own music, and each music¬¬al genre has its own con¬text. Sacred music, for instance, is not a goal in itself, but serves as a tool in wor¬¬ship: the dura¬tion of a piece played during communion should be roughly equal to that of communion it¬¬self. A church cantata – to mention just one other example – has to take into account the readings in a ser¬¬vice and the musical interpretation of the text has to con¬form to the prevailing theological under¬stand¬ing in a con¬gre¬gation. Popular music, jazz music, film music, etc., also have their own contexts.
In order to under¬stand both the outer necessity and the inner motivation that in¬fluence the forms and func¬tions of music of all centuries, this course provides fundamental contextual knowledge about Western art music. The study of music¬al scores will not only allow students to achieve a deeper level of understanding of musical master¬¬works than could be gained from pure¬ly inner-musical analysis; the introduction to contextual themes and issues such as “music and its instruments”, “music and rhetoric”, “music and its notation”, etc. will also pro¬vide them with a better under¬standing of the role and place of music in present-day society.

Instructor

Prof. Dr. Albert Clement

Track

Music

Period

Spring / 2011

Prerequisites

One needs to have followed one of the following courses in order to take this course:

• A&H 195 A History of Western Music
• A&H 196 Introduction to Music Theory

Required for

This course is required in order to take the following course:

• A&H 395 Case Studies in Music