BA (Hons) Music (Extended Degree)

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.

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.

This module will introduce you to the implications of the ‘digital turn’ in music composition/performance/production, music scholarship and music education. Throughout the module, we will ask how digital technologies have reshaped modern understandings of and approaches to music as both an art and an object of study. In weekly workshops, you will learn how to analyse and evaluate a range of digital music and digital musicology projects, which may include (but will not be limited to) examples of computer music and digital scenography in opera, digital critical editions of music, music mapping projects, reconstructions of lost historical soundscapes, and digital archives/collections relating to music. In weekly seminars, we will use assigned scholarly readings as springboards for reflecting critically on some of the social, cultural and aesthetic changes brought about by digital technologies in people’s everyday engagement with music across the world. Seminar topics will include the rise of CDs and DVDs, the use of streaming platforms such as YouTube and Spotify, DIY music practices, music creativity in the age of AI, digital intellectual property rights, and using digital tools for music teaching.

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.