MUSC 40501 - Music History I

This course offers a broad introduction to the history of music from Greek and Roman antiquity until circa 1600. In addition to developing skills pertinent to matters of style, genre, function, and form, students will engage with the social, cultural, and philosophical contexts of musicking from a global perspective. Historical approaches to music pedagogy; connections between music and the body; developments in musical notation and music publishing; the evolving relationship between music and text; and the relationship between musical transmission and human migration will be emphasized in this course. Above all, this course aims to foster and develop listening skills essential to thinking, speaking, and writing critically and intelligently about all musical traditions, and to combine these skills with historical and cultural knowledge of diverse musical traditions.

Preparation for Course
P. MUSC 10500.

Cr. 3.
Student Learning Outcomes
1. Increase musical vocabulary, define pertinent concepts/movements, and develop sophisticated language used to speak and write effectively about musicking from antiquity until circa 1600.
2. Develop critical listening skills to engage with and speak about music on a deeper, more intellectual, level.
3. Become familiar with the cultural contexts from which music arose and how music signifies in diverse soundscapes.
4. Demonstrate an awareness of why musical sources were created, what kinds of evidence historians use to construct music historiography, and what historical sources can tell us about musicking of past eras.
5. Understand the ways in which understanding music history can impact our lives today and identify the multifarious agendas of historians.
6. Determine the genre, function, significance, and appropriate soundscapes of an unknown piece of music by identifying its stylistic features through listening and score study.
7. Compose essays about music of this period using appropriate terminology and learn how to structure and edit writing to a level of professionalism appropriate for university undergraduate students.