MA Music (Popular Music Research)

This module locates the emergence of the study of popular music within specific historical contexts and asks how scholarship has been informed by interdisciplinary dialogues. We’ll consider the (re)valuing of the ‘popular’ as a political project, and the institutionalisation of popular music studies within academia.

We’ll explore the various intellectual legacies that feed into the study of popular music, and how musicology engages with the practices of musicians and the arguments of critics. The module focuses on a selection of contemporary debates relating to different aspects of the production, mediation, circulation, and use of popular music. The module adopts a geographically and historically broad and inclusive approach to popular music, debates about music and social life, and encourages you to bring your own musical preferences to an engagement with issues and debates from different times and places.

This module explores the development and deployment of critical discourses on popular music, focusing on the ways in which commentators – journalists, academics, bloggers, and consumers – have used words to represent sound, and to construct systems of meaning and value for the music they have loved and hated.

Spanning the 20^th century but focusing on present day practices, the module will address discourses on jazz, rock, dance, and pop in which commentators have attempted to articulate the excitement and anxiety these musics inspired as they came into being. Although much critical work has been done in print, the module will also consider how other media (radio, television, the internet) have shaped their own descriptive and evaluative practices.

Together, we’ll think about the relationship between critical listening and critical languages; between popular and academic discourses and modes of evaluation; and about the changing place and status of the popular music critic and scholar. Classes will comprise extended critical discussion leading out of weekly set readings and listening/writing exercises in which we will grapple with the problems and possibilities of representing and evaluating music in words.

To take this module, you should have familiarity with various styles of popular music and an ability to research and to write in a critical manner. Knowledge of music theory is neither assumed nor necessary.

This module offers an overview of the formative debates in musicology over roughly the past three decades. Through a series of thematised readings each week, students will be introduced to a variety of issues that have permeated recent musical discourse, including gender, sexuality, race, canon, technology, performance, analysis and notation.

As well as investigating topics in art music, popular music and ethnomusicology, this module will consider other fields that have influenced musicological discourse, such as anthropology, philosophy and sociology. Throughout, students will be invited to debate the ways in which the history of music has been written: how certain music and musical cultures have entered into or been excluded from canons; how recent writing on music has attempted to redress such exclusions; and what the future of musicology might hold.

With this in mind, students will be encouraged to write essays that innovatively apply the concepts and issues explored during the module to a topic of their own devising. They will also complete two or three short reviews of a mixture of recent musicological articles and presentations given in the Music Research Series. Students should come away from this module not only with a firm understanding of the field, but also with the methods by which it has been (and is being) researched.

The module explores contemporary approaches in ethnomusicology. The focus is on contemporary theoretical issues in the field, although current concerns will be situated within the history of ethnomusicological discourse. The module will address a range of topics and issues, such as fieldwork and ethnotheory, issues of gender, sexuality, race, decolonisation, globalisation, and diasporas, the “world music” phenomenon, medical and activist ethnomusicology, and ecomusicology.

During the module, you’ll gain familiarity with the connections between ethnomusicology and related disciplines such as anthropology, and with debates concerning disciplinary boundaries within music studies.

Contemporary music may be viewed as a collection of situated and interconnected practices, in areas including creative, performative, critical and analytical work. This module gives a broad overview of practice and discourse in late 20^th and 21^st century music, and asks you to consider: how might a musical performance contribute to discourse? How might an analytical or critical methodology be practice?

While the module will primarily focus on music stemming from a Western Art Music tradition, contemporary improvised, popular, jazz and electronic musics will also be considered, in order to invite a holistic approach to the discourses and practices that define contemporary music.

You’ll explore and develop a position via your own combination of methodologies, which may include, embodied, analytical, collaborative, (auto-)ethnographic, historical, critically reflective, sociological, and discovery-led approaches, among others. You’ll then articulate your position either as a text-based (essay) or practice-based (performance) project, and in a conference-style video presentation.

The module examines the uses of ethnographic film/video in music research. It will enable you to develop the practical, technical and theoretical skills necessary to make your own short ethnographic film on a music topic in a critical and self-reflexive manner.

Through a critical reading of key ethnographic films about music, the module will address questions of aesthetics, representation and ethics that arise in the process of filmmaking. It will also consider the use of digital media in musical ethnography more generally and assess the methods of analysis afforded by the visual documentation of music practices.

In complement with theoretical seminars, practical workshops on the methods of digital video recording and editing will familiarise you with a variety of approaches to ethnographic filmmaking and techniques of sound recording.

The module introduces you to the principles of managing music creatively and critically, covering a variety of musical contexts and industries: popular music, jazz, western art music and the sonic arts, with contributions from industry specialist guest lecturers. The module focuses on the relationship between creative practice and creative management, of taking control of your work within rapidly changing arts, economic and social environment. You’ll explore finance and funding streams as well as gain practical experience of the necessary skills and considerations the module teaches by undertaking a real-world music management project.

Key topics will include:

• curation and entrepreneurialism in the music industry
• developing a project plan and researching your business model and method
• researching your musical field
• honing and pitching your idea or story, including publicity
• audiences and marketing
• event planning and production e.g. gigs, performances, launches
• finding the right venue or space
• maximising the potential of your idea through evaluation, problem solving, creative and lateral thinking

This module provides a critical appraisal of the philosophical, conceptual and methodological limitations of existing approaches to researching popular music, whilst exploring ways of overcoming these and finding new research directions. The module surveys a cross section of studies that have been conducted in different contexts, with varied methodologies informed by contrasting agendas: This includes scholarship focussing separately on industries and production, texts and meaning, reception and consumption and scientific research on music. You think across disciplinary boundaries, informed by an oft-repeated maxim; that innovative and significant research entails the art of asking the right questions. Hence, you ask new questions of old research, and set up new questions for potential future research. The module will complement musicological techniques by drawing from methods deployed across the arts and humanities, business and the sciences when exploring methodological techniques for researching such questions.

The aim of the module is to develop knowledge and understanding of musical performance as a research technique, particularly in relation to the music of other cultures. It will address practical, theoretical and conceptual issues concerning music performance, including issues such as the nature of musicality, processes of music learning, theories of improvisation, musical gesture and the body in music performance.

Theoretical understanding will be developed in conjunction with practical, experiential learning. You’ll develop a research-centered performance project by either learning to perform from a repertory outside your primary music culture or by developing expertise in a new area of performance practice.

This may include learning to perform a new instrument and/or genre; developing music improvisation skills; or the arrangement and performance of pieces from a particular music tradition. You’ll be required to give a short performance demonstrating the development of your performance skills and to theorise your performance practice and experiential learning in a written form.

The module combines investigation of theoretical perspectives towards musical performance (as) research with practical exploration through individual projects. It explores the diverse ways in which such practice can be informed by research and (the more challenging question) can constitute research in and of itself. A wide range of repertoires and approaches will be considered, ranging from historical performance practice issues and the challenges presented by contemporary notated scores to creative practice in the most diverse performance contexts, both physical and electronic. A central concern will be the extent to which the processes of performance should be documented, and ways in which technology can be harnessed to aid such documentation. The module will culminate in individually negotiated projects, in which elements of practice will be demonstrably related to the theoretical foundations established during the course.

The module will consist of (i) lecture/workshops with specialists across a variety of different fields (some of which may take place outside the regular timetable) and (ii) practical sessions drawing on students’ experience as performers and researchers. Each student will have the opportunity to present their project in progress at one workshop and to discuss both its practical and written elements in a one-to-one tutorial.

In addition, students will be encouraged to attend relevant research seminars, including interaction with practice-researchers from other departments in order to broaden their experience of different disciplines and approaches towards practice research. To take this module you should have experience as a performer (not necessarily at Masters level); an ability to write about performance issues in a critical and analytical manner; an ability to carry out independent research. Though the module is not restricted to any specific musical traditions, some knowledge of Western art-music repertoires and notations will be expected.

The aim of this module is to develop theoretical and critical frameworks for creative sound practice, and to engage with, apply, enact, and experiment with these ideas through practice: a process we could term 'praxis'.

We'll do this by way of lectures, discussions, and tutorials, referring to a variety of artistic practices that use sound in some way. The module explores core concepts, current thinking, and the salient historical and sociocultural contexts of these practices.

Key topics will include:

• the limits of sound
• aural diversity
• autonomous and heterogenous tendencies
• space and place
• the body
• sound technologies
• critical sound studies

This module considers music both as the object of philosophy and as an artefact that may both engage with and communicate philosophical ideas. It does so through a joint focus on reading philosophical texts and the examination of musical ‘works’, practices, and approaches.

The module will address the intersections of these ideas through an examination of the methods of the philosophy of music—examining the ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, and aesthetics of music through these—and through key topics for the philosophy of music such as the body, the voice, materiality and instrumentality. In examining questions in these topics, you’ll draw on examples from your own musical background as well as those introduced in the module. Seminar discussions will be a key part of the work.

In addition, the module will consider world traditions of philosophy and their implications for the assessment of global music, and the intersection of aesthetics and society in the study and philosophy of musical works. Finally, the philosophy of music beyond the ‘musical’ will be considered, extending philosophical ideas about music into the experience of sound in everyday life.

The dissertation acts as focus of the knowledge and skills acquired during the MA programme. You'll have the opportunity to undertake genuinely original work, employing relevant research methods and building upon the advanced and systematic understandings you've developed in other elements of the programme.

The dissertation may take the form of a critical discussion of a problem in musicology, analysis of an appropriate repertoire, a critical edition of a musical document, or another project as worked out with your appointed supervisor. Most work on the dissertation will be independent study, supported by frequent and individual consultation with your supervisor throughout the academic year, with particular emphasis on Term 3. Students will also have the opportunity to discuss their projects with their peers in a workshop setting.