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MUSI2082 Music in Western Culture II
Course Type: core/compulsory for music majors/minors (music minors may choose between this and MUSI2081 Music in Western Culture I), free elective for others
Prerequisite: NIL
Instructor: Dr. Kiki LEUNG
Semester: Second Semester 2023/24
Time: 10:30am-12:20pm, Tuesday
Venue: CPD-LG1.22 Rehearsal Room
The course examines topics in musical practices, works, and aesthetic ideas from the mid 19th century to the present day. Various musical styles as well as conceptual ideas behind the musical practices are examined. The course emphasises the socio-cultural context in which the music was created, performed, and consumed, as well as its relationship to the other art forms. Together with MUSI2081, the course promotes students’ foundational knowledge in music history and stylistic listening skills. It is also designed to enhance student’s ability to critically think about music and communicate these thoughts. The focus of course content may vary from year to year.
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Course Learning Outcomes
Assessment Methods
Topics
Text & Resource Materials
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
  • demonstrate knowledge in various musical styles and illustrate a deeper understanding of conceptual ideas behind the musical practices;
  • appreciate the profound link between music and historical change and explain this link in terms of social function, musical style, and individual creativity;
  • think critically about musical practices, works, and ideas in their socio-cultural contexts and communicate these thoughts coherently.
TBC
  • introduction
  • Fin-de-siècle Vienna
  • music and nationalism
  • music, modernism, the “new world”
  • music and gender
  • music and politics
  • noise, silence, and technology
  • music and order
  • music and minimalism
  • music, time, and death
  • crossing borders
  • Hanning, Barbara Russano, and Donald Jay Grout. Concise History of Western Music. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014. (required textbook for this course and MUSI2081)
Selected readings and listening/viewing materials are either available on Moodle or on reserve at the Music Library. Additional resource materials include:
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  • Auner, Joseph Henry. Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Western Music in Context. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.
  • Burkholder, Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. 9th ed. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2014.
  • Burkholder, Peter and Claude Palisca, eds. Norton Anthology of Western Music, Vol. 3. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
  • Cook, Nicholas, and Anthony. Pople. The Cambridge History of Twentieth-century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  • Frisch, Walter. Music in the Nineteenth Century: Western Music in Context. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013.
  • Samson, Jim. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-century Music. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • Taruskin, Richard, and Christopher Howard Gibbs. The Oxford History of Western Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  • Móricz, Klára, and David E. Schneider, eds. Oxford Anthology of Western Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 
  • Weiss, Piero, and Richard Taruskin, eds. Music in the Western World. 2 edition. Australia; Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2007.
  • Online resources: Naxos, Music Online; Grove Music Online.