Musicology 1 introduces the study of musicology at the undergraduate level. It aims to establish fundamental knowledge and skills required for musicological study and research, particularly emphasizing finding, surveying and reporting on musicological information. In this semester the musical topics of study are drawn from Australian classical music of the 20th century.

Musicology 2 continues the introduction to musicology at the undergraduate level, and like Musicology 1, it aims to further the establishment of fundamental methodological knowledge and skills required for musicological study and research. Musical topics for study are drawn from the period covered by MCGY2611 Music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, and some strategies for musical analysis of music of the period are introduced.

Musicology 3 continues the emphasis on development of methodological skills begun in Musicology 1 and 2, focusing in particular on research and writing skills including formulating research questions, critical reading and building arguments. It will also continue the chronological development of music historical knowledge from Musicology 2, concentrating on the long 18th century. The continued development of methodological skills establishes a sound basis for increasing independence of thought and process. Students will work in a small group class.

Musicology 4 expands students' methodological and conceptual skills by exploring more advanced concepts in musicological discourse including recent applications of critical theory to music research. Students will be expected to demonstrate increasing independence in critical thinking and research process. These skills will be put into practice in topics relating to the long 19th century. Students will continue to work in a small group class.

The work of Musicology 5 and 6 is intended to build on the methodological foundations of the previous semesters and develop the student's capacity for more independent study and research. A broader view of the discipline and its fields will be developed. In Musicology 5 or 6 topics in ethnomusicology may be included when possible.

The work of Musicology 5 and 6 is intended to build on the methodological foundations of the previous semesters and develop the student's capacity for more independent study and research. A broader view of the discipline and its fields will be developed. In Musicology 5 or 6 topics in ethnomusicology may be included when possible.

Musicology 7 and 8 form the culmination of the principal study stream in Musicology. Drawing on experience gained in the previous semesters and continuing to develop skills, the student will work on a single project throughout the two semesters. The project topic will be proposed by the student in discussion with the tutor and approved by the Musicology Unit. The final outcome by the end of Musicology 8 will be a research paper of about 10,000 words.

Refer to MCGY4607

What do we study when we study music? What kinds of stories do we tell about the history of music? What are the central issues, questions, and concerns that drive the study of music? This unit of study will begin to answer these questions and provide an overview of historical musicology as an academic discipline. In addition, students will also learn and practice the research skills necessary to find and evaluate sources, and to define and develop an area of interest. These skills will provide a solid foundation for the independent research work necessary in the Honours year.

This unit explores some of the most important theories on music and culture. It will introduce students to scholarly discourses and critical thinking potentially relevant to their own research. It will address questions such as what are we doing when we analyse music; how does our view of history shape our hearing and understanding; does music articulate collective human experience; etc. Topics covered include historiography, memory, musical analysis, semiotics, narrative theory, gender and sexuality, national identity, genre theory and hermeneutics.

What can we learn from non-textual approaches to understanding music? The primary goal of this unit of study is to study music not as a composer, producer, performer, listener or audience member, but as an ethnographer. That is, analysing music through an observational, experiential and intellectual understanding of how people make and take meaning from music.

Students will learn about, discuss and play different musical forms from East Asia ¿ ranging from ancient guqin music to contemporary K-Pop. They will develop an understanding of key aesthetic concepts, musical instruments and musical features of the music cultures in this region. Students will be encouraged to develop awareness of the diversity of East Asian musics and cultures, and of music's interrelation with and great significance to East Asian societies both in the past and today.

As an analytical method, ethnography concentrates on the experience of life as it is lived. Following the development of the fieldwork-based discipline of ethnomusicology, ethnographic approaches to music have come to examine: historical and archival data, objects and artefacts in collections, cyber networks, digital communications, and medical and therapeutic understandings of sound, among other aspects of everyday life. This unit of study engages ethnographic methodologies to examine the myriad ways music informs and enriches people's lives and contributes to defining how humans flourish in their natural, social and cultural environments.

Students in this unit will observe in detail a selection of Western musical styles and the work of particular composers, applying the knowledge thus gained by writing short compositions in the relevant styles. For the student with some creative inclinations, the activity of stylistic imitation offers unique insights into the music of any period. Topics for study will be selected according to the interests of the group, taking into account the need for a coherent and cumulative course structure.

Explore how 19th-century composers extended 18th-century chromatic routines for new expressive purposes, and discovered new compositional syntaxes in those routines. Learn new terms and graphic techniques for classifying and representing harmonic states characteristic of 19th?century music. Study systematic implications of analytical observations. Representation of analytical interpretations using economical and focused prose. Intensive study of compositions by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Wagner.

This unit is designed to equip students with a working knowledge of current music theory and analysis practice, impart analytical skills that can be applied across a broad spectrum of activities and different musical genres and types, and develop an understanding of related concepts such as what analysis actually is, different types of analysis (functional, descriptive, surface, aural/perceptual vs. score based) and an understanding of working at different levels of abstraction.

Listening to music performance is an everyday occurrence, yet expert listeners possess tacit knowledge about performers' sound and little is known about how they process sensory information from a performer to conceptualise, recognise and verbalise the sound they hear. This unit of study will focus on recent empirical research studies and examine the ways in which we listen to music performers by sound and sight, how we assess music performance, and how we describe the sounds we hear.

Since its beginnings around 1600, no genre of Western art music has been more innovative or influential than opera. It has inspired devotion and disdain, and led to innumerable theoretical debates. In this unit, 400 years of changing operatic practices will be explored through a series of seminal works. These will be treated as documents of specific historical circumstances (including contemporaneous singing and staging practices), and as aesthetic objects which have been reinvented continuously down to the present.

This unit is open to all students who want to go beyond the overview gained in survey courses and investigate baroque music topics of their own choice in more depth. The course emphasises student participation and individual exploration. Students choose their own readings, using primary and secondary sources ranging from 17th and 18th-century treatises, manuscripts and other documents, to the latest critical writing by international scholars. Essay topics can cover any aspect of baroque music, for example performance practice, aesthetics, instruments, or studies of the music of particular composers, genres or places. Students can choose to share their findings either in a conventional class presentation or in a lecture-demonstration / performance.

This unit will explore specific works of literature which deal with musical matters or which make significant statements about musical aesthetics. The contribution towards understanding musical experience of creative artists who are not, or not primarily, musicians, is sometimes ignored in courses for the training of musicians. Yet, in the case of writers, such artists are often better equipped than musical professionals to capture in words, the ineffable nature of musical experience and aesthetics. Moreover their place as receivers rather than creators sometimes enables them to make statements about the broader cultural significance from a perspective outside that of production and performance. This course exists to allow trainee performers, teachers and musicologists an opportunity to explore such perspectives. Topics will be decided by class interest and may include work by Bruce Chatwin, Gunter Grass, Herman Hesse, James Joyce, Milan Kundera, Thomas Mann, Romain Roland, Vikram Seth, William Shakespeare, Tim Winton and others.

Paleography of Music introduces principles and issues of some different types of western musical notation in use during the medieval and Renaissance periods, and contributes to the development of an understanding of original sources of music of these eras. Through studying original notations and sources, students can develop an understanding of the characteristics and problems of medieval and renaissance musical repertories not otherwise available. Among the notations to be studied are several chant notations including that of the musical sources of Hildegard of Bingen; white mensural notation as used in sources of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century vocal polyphony with examples likely to include music by Dufay, Ockeghem and Byrd; French and Italian lute tablatures; and German keyboard tablatures. Understanding the notations studied forms the main emphasis of this course, and students learn to transcribe from the original notations into modern musical notation. In addition, change and usage of notation, and scribal method will also be studied.

This unit will explore the fantastic as a central aspect of romanticism in its various manifestations, including the uncanny, the daemonic and the playful. In music, this meshes fruitfully with the older tradition of the fantasy, a genre which is similarly dependent on the imagination and the evasion of clear boundaries. A range of Lieder, operas, symphonic and solo instrumental works by composers such as Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Schubert will be studied against the backdrop of literary and artistic innovations by Goethe, Hoffmann, Byron, and Friedrich. Theories of the fantastic by Todorov, Freud and others will also be examined.

The New German School was a controversial term coined in 1859 to legitimise the self-consciously progressive art of figures such as Wagner and Liszt. This course explores the music and aesthetic theories of these two composers against the backdrop of contemporary debates and reception politics. Their personal relationship will also be scrutinized in detail. Works to be studied include selections from Liszt's symphonic poems and piano works, Wagner's Tristan, Die Meistersinger and Ring tetralogy.

This unit aims to provide students with a framework for analysing African-American musical products. An historical survey of research into African-American performance is followed by a discussion of current critical debates and scholarship. Students will apply existing theoretical models to the analysis of jazz, funk and hip-hop works. In turn, they will develop original research methodologies for the analysis of an African-American expressive work of their choice.

Since the early 20th century, the period c.1750-1830 has been associated with the idea of Classicism in European music, but it was also a period of rapid development and transformation in both music and society. This unit offers an in-depth examination of core repertoire by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and their contemporaries in this historical context, and provides an opportunity to explore topics that will deepen and extend students' understanding of this highly significant period. Participants will explore important repertoire, become acquainted with scholarly and performance issues associated with the style by studying a selection of critical writings about the period, and choose one topic to research in depth.

Between 1889 and 1914, certain Austro-Germanic composers played a crucial role in the emerging modernist movement. Richard Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg engaged with past musical traditions and contemporary trends in visual art, literature and philosophy to produce a distinctively new type of music. Works to be studied include Strauss's tone poems, Mahler's symphonies and Schoenberg's chamber music, as well as Lieder and stage works. Among the issues which will be explored are the way in which traditional formal structures were invoked and destabilised, the changes the musical language underwent and how music was conceptualized in this era of change and crisis

This unit of study provides students with the opportunity to critically engage with Aboriginal Australian perspectives on music, design and creativity, highlighting the concerns of Aboriginal practitioners. These will intersect with key concepts including Country, decolonisation, sovereignty, globalisation, cultural sustainability and national identity. Students will explore ethical issues associated with representation, appropriation and cross-cultural collaboration. As a response to the material covered, students will develop a creative work or design, in accordance with relevant protocol guidelines.

This course will study the literary and musical strategies employed by composers and librettists in the adaption of the plays of Shakespeare into opera. Operas to be examined are taken from nearly 400 years of operatic repertoire including the classical, romantic, modernist and postmodernist periods. Recent CD and DVD recordings of both the plays and operas will be used, and current adaption theory as applicable to opera will be investigated.

Even as the 'Age of Newspapers' seems to be coming to an end, human beings' need for authoritative commentary on music remains as strong as ever. Along with surveying the history of music journalism from the early eighteenth century up to the present day, this unit of study offers participants the chance to try their hands at various forms of music journalism.