Jazz History 1 provides the student with a practical understanding of the roots of jazz and the music developed, played and composed from the late 1800s - early 1930s and the historical context in which it was created. The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings, archival footage, group discussion/analysis and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A listening list, reading list, video links and audio examples will be provided.

Jazz History 2 provides the student with a practical understanding of the Jazz styles developed, played and composed from the early 1930s to the late 1940s and the historical context in which it was created. The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings, archival footage with group discussion/analysis and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A listening list, reading list, video links and audio examples will be provided.

Jazz History 3 provides the student with a practical understanding of the Jazz styles developed, played and composed from the mid-1940s through to 1960 and the historical context in which it was created.
The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings, archival footage with group discussion/analysis and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A listening list, reading list, video links and audio examples will be provided.

This course introduces students to the different ways of thinking about music that bind together our Conservatorium culture. It is a course concerned with 'big' questions: What exactly is a musical work? What do we hear when music is played? How do we go about making new music and how do we make old music new again? In grappling with these questions, students learn how to formulate persuasive arguments about the nature of music in general and the significance of musical works and artists in particular. The course is broken into four three-week episodes: Talking about Music, Making Music, Listening to Music and Learning about Music. Lectures from performers, composers, music educators and musicologists comprise each of these episodes and cover the wide variety of music genres and approaches to music making taught at the Conservatorium. As students hone their philosophical positions in relation to the course's 'big' questions, they are therefore simultaneously introduced to the constellation of ideas that constitute our musical world.

Embracing popular music, Indigenous music, classical music, and the music of multicultural communities in Australia, this unit offers an introduction not only to diverse musical traditions, but also to themes prevalent in the work of contemporary music scholars. These include gender and identity, ownership and appropriation, reception and transmission, colonialism and Empire, globalisation, modernity, representation, and music and place.

This unit explores major topics in the history of Western art music from the 9th century to c. 1750 in a broad historical context. Beginning with Gregorian chant and the invention of music education notation, we investigate a wide range of genres and styles of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque eras, as well as innovations including the development of music printing, developments in musical instruments, and the emergence of opera, sonata and concerto. Musical works for analysis and discussion include examples by Hildegard of Bingen, Machaut, Dufay, Josquin, Palestrina, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Corelli, Lully, Purcell, Vivaldi, Handel and J.S. Bach.

This unit will survey the main lines of musical development between 1750 and 1890, with primary focus on the composition of music, and how this relates to the social and aesthetic currents of the time. The overview given in the lecture series will be reinforced by detailed focus on individual works in the tutorials from both historical and analytical perspectives. Topics will include the emergence and codification of classical form and syntax; style and genre in the works of the first Viennese School; Beethoven's 'heroic' and 'late' styles; national opera traditions; symphonic poem and music drama; nationalism and exoticism; and the conflict between progress and tradition.

Traces the essential developments in Western art music from the very end of the 19th century to the start of the 21st, and relates them to broad socio-historical and artistic changes. The overview given in the lectures is reinforced by the analysis of key works in tutorials. Areas covered include Late Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Free Atonality, Rhythmic Innovation, Neo-classicism, Serial Music, Political Music, American Experimentalism, Electro-Acoustic Music, Chance composition, Textural Composition, Minimalism, influences from Popular Music, Collage and Polystylism, East-West Encounters, Neo-Romanticism, Post Modernism and Spectralism. Works analysed include compositions by Andriessen, Bartok, Cage, Debussy, Ligeti, Messiaen, Part, Schoenberg, Strauss, Stravinsky, Stockhausen and Webern.

This unit surveys some of the major developments in the history of western classical music from the Medieval period to the present, and relates them to broader historical and artistic trends. In addition to analysing individual musical works, students will engage with historiography and the relationships between music, society, and the history of ideas.

This course examines the powerful link between jazz and moments of social revolution in the United States. It illuminates the central role jazz musicians like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and Max Roach played in changing hearts, minds and social structures during four distinct historic periods: the Harlem Renaissance, the post-War 1940s, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and the Black Nationalist movement of the 1960s. Its central focus is on how music can both ride and resist the political energies that charge particular historic moments.

New Music, New Thinking is designed to challenge the way in which students understand the music of our time. Through analyses of recent music and artistic themes, discussion and creative tasks, students will be exposed to a variety of compositional techniques, concepts and aesthetics. The content and assessment of this subject will enable students to further develop critical thinking concerning their future contribution to the world of new music be it in composition, performance, musicology or education.

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.

This unit of study presents students with an opportunity to learn the theory and to experience the nuts and bolts of historically informed performance (HIP). Today's performers need to be able to navigate their way through a wide variety of styles, genres and modes of performance. HIP is a growth area globally, which influences the style of performance of period and modern instrument ensembles and vocalists. Here in Australia, for example, the ACO requires its members to have a keen awareness of HIP conventions in repertoire ranging from 1600-1900. Students will explore readings from primary and secondary written sources, recordings (including historical recordings) and will learn how to apply their findings to repertoire spanning the high-Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. Mini-lectures are combined with demonstrations of HIP style, peer-led discussions and practical workshops.

This unit aims to provide students with an historic overview of the development of the field of jazz studies and the emergence of key musicological paradigms that continue to frame contemporary jazz scholarship. In turn, it will introduce students to the most prevalent analytical approaches used to study jazz works and help them make sense of these approaches in relation to the aims of different jazz researchers. By the end of the unit, students will be able to frame new research questions about particular jazz phenomenon in relation to strains of existing musicological discourse and answer these questions using appropriate analytical tools.

Musicology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of musicological work, and the opportunity to gain a broad perspective on the discipline. Many Musicology Workshop activities are built around the Conservatorium's fortnightly Musicology Colloquium Series lectures, presented by SCM staff and visiting national and international scholars speaking on a wide range of topics. Other class activities explore areas such as research and writing skills, music criticism, controversies in recent music literature, visits to local libraries or archives, and conference attendance and reporting. Students are expected occasionally to attend other musicological activities such as the Conservatorium's Alfred Hook lecture series. During classes students also have the opportunity to present and gain feedback on their own research topics.

Musicology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of musicological work, and the opportunity to gain a broad perspective on the discipline. Many Musicology Workshop activities are built around the Conservatorium's fortnightly Musicology Colloquium Series lectures, presented by SCM staff and visiting national and international scholars speaking on a wide range of topics. Other class activities explore areas such as research and writing skills, music criticism, controversies in recent music literature, visits to local libraries or archives, and conference attendance and reporting. Students are expected occasionally to attend other musicological activities such as the Conservatorium's Alfred Hook lecture series. During classes students also have the opportunity to present and gain feedback on their own research topics.

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.

Ethnomusicology refers to the study of all musical genres worldwide within their respective social and cultural contexts, and is sometimes also known as the anthropology of music or cultural musicology. This unit introduces and explores some of the most important ideas that have informed the thinking of researchers working in this field - such as the connections between music and gender, social structures, forms of capital, politics, identity, health and the environment. The course also interrogates notions of the nature and experience of music, why musical genres differ and why music has such important but diverse significance worldwide. The course includes several lectures given by expert practitioners from particular musical traditions (such as Indigenous Australian music and Korean drumming), and it directly complements courses on ethnomusicological fieldwork methods. It does not require prior formal musical training.

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.

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.

More than 250 years after his death, J.S. Bach remains one of the most revered musicians in the Western tradition. What influences formed Bach's style? What makes his music embedded in its time and place, yet distinctive and instantly recognisable? This unit investigates the music of this iconic composer in its historical context, considering his training, cultural and religious environment, stylistic influences and ongoing legacy, and allows students to explore their own research interests relating to Bach's music.

This unit will explore the fantastic as a central aspect of romanticism in its various manifestations, including the uncanny, the daemonic and the alienated. In music, this meshes fruitfully with the fantasy as a genre, which is similarly dependent on the imagination and the evasion of clear boundaries. A range of Lieder, operas, symphonic and solo 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.

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 the music of 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. Students 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.

Composition and basso continuo manuals from the 17th and 18th centuries often describe music as the movement of parts, rather than progressions of chords. This approach focuses on voice leading primarily and harmony as its consequence, contrary to the theory of Rameau. Students will study different styles through the examination of relevant contemporary sources and put that knowledge into practice by emulating those styles in composition and performance. Offering a deep understanding of how Baroque and Classical composers conceived their music, this unit is intended to challenge the way that students listen to and play works within and outside of the canon.

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.

Music has been dramatically shaped and reshaped by every major change in communications technology in the 20th century from vinyl discs to spotify. In this unit of study we will analyse such issues as the ways in which the early recording industry transformed jazz, the blues and country music, how the presentation of music on radio and television changed the ways the music industry created new musical celebrities, and the challenges the music industry faces as digital technology transforms the creation, distribution and consumption of music.

This unit focuses not just on music but also on 'noise' and sounds both natural and man-made. By means of in-class experiments, field trips and 'audio diaries', students will explore the nature of sound; by means of lectures, readings and discussion, they will examine the many ways in which human beings engage - negatively as well as positively - with the sonic world around them.

This unit of study introduces students to philosophical questions about music and to thinking about music with philosophical methodology. The course visits some of the questions which have perplexed musicians and philosophers alike: How are beauty and music related? What does music tell us about time? What is a musical work? How do we listen? Is music related to language? This course enables all students of music and the liberal arts to understand music as a philosophically distinctive phenomenon.

Psychology of Music examines music cognition and behaviour to explore the way music is created, produced and perceived. This unit will introduce recent interdisciplinary research as a way to explore music as a social activity. It will consider the methods used by sociologists and psychologists to investigate music and encourage students to think conceptually about their own musical activities.

In this unit students aquire skills in how to analyse the forms and functions of songs in diverse cultures and genres. We examine lyrics, music and the different ways they combine; and how the language we speak shapes the way words are put to music. Student learn about the different roles song plays in societies and consider why singing is a universal human activity. Students will gain experience in song analysis and have the opportunity to apply these skills to their own song writing.

How did early American blues and country music develop in tandem? How was punk different in the US, the UK and Australia? What are the origins of the DJ culture? This unit of study presents a thematic overview of a wide variety of styles, movements and spectacles. It examines major genres of popular music, their stylistic features and historical antecedents as well as modes of reception and the role of popular music in everyday life. No formal music training is necessary.

This unit is an introductory survey of the history and aesthetics of film music from the late 1890s to the present day. Topics for discussion will include the dramatic function of music as an element of cinematic narrative, the codification of musical iconography in cinematic genres, the symbolic use of pre-existing music, and the evolving musical styles of film composers.

The range of media channels through which we experience popular music has proliferated in recent years. The emotive power of music is used to tell stories, sell products and connect people to one another. This unit of study will analyse the use of popular music in a broad range of multimedia forms from film and television to video games and the use of digital media to disseminate a multitude of musical multimedia productions.

How did the music of enslaved and marginalised people eventually become a dominant force in contemporary popular culture? This unit will examine the local reinvention of a wide variety of African American music in communities around the world. From soul and funk in West Africa to ska and reggae in the Caribbean, we will examine how music moves around the world and within local communities to make new forms of meaning.

The history of Australian popular music presents us with a long and complex heritage. It reflects, in its very constitution, the lives of those who create it and is underscored by the dynamic relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. This unit of study will explore the continuing experience and influence of a wide range of music made in Australia, from songlines to bush ballads and dance anthems, Countdown and Rage. We will examine hillbilly music of the 1930s, surf rock of the 60s, pub rock of the 70s, reggae, punk and indie rock of the 80s and 90s as well as the emergence of Australian dance music, hip hop and the multiplicity of styles and expressions that mark the contemporary music scene.

This course will survey the history and development of the musical (the combination of song, dialogue, dance and acting onstage) from its antecedents including operetta, singspiel, musical comedy, cabaret and revue to the present day, including Broadway/West End/international, book musicals, epic, through-composed, jukebox and rock influenced, political, didactic, biographical, dance, film and tv. Students will analyze the specific mechanics of the musical (i.e., music, lyrics, book, design, etc.) and the major historical movements from the nineteenth to twenty-first century as contextualized in particular musicals. Students will become familiar with key historical repertoire from 1850 to the present. Students will consider how the musical has interacted with, reflected and influenced social and political culture across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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 begins to answer these questions and provides an overview of musicology as an academic discipline. The readings cover the field of musicology from its beginnings in the 1880s up to the present day.

Every musical form worldwide exists within a tradition, and globalization has been crucial in shaping those traditions in the contemporary era. This course explores different ways that musical traditions and globalization intersect. It introduces key theoretical approaches to both globalization (including postcolonial perspectives) and the concept of musical tradition, and explores case studies including social media and music in the Pacific Islands, East African hip-hop, understanding globalization's influence on indigenous Australian musical traditions and historically informed Western art music performance.

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.

The act of performing music creates a multitude of social relationships between listeners, audiences, musicians, performers, and the industries and institutions that surround them. This subject will ask students to study acts of performance historically, theoretically, and observationally. They will examine a wide range of situations and circumstances and try to work out how the expression of music is also an expression, affirmation, and contestation of social power. This subject will appeal to those who wish to study subjects such as music, performance studies, sociology, anthropology, and gender and cultural studies. It cuts across all of these areas of inquiry in the attention that is paid to the complexity and subtlety of how music is perceived and experienced across multiple social scenes and communities. This subject is not about performance practice or assessment. Instead, it seeks to allow students to gain some insight into the experience of performance as multifaceted and perspectival.

Climate change is one of the most important global issues of our era, and one which is destined to have a major influence on the lives of subsequent generations. It is especially dependent upon our understandings of the environment, our place within it, and our views of our environmental responsibilities. In this unit, students will explore some of the incredible range of ways in which music, the environment and climate change and interwoven. They will be guided through lectures from musicians and researchers involved in the connection between music and the environment across the fields of ethnomusicology, composition, digital music technology, jazz and contemporary music, as well as by lectures and a workshop with Indigenous Australian cultural custodians. Through this unit, students will understand not only the ways that, for millennia, music has a central role in the way that humans record, transmit and promote understandings of many different aspects of the environment, but also how it functions today and how it may help in solving environmental problems of the future.

This unit of study deals with the different ways in which we comprehend music and with the different ways in which that comprehension might be explained. It deals with modes of hearing and musical analysis for the purpose of leading students towards a deeper knowledge of how music in various genres (ranging from the classical mainstream to the twentieth-century avant-garde, from Tin Pan Alley songs to punk rock and hip-hop) is understood. This is a required unit of study for a music major in an Arts degree.

Musicology Workshop Advanced provides a forum for discussion of musicological work and provides experience in the presentation of ideas and research. It also provides a broadening of students' experience in the field through attendance at the Conservatorium's fortnightly Musicology Colloquium Series lectures, presented by SCM staff and visiting national and international scholars speaking on a wide range of topics, as well as through class activities exploring areas such as research and writing skills, music criticism, visits to local libraries or archives, and conference attendance and reporting. Honours students also have the opportunity to build skills in leadership and influence by mentoring undergraduates taking Musicology Workshop 1 and 2.

This course provides an overview of major types of Western Classical solo vocal repertoire, from approximately 1600 to the present. It traces the evolution of important formal and stylistic commonalities and differences between individual composers and national characteristics. The course encourages students at a foundational level to recognise, analyse and culturally contextualise the forms they are performing and listening to.