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Schubert Song on Record
Course description
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An introduction to the study of performance style and expressivity, exemplified in 100 years of Schubert song on record.
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| Overview |
| The study of music in performance is a new field for musicology, and
one with enormous potential. The radical changes in performance style, since
recording began at the end of the 19th century, raise a number of issues
fundamental to our view of what music is. 1) They force a re-evaluation
of the relationship between works and performances, suggesting that music
is far less fixed than ideologies of the musical work have led us to believe.
2) By showing that musical expressivity changes, they force us to consider
the meaning of expressive gestures, and how that meaning is signalled. As
a consequence, 3) they raise questions about, and shed light upon, the mechanisms
underlying music perception, mechanisms studied empirically, and with strikingly
comparable results, by psychologists. A musicology of performance touches
on many other fields, including music analysis, the history of recording
and its technologies, philosophy of music, psychology of music perception,
anthropology, sociology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. As one
of the repertoires most favoured by record companies since the beginning
of 20th century, recordings of Schubert's songs offer innumerable opportunites
to study questions of musical communication.
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| Assessment |
| 1 5000-word project by 15 September 2007: 100%
Topics will be selected in consultation with DLW. A first draft will be given as a presentation in class, and will then be refined before submission as an essay for assessment. As part of that refining process, written drafts should be submitted not later than 7 May 2007. |
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