Unit name | The Romantic Imagination |
---|---|
Unit code | MUSI30130 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Professor. Hibberd |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of Music |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
What function does the imagination play in our appreciation of music? This research seminar will consider the claims of the early romantics for music as a ‘pure’ art form, to be listened to with reverence, in relation to the tenacious hold of narrative, and the explosion in visual technologies that both mediated musical perception and permeated the language used to discuss its effects. Through a series of case studies we will explore music’s ability to evoke different voices, to negotiate between real and imaginary worlds, to move back and forwards through time and to engage our imaginations. And we will consider the critical strategies of historical commentators and modern scholars as well as our own responses. The main aims will be to understand ways in which music works in relation to other arts; and the meanings that emerge from the gap between music and its ‘texts’. Classes will include discussion, debates and listening/viewing.
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
Weekly two-hour lecture-seminar
David Charlton, ed. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings (Cambridge, 1989)
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, 1992)
James Johnson, Listening in Paris (Berkeley, 1995)
Deidre Loughridge, Haydn’s Sunrise, Beethoven’s Shadow (Chicago, 2016)
Ernest Newman, ed./trans., Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, from 1803 to 1865 (London, 1960)
Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA, 1995)