Details for MUS451 Musicology

Music enriches our lives, yet its complexity often goes unexamined. This unit will equip students with analytical tools to dissect music across all its forms—whether performed, recorded, or written. From enhancing aural skills to critiquing musicological methods, students will learn to interpret music within varied historical, social, and cultural contexts.

Quick Stats

• Currently offered by Alphacrucis: Yes
• Course code: MUS451
• Credit points: 10

Subject Coordinator

Prerequisite

Nil

Unit Content

Outcomes

1. Consider bias-aware strategies to appraising music;
2. Develop aural skills to assess, and oral skills to explain musical works;
3. Analyse music as encountered in a broad range of historical, social, cultural, performative, notational, and mediated contexts; and
4. Critique common methods and methodologies for analysing music.

Subject Content

• Introduction to musical analysis
• Why music matters
• Personal musical biases
• Aural perception skills
• Musicology and Historical Musicology
• Ethnomusicology and Ethnography
• Theomusicology
• Popular Music Studies and Vernacular Music Studies
• Sociomusicology and Phenomenology
• Liturgical and Ritual Studies, Music Semiology
• Interdisciplinarity in studying music
• Limits of studying music, and revision

This course may be offered in the following formats

• Face to Face (on site)
• E-learning (online)
• Intensive

Please consult your course prospectus or enquire about how and when this course will be offered next at Alphacrucis University College.

Assessment Methods

• Forums (25%)
• Oral Presentation (25%)
• Major Essay (50%)

Prescribed Text

• Primary readings provided