Rudiments of Music Theory and Interpretation of Early Music
Code: 42201 ECTS Credits: 10| Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4312637 Musicology, Musical Education and Interpretation of Early Music | OT | 0 | 0 |
Contact
- Name:
- Germán Gan Quesada
- Email:
- German.Gan@uab.cat
Use of Languages
- Principal working language:
- spanish (spa)
External teachers
- Agostino Cirillo
- Antonio Ezquerro Esteban
- Eva Martínez Marín
- Javier Artigas Pina (coord. ESMUC)
- Josep Borràs i Roca
- Juan Carlos Asensio Palacios
- Xavier Blanch Mezquiriz
Prerequisites
There are no compulsory requirements for the inscription in this subject, beyond the general administration requirements for the master inscription. Intermediate notions of music theory and interpretation are, however, highly advised.
Objectives and Contextualisation
1) Knowledge of the origins of the Early Music movement.
2) Knowledge of the theoretical foundations of musical performance.
3) Knowledge of the specific theoretical criteria for the interpretation of Early music according to the movement known as historically informed performance.
4) Development of a personal critical sense regarding the theoretical foundations of the interpretation of Early Music.
5) Handling of different types of primary sources as a driver in the creation of an interpretive project.
6) Communication, both orally and in writing, and according to an adequate scientific methodology, of the most relevant musicological and interpretive aspects developed through the different pre-established practices.
Competences
- Analyze and interpret historical sources and documents relating to music.
- Applying critical projects musicological research and interpretive projects.
- Conduct research archive, periodicals and literature related to the field of music.
- Consider innovative projects musicological research and interpretive projects.
- Distinguish and apply different orientations performing early music
- Working in interdisciplinary contexts related to musicology, music education and interpretation.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply a simple way to obtain these resources of different kinds of data from early music.
- Apply critical capacity in musicological research projects and interpretive projects.
- Assess the suitability of each analytical and interpretive regarding the issues addressed in the interpretation of early music and in relation to each type of historical and documentary source methodology.
- Discerning the different methodologies and resources to obtain basic data on early music file.
- Distinguish the adequacy and implementation methodologies appropriate to each type of interpretative research project on early music.
- Identify the basic methodological procedures apply different perspectives to research on early music.
- Propose innovative projects proposed in musicological research and interpretive projects.
- Working in interdisciplinary contexts related to musicology, music education and interpretation.
Content
• Theoretical and critical foundations of musical interpretation.
• The Early Music movement: origins and evolution. The International and Hispanic panorama.
• Organology of ancient instruments: pitches, tunings, consorts.
• Analysis of historical texts on musical performance.
• Critique of studies on historically informed performance.
• Practical cases of interpretation.
• Direct reading of treatises and practical experimentation in exemplifications and concrete and applicable interpretive problems.
Methodology
Sessions will include the following:
• Analysis of various evolutionary examples of historically informed performance
• Critical comments on proposed readings
• Masterclasses
Activities
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Analysis of different listening examples of Historically Informed Performance | 12.5 | 0.5 | 1, 5, 4, 6, 3 |
| Masterclasses with ICT support | 18.75 | 0.75 | 1, 2, 5, 4, 6, 7, 8, 3 |
| Type: Supervised | |||
| Critical comments on proposed readings | 25 | 1 | 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 3 |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| Personal study of theoretical treatises and comparison between different HIP performances | 93.75 | 3.75 | 1, 2, 5, 4, 6, 7, 3 |
Assessment
Assessable activities are as follows:
a. Elaborating a critical comment on texts about interpretive practice (overall weight in the final grade: 30%).
b. Elaborating a critical comment on auditions of interpretative practice (overall weight in the final grade: 30%).
c. Carrying out a research work on one or several chapters of a primary source of theoretical nature and in relation to the practice of musical interpretation (40%).
Through an attendance to/participation in the sessions higher than 80%, the student could get up to 1 additional point in his/her grade.
Following the academic schedule established by the Faculty, students may retake assessment activities they have failed or compensate for any they have missed, and after discussing this possibility with the lecturer. The highest mark for these retaken activities is 5.
When publishing final marks prior to recording them on students’ transcripts, the lecturer will provide written notification of a date and time for reviewing assessment activities, which, as a rule, will be established no later than fifteen days after the ordinary assessment activities and scheduled onsite or in an online way (through TEAMS or similar academic software). Students must arrange reviews in agreement with the lecturer.
In the event of the assessment activities a student has performed accounting for less than 60% of the subject’s final mark or his/her attendance to/participation in the sessions do not reach at least 80%, their work will be classified as “not assessable” on their transcript.
IMPORTANT REMARKS
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the ESMUC's virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.
Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical commentary on music examples | 30% | 32.5 | 1.3 | 1, 2, 5, 4, 3 |
| Research Project | 40% | 35 | 1.4 | 1, 2, 5, 4, 6, 7, 8, 3 |
| Text commentary | 30% | 32.5 | 1.3 | 1, 4, 6, 8, 3 |
Bibliography
BARTEL, Dietrich. Andreas Werckmeister’s Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse A Well-Tempered Universe. Lanham (Maryland), Lexington Books, 2018.
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BENT, Margaret. “The grammar of early music preconditions” en Tonal Structures in Early Music (ed. COLLINS-JUDD, Cristle). New York, Garland Publishing, 1998.
BUELOW, George J. The Late Baroque Era From the 1680s to 1740. Londres, MacMillan Press, 1993.
BUTT, John. Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
BUTT, John. Playing With History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
CARROZZO, Mario. “Music only became autonomous when it stopped being useful. Richard Taruskin e la storiografia musicale postmoderna”, Il saggiatore musicale, vol. 21, 2014.
COLLINS-JUDD, Cristle. Musical Theory in the Renaissance. Londres. Ashgate, 2013.
COLLINS, Timothy A. “Reactions against the Virtuoso. Instrumental Ornamentation Practice and the Stile Moderno”, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, vol 23-2, 2001.
CYPESS, Rebecca. Curious and Modern Inventions Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy. Chicago, University of Chicago, 2016.
CYPESS, Rebecca. “Esprimere la voce humana. Connections between Vocal and Instrumental Music by Italian Composers of the Early Seventeenth Century”, The Journal of Musicology, vol. 27-2, 2010.
CYPESS, Rebecca. “Frescobaldi's Toccate e partite... libro primo (1615–1616) as a pedagogical text. Artisanship,imagination, and the process of learning”, Recercare, vol. 27-1.2, 2015.
DEMEYERE, Ewald. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Art of Fugue. Performance practice based on german eighteenth-century theory. Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2013.
DEVIE, Dominique. Le Tempérement Musical. Philosophie, Histoire, Théoire et Pratique. Beziers, Société de Musicologie du Languedoc, 1990.
DREYFUS, Laurence. “Early Music Defended against Its Devotees. A Theory of Historical Performance in the Twentieth Century” en The Musical Quarterly, vol. 69-3, 1983.
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GARRAT, James. Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination. Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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HAYNES, Bruce. A History of Performing Pitch. The history of A. Lanham (Maryland), Scarecrow Press, 2002.
HAYNES, Bruce. The End of Early Music. A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.
JOHNSTON, Gregory S. A Heinrich Schütz Reader Letters and Documents in Translation. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
KELLY, Thomas Forrest. Early music: a very short introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.
KEVORKIAN, Tanya. Baroque piety religion, society, and music in Leipzig, 1650-1750. Londres, Ashgate, 2007.
KITE-POWELL, Jeffery. A Performers Guide to Renaissance Music. Bloomington (Indiana), Indiana University Press, 2007.
KIVY, Peter. Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance. Ithaca (New York), Cornell University Press, 1995.
KUIJKEN, Barthold. The Notation Is Not the Music. Reflections. Bloomington (Indiana), Indiana University Press, 2013.
LEDBETTER, David. “On the Manner of Playing the Adagio. Neglected Features of a Genre”, Early Music, vol. 29-1, 2001.
McCLARY, Susan. Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression. Toronto, University of Toronto, 2007.
MUGGELSTONE, Erica. “Guido Adler's The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology”, Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 13, 1981.
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PROD'HOMME, Jacques Gabriel y BAKER, Theodore. “A Musical Map of Paris”, The Musical Quarterly, vol. 18-4, 1932.
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WILLIAMS, Peter. “Some thoughts on Italian elements in certain music of Johann Sebastian Bach”, Recercare, vol. 11, 1999.
WOOLEY, Andrew and KITCHEN, John. Interpreting Historical Keyboard Music Sources, Contexts and Performance. Londres, Ashgate, 2013.
If needed, additional bibliographical references will be provided for each session.