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Aesthetics of Music I

Code: 100636 ECTS Credits: 6
2024/2025
Degree Type Year
2500240 Musicology OB 2

Contact

Name:
Josep Maria Gregori Cifre
Email:
josepmaria.gregori@uab.cat

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites.


Objectives and Contextualisation

This subject aims to give students a knowledge of the sources of musical thought in the Ancient World of Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, providing the methodological tools necessary for a cognitive approach that respects both the nature of these sources and their philosophical context.

- To reflect on the origins of music, its needs and its functions.

- To reflect on the universal phenomenon of inspiration

- To be familiar with the mythological foundations related to music

- To have access to the parameters of symbolic and mythological thought pertaining to the sources of the ancient world

- To be familiar with the basic philosophical and authorial sources of the ancient and medieval worlds.


Competences

  • Make changes to methods and processes in the area of knowledge in order to provide innovative responses to society's needs and demands.
  • Recognise trends in thinking, in all its orders, in relation to music.
  • Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Commenting on literary texts, applying the acquired tools and taking into account the historical and sociocultural context.
  2. Develop a critical capacity for interpreting musical texts of an aesthetic nature.
  3. Develop habits for transfer to the ambit of musical dissemination and information the musical training acquired.
  4. Evaluate the evolution of the aesthetics of music from a diachronic perspective.
  5. Identify situations in which a change or improvement is needed.
  6. Identifying normative, stylistic or argumentative errors in a text.
  7. Integrate knowledge acquired in the production of clear and concise appropriate to the academic and specialist communication.
  8. Make predictions and infrerences on the adscription of the content of a text to a certain aesthetic trend.
  9. Making predictions and inferences about the content of a text.
  10. Organise the content of an aesthetic musical text, identifying the main and secondary ideas .
  11. Produce correct, precise and clear argumental and terminological writing of knowledge acquired, both in the area of musical specialisation and dissemination.
  12. Propose new experience-based methods or alternative solutions.
  13. Relate msucical creation and reception to the aesthetic and literary foundation of each period.
  14. Structure ideas taking into account the different parts of an academic text.
  15. Use strategies which help to plan and develop ideas and to summarise and evaluate the written text.

Content

1. The Origin of Music: Magical Need or Aesthetic Function?

2- Music and Poiesis: Approximation to the Phenomenon of Inspiration.

3.- Music and the Sacred: Inspiration, Revelation and the Ontological Value of Music.

4.- Music and Myth in the Greek Tradition. The Gift of the Muses.

5.- Music in The Odyssey. The Sirens’ Song.

6.- The Myth of Orpheus in the Ancient World and its Reinterpretation in the Context of Renaissance Humanism.

7.- Pythagorism and the Harmony of the Spheres.

8.- Music in the Thought of Plato and Aristotle.

9.- Musical Thought in the Greek Period and in Roman Culture.

10.- Music in Christian Thought from Clement of Alexandria to Isidore of Sevilla.
 


Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Presentation of items 1 to 10 of the syllabus 39 1.56 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15
Tutoring 28 1.12
Type: Supervised      
Text commentary work 18 0.72 1, 3, 11, 14
Type: Autonomous      
Personal study 25 1 2, 7, 9, 10, 14
Read the bibliography 25 1 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10
Reading of short texts proposed in class 10 0.4 1, 2, 6, 9

1.- The role of the teacher in this subject is to accompany students in their discovery of the items on the syllabus, provoking academic debate and guiding their readings on course content. Through the broad interconnectedness of its topics, this subject facilitates opening the identification of concordances between concepts that, although distant chronologically, maintain points of contact as regards the message of their discourse. The teacher’s challenge is to help student cultivate induction as an additional tool for accessing knowledge, fostering the use of analogical thinking, seeking to go beyond the linearity of deductive and rational currents. Essentially, it seeks to approach mythological thinking from an immersion in its own parameters.

2.- This subject has a significant amount of theoretical content; teaching time is therefore divided into two parts, in order to combine lecture-based explanation of the fundamental contents (70 minutes), followed by the promotion of a reflective and participatory dialogue amongst students on the subject dealt with in class (20 minutes).

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
1.- Three continuous evaluations. 2.- Attendance 1.-90%. 2.-10% 5 0.2 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Evaluation procedures:

1.- Class attendance, in-person classes, controlled by the teacher. Weight in qualification: 10%

2.- First evaluation: written test. Lessons 1 to 3. Weight in qualification: 30%

3.- Second evaluation: written test. Lessons 4 to 6. Weight in qualification: 30%

4.- Third evaluation: written test. Lessons 7 to 10. Weight in qualification: 30%

Re-evaluation process:

The students who have passed one or two of the three subject assessments with an average grade os 3,5 will be able to participate in the re-evaluation process.

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 UAB’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.

The Single-assessment option:
										
											
										
											Evidence 1: Topics 1 to 3. Weight in the subject content: 30%
										
											
										
											Evidence 2: Topics 4 to 6. Weight in the subject content: 30%
										
											
										
											Evidence 3: Topics 7 to 10. Weight in the subject content: 30%
 

 

 


Bibliography

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ANDRÉS, Ramón. El mundo en el oído. El nacimiento de la música en la cultura. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2008.

ANDRÉS, Ramón. Diccionario de música, mitología, magia y religión. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2012.

ANDRÉS, Ramón. Filosofía y consuelo de la música. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2020.

AA. VV. Musique & Antiquité. Actes du colloque d’Aimiens. Paris: Les belles lettres, 2006.

AA. VV. Musique, sacré et profane. Paris: Cité de la musique, 2007.

AA.VV. La música en el Món Antic i el món antic de la música. Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 2014.

BARAN, K. «Seeing the Divine through Music in Hinduism and Early Christianity», Humanity and Society, 17 (1993), 4, p. 467-487.

BARKER, A. Greek Musical Writings. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1984, 2 vols.

BAYLE, L (Ed), Musique, sacré et profane. Paris: Cité de la Musique, 2007.

BEAUFILS, M. Musique du son. Musique du verbe. Paris: Klincsieck, 1994.

BEGBIE, Jeremy S. Theology, Music and Time. Cambridge, 2005.

BÉLIS, Annie. Aristoxène de Tarente et Aristote: le Traité d’harmonique. Paris: Klincksieck, 1986.

BENSON, Dave. Music: A Mathematical Offering. Cambridge, 2013.

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BURKERT, Walter. De Homero a los Magos. La tradición oral en la cultura griega. Barcelona: Acantilado,2002.

CAMPBELL, Joseph. El héroe de las mil caras. Psicoanálisis del mito. Madrid: FCEE, 2017.

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DUCH, Lluís. Mite i interpretació. Barcelona: PAMSA, 1996.

DURING, J. Musique et extase. L’audition mystique dans la tradition soufie. Paris: Albin Michel, 1988.

DURING, J. «L’autre oreille:le pouvoir mystique de la musique au Moyen-Orient», Cahiers de muqies traditionnelles, 3 (1990), p. 57-78.

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LALOY, L. Aristoxène de Tarente et la musique de l’Antiquité. Genève: Minkoff Reprint,1973.

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Software

Without specific computer application.

Language list

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(PAUL) Classroom practices 1 Catalan first semester morning-mixed
(TE) Theory 1 Catalan first semester morning-mixed