New Tendencies in Musical Creation
Code: 100661 ECTS Credits: 6| Degree | Type | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 2500240 Musicology | OT | 3 |
| 2500240 Musicology | OT | 4 |
Contact
- Name:
- German Gan Quesada
- Email:
- german.gan@uab.cat
Teaching groups languages
You can view this information at the end of this document.
Prerequisites
Students enrolling in this course should have successfully completed the courses “Anàlisi musical” and “La música dels segles XX i XXI” –or similar ones from other Musicology degrees–, provided the intimate connection and propedeutic nature of their contents with this course.
Objectives and Contextualisation
On successfully completing this course, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of the main trends of academic music composition from 1968 until the present time.
- Connect the discourses of Contemporary Music with their respective sociocultural, intellectual, aesthetic and scientific contexts.
- Make use of the most recent methodological proposals within the fields of the analysis and aesthetics of Contemporary Music.
- Provide suitable and systematical concepts and terminology in oral and written expositions on the contents of the subject.
- Highlight the role of female composers and musicians in Contemporary academic music composition.
Competences
- Musicology
- Critically analyse musical works from any of the points of view of the discipline of musicology.
- Identify and compare the different channels of reception and consumption of music in society and in culture in each period.
- Know and understand the historical evolution of music, its technical, stylistic, aesthetic and interpretative characteristics from a diachronic perspective.
- Recognise and appreciate musical manifestations in non-western, traditional, popular and urban cultures.
- Recognise the role of music in current society, its function in performances, its relationship with audio-visual culture, technology and informatics, and with leisure and cultural enterprises.
- Relate musical creations with their different contexts, differentiating between the social functions of music, its roles and that of the musician in society and in relation to other artistic manifestations.
- 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.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
- Students must be capable of communicating information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
- Students must have and understand knowledge of an area of study built on the basis of general secondary education, and while it relies on some advanced textbooks it also includes some aspects coming from the forefront of its field of study.
Learning Outcomes
- Address the analysis of musical creation in our time with the appropriate musicological tools and interdisciplinary approaches.
- Analysing a contemporary fact and relating it to its historical background.
- Analysing ideas about an artistic phenomenon in a given cultural context.
- Contextualise new tendencies in musical creation in general historical evolution and observe its incorporation in the sociopolitical panorama in which they are framed.
- Define the processes of periodisation and stylistic classification and usual typology in the historical conceptualisation of the musical fact.
- Examine the interrelationships between contemporary musical creation, within historical tradition, and other musical manifestations of the period under study (músicas del mundo, músicas populares urbanas).
- Identify the connections between current musical creation and the sociopolitical and cultural circumstancesticas in which it takes place.
- Interrelate technological and scientific changes in each period with the creation and reception of music.
- Localize and evaluate the role of music in the different sectors of contemporary societies according to the historical time and artistic objective.
- Prepare oral presentations on an analytical question and adapt them to the level and expectations of the audience or group.
- Present knowledge about the history, art or other cultural movements.
- Solve problems of a methodological nature in the area of musicology.
- Use basic vocabularyand tools to describe and transmit knowledge acquired through effective oral presentations of musicological content adapted to the audience.
Content
This course is structured into the following units:
Unit 1. Dialogues with musical tradition(s): intertextual strategies.
Unit 2: The persistence of expression: Simplicity and Complexities at stake.
Unit 3. Neo- and Minimalist attitudes: towards a reinterpretation of harmonic and rhythmic systems.
Unit 4: New harmonic worlds: spectralism and microtonality.
Unit 5: Open music and new notational resources: the space in/of the score.
Unit 6: Homo tecnologicus: electronic and computer tools for music composition.
Unit 7: The importance of gesture (I): the microsyntax of timbre
Unit 8: The importance of gesture (II): musical action and scene.
Unit 9: Crossbreeding with “other” kinds of music: only sideways?
Activities and Methodology
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Theoretical and practical sessions | 42 | 1.68 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 |
| Type: Supervised | |||
| Individual and Group supervision | 4.5 | 0.18 | |
| Supervision for the development of the analysis seminars | 20 | 0.8 | 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| Group meetings - Group task | 25 | 1 | 1, 10, 12, 13 |
| Individual study and review of course materials | 20 | 0.8 | |
| Search of bibliographical and audiovisual sources | 15 | 0.6 | 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 |
- Lectures will offer a general introduction (both aesthetic and stylistic) into the contents of the subject and will be complementary with the analytical commentary of a selection of scores and/or music examples in each exposed unit. Flipped classroom methodology will be used in the sessions of oral expositions of group tasks.
- Throughout the course, attending certain concerts and performances – scheduled in the Vallès Occidental or in Barcelona, such as the Festival Mixtur or the Auditori-Sampler Sèries – will be recommended, related to the contents of the subject; if needed, they will be prepared through an in-class debate and discussed. Though not a compulsory assessment activity, students are granted the possibility of improving their final grades by up to an additional point, provided that they submit, at the end of the course, a brief report of these activities.
- The Moodle class room is the reference space for every activity of the subject and the only repository for its teaching materials (always respecting (C) laws) and related communications; any question concerning the subject is to be submitted, therefore, through the Moodle’s mail and the lecturer will not answer enquiries sent to his main E-mail address.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group task | 40% | 0 | 0 | 1, 5, 7, 12, 13 |
| Intermediate exam | 30% | 22 | 0.88 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 |
| Written final exam | 30% | 1.5 | 0.06 | 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13 |
Assessable activities are as follows:
- Written intermediate and final exams, of theoretical-practical nature [scheduled dates: April 11, 2025; June 6, 2025].
- Preparation of a group task (3-4 students) on a topic related to the contents of the subject. The date of the oral presentation [between 16-20 June, 2025] will be determined at the beginning of the activities, as well as the format and approach, supervised by the responsible teaching staff.
All assessment activities are obligatory and independent. Following the academic schedule established by the Faculty, students may retake assessment activities they have failed or compensate for any they have missed, provided that those they have actually performed account for a minimum of 70% of the subject’s final grade, and after discussing this possibility with the lecturer. The highest grade for these retaken activities is 6.
When publishing final grades prior to recording them on students’ transcripts, the lecturer will provide written notification of a date and time for reviewing assessment activities. Students must arrange reviews in agreement with the lecturer.
In the event that a student has only participated in assessment activities accounting for just 30% or less of the course grade, their work will be classified as “not assessed” on their transcript.
IMPORTANT NOTICES
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.
SINGLE ASSESSMENT [pre-scheduled date: June 5, 2025]: 1) Concept and historical facts test [30%]; 2) Historical/contextual test [30%]; 3) Review of a musicological chapter or article [40%]. The same assessment method and grade averages will be used in the event of retaken or compensated failed activities, on the date established by the Faculty to this purpose.
Bibliography
N. B. References of dictionaries, encyclopaedias and monographic books or studies on composers are excluded from this general bibliography.
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Software
Does not apply.
Language list
Information on the teaching languages can be checked on the CONTENTS section of the guide.