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Bachelor'S Degree Final Project

Code: 100648 ECTS Credits: 6
2025/2026
Degree Type Year
Musicology OB 4

Contact

Name:
Jordi Roquer Gonzalez
Email:
jordi.roquer@uab.cat

Teaching groups languages

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


Prerequisites

It is mandatory for the registration of the Final Project that the student has completed at least two thirds (160) of the total credits of the Degree Program of Studies.


Objectives and Contextualisation

According to the UAB’s Academic Regulations (Chapter III, Section 1, Article 39), the Bachelor’s Degree Final Project (TFG) “has as its essential objective the demonstration, by the student, of their command and application of the knowledge, competences and skills that define the degree.” As a general rule, the TFG must be an academic, autonomous and individual project, either theoretical or applied, supervised by teaching staff from the corresponding degree programme. It must include, at a minimum, tasks such as bibliographic search and review, theoretical and methodological exposition, reading and integration of data and information, production of relevant content, writing, and presentation. The format may vary depending on the specific learning outcomes of each degree. The TFG may also be developed using methodologies such as Service Learning or Challenge-Based Learning. In such cases, the project must follow the regulations established by the Service Learning Office.


Competences

  • Apply technological and informatic media (internet, data bases, specific editing software and sound processing, etc.) to the discipline of musicology.
  • Define relevant musicological research topics and manage the appropriate methods and sources to carry out the research.
  • Demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the research methodologies used in the field of musicology which can allow access to postgraduate and doctoral studies.
  • Demonstrate the ability to work autonomously or in teams to achieve planned objectives, where appropriate in multicultural and interdisciplinary contexts.
  • Know and understand the historical evolution of music, its technical, stylistic, aesthetic and interpretative characteristics from a diachronic perspective.
  • Make changes to methods and processes in the area of knowledge in order to provide innovative responses to society's needs and demands.
  • Relate concepts and information from different humanistic, scientific and social disciplines, especially the interactions which are established between music and philosophy, history, art, literature and anthropology.
  • 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 develop the necessary learning skills to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
  • 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.
  • Take account of social, economic and environmental impacts when operating within one's own area of knowledge.
  • Take sex- or gender-based inequalities into consideration when operating within one's own area of knowledge.
  • Use digital tools and interpret specific documentary sources critically.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Accurately drawing up normative texts.
  2. Analyse a situation and identify points for improvement.
  3. Analyse the sustainability indicators of the academic and professional activities in this field, integrating the social, economic and environmental dimensions.
  4. Analysing the recipients of an artistic phenomenon in a specific cultural context.
  5. Apply knowledge acqured in emerging areas of musicology, both in the field of historical musicology and in that of urban , popular tradition and non-western music.
  6. Apply scientific methodology in musicology and in the design and execution of research.
  7. Apply the conceptualisation of philosophy, history, literature and anthropology to musical research.
  8. Assess the reliability of sources, select relevant data and contrast information.
  9. Be familiar with all the computer tools specific to musicollogy and know how to apply them correctly in projects.
  10. Carry out searches for the most appropriate bibliographic materials and primary sources, using the UAB search and online consultation tools.
  11. Carrying out a planning for the development of a subject-related work.
  12. Carrying out oral presentations using an appropriate academic vocabulary and style.
  13. Communicate using language that is not sexist or discriminatory.
  14. Consider the subject as a whole and identify the context in which the processes studied are inscribed and their interrelationship with the elements and factors that are involved in their sociohistorical development.
  15. Effectively express and textual argumentative applying formal procedures and scientific texts.
  16. Establishing relationships between science, philosophy, art, religion, politics, etc.
  17. For work and consultations use computer tools specific to ethnomusicology and, in particular, to the Mediterranean area.
  18. Identify and critically assemble the basic bibliography that has shaped the field of study.
  19. Identify situations in which a change or improvement is needed.
  20. Integrate knowledge acquired in the production of clear and concise appropriate to the academic and specialist communication.
  21. Make ethical use of information, especially when it is of a personal nature.
  22. Manage information leading to the proposal and execution fo musicological research.
  23. Plan work effectively, individually or in groups, in order to achieve the objectives set.
  24. Producing a written text that is grammatically and lexically correct.
  25. Producing an individual work that specifies the work plan and timing of activities.
  26. Propose innovation with respect to research topcs in the area of musicology.
  27. Put into practice the methodological knowledge acquired in the first phase of bibliographical and documentary research.
  28. Solve problems of a methodological nature in the area of musicology.
  29. Solving problems autonomously.
  30. Submitting works in accordance with both individual and small group demands and personal styles.
  31. Use specific computer tools (internet and international data bases) in the study of musicology and musical iconography.
  32. Use the appropriate terminology in the construction of an academic text.
  33. Work in a team, respecting different opinions.
  34. Write critical papers on musicology that are planned and organised efficiently.

Content

The usual format of the Bachelor’s Degree Final Project (TFG) is a written essay. The topic is open, but it must be approved by the assigned tutor.

Below is a list of the areas of specialisation of the teaching staff in the Music Area:

Pablo Acosta – Medieval Romance literatures; religious literature; music and literature; rituality; history of emotions; cultural history.
Pau Aguilera – Music and digital culture; urban popular musics; popular music and gender; queer identities.
Alejandro Arribas – Popular musics and national/linguistic identities; traditional musics in the 21st century; popular music and gender; popular music and territory.
Diego Alonso – 20th-century musics; musical analysis.
Jaume Ayats – Ethnomusicology; collective singing; oral history.
Carles Badal – Musical heritage, databases and data analysis; ecclesiastical music from the 18th to 20th centuries; relations between music and technology.
Maria Incoronata Colantuono – Medieval music; medieval notation; liturgical chant; liturgical-musical books; liturgical and oral tradition repertoires.
Francesc Cortès – Opera and lyric repertoire; music and national identities; music management; music in the Romantic period and the 20th century; song (lied) and text–music relations; 19th- and 20th-century musical heritage.
Xavier Daufí – Music in 18th-century Catalonia; musical rhetoric in the Catalan Baroque; studies on the villancico and related genres; music during the Enlightenment.
Publio Delgado – Jazz and modern music; film musicals; symphonic analysis and orchestration techniques; Brazilian popular music; music management and production.
Germán Gan – Contemporary musical aesthetics; avant-garde music creation; music under Francoism.
Sergi González – Digital humanities; Renaissance instrumental music; ethnomusicology; traditional Catalan music; music and culture; urban musicology; sound studies.
Andrea Gutiérrez – Sonic reconstruction of urban space; ritual reception and participation; social meaning of sound; sound documentation in historical archives.
Gabrielle Kaufman – Performance analysis; recordings, reception and musical perception; music psychology.
Tess Knighton – Music and culture in Spain and Portugal from the 15th to the late 17th century.
Lídia López – Music and cinema; music and audiovisual media; music and war.
Sílvia Martínez – Ethnomusicology; urban popular musics; music and gender; postcolonial and decolonial perspectives in music studies.
Francesc Orts – 15th- and 16th-century music (especially instrumental ensembles); urban musicology; historical soundscape; civic celebrations: processions and royal entries.
Lola Peña – Urban musicology; gender studies; women in history; music and culture in the early modern period; musical identities; sociology of music.
Aurèlia Pessarrodona – Aesthetics; musical heritage; history of opera; musical dramaturgy; music semiotics; 18th-century music.
Jordi Roquer – Popular musics; music production; analysis of recorded music; interactions between technology and sound aesthetics.

The length of the TFG must be between 10,000 and 12,000 words, excluding appendices, acknowledgements and bibliography. Under no circumstances may the main body of text exceed 12,000 words. This length corresponds approximately to 30–40 pages,depending on the formatting guidelines below.

The document must be written using a standard font (Times New Roman, Garamond, Calibri or Arial), size 12 for the main text, size 10 for footnotes, and size 11 for long quotations separated from the main body. Line spacing should be 1.5, and margins must be between 1.5 and 3 cm. Images, graphs and tables included in the body of the text count towards the established word limit.


Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Supervised      
Supervision process and follow-up 40 1.6 4, 7, 14, 1, 24, 25, 16, 11, 15, 32, 20, 30, 34, 28
Type: Autonomous      
Preparation of the oral defense 25 1 12, 30, 9, 29
Preparation of the written version of the project 50 2 4, 7, 6, 14, 1, 24, 25, 16, 15, 10, 32, 22, 20, 26, 9, 28, 31, 17
Search for bibliographic information / Field work / Analysis of primary sources 25 1 11, 10, 22, 9, 29, 28, 31, 17

Given the nature of the Bachelor's Degree Final Project (TFG), no collective directed activities or mandatory in-person sessions are scheduled beyond the oral defence. The supervision of the project is carried out through individual tutorials with the assigned tutor and via the institutional TFG monitoring platform: https://tfe.uab.cat.

This platform is the official tool for managing the supervision process and includes several new features that promote a structured and transparent follow-up of the project. Both students and tutors commit to using it actively to:

  • Record the agreements made during the first meeting (December), including objectives, work plan, and calendar of partial submissions.

  • Document the tutorials held, including date, duration, and a brief summary of the topics discussed.

  • Send and review working documents throughout the various development phases.

  • Formalise the tutor’s validation of the TFG before the final submission.

  • Consult the supervision history and registered comments from both the tutor and the student.

It is the student's responsibility to keep the information updated and to meet the agreed milestones. Tutorials may be in-person, online, or hybrid, depending on the preferences of the parties involved. Failure to meet the agreed deadlines or to document progress on the platform may result in the project being deemed unfit for evaluation.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
In May, the TFG coordination team will hold an informational session for third-year students.

Second half of September: the coordination team will publish an indicative list of topics (and, where applicable, specific lines linked to particular tutors) via the subject’s Moodle page and the degree’s official web page.

First half of October: enrolled students will formally request their TFG topic or area, based on the published list. If desired, they may propose their own topic and express tutor preferences. The request must be submitted using a Word document available on the subject’s Moodle page. Students must complete this form correctly and re-upload it to Moodle. It is advisable to include several proposals with different tutor preferences.

First half of November: the TFG coordination will publish (via Moodle and the tracking platform) the allocation of topics and tutors. Once the proposals have been received and discussed by the Teaching Committee, tutors will be assigned based on the compatibility of research profiles, the teaching load of tutors, the suggested topics or areas, and the balance of workload distribution. Upon prior consultation with the assigned tutors and the TFG coordination, co-supervision may be arranged between teaching staff from the Musicology degree and lecturers from other degrees at the UAB or from other Catalan universities, when the chosen topic requires it.

Early June: final deadline for submitting the project to tutors (the exact date will be announced one month in advance).

Mid-June: publication of the oral defence panels (dates and schedules will be announced in advance).

Late June: oral defences.

Mid-July: final closing of the course grades.

The teaching staff responsible for this course act as general coordinators. Their responsibilities are limited to preparing the annual course guide, managing the overall organisation of the course, setting the calendar, and supervising the processes of tutor assignment, tribunal organisation for oral defences, and final grade submission. They will not participate in topic selection or the initial phase of assessment, except, of course, in the case of TFGs they personally supervise.

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
Definitive version of the Project 60% 10 0.4 13, 12, 30, 21, 29
Oral defense 40% 0 0 3, 4, 2, 7, 5, 6, 13, 14, 1, 24, 25, 16, 11, 15, 10, 32, 22, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 30, 21, 9, 34, 29, 28, 33, 31, 17, 8

The assessment of the Bachelor’s Final Project (TFG) is divided into two distinct phases: supervision and evaluation of the written work (60%) and the oral presentation before a panel (40%).

1. Assessment of the written work (60%)

The supervision process of the written work is carried out in coordination with the assigned supervisor. While the internal timeline may be adjusted by mutual agreement, three mandatory submissions are required:

  • Initial submission: 10% (deadline: 20 December)

  • Intermediate submission: 15% (deadline: 31 March)

  • Final submission: 35% (also assessed by the panel)

Students who fail to meet all three submission deadlines will be deemed Not Assessable.

The tutor's approval is an essential requirement for the presentation of the final degree project.

2. Assessment of the oral presentation (40%)

The oral presentation will be given before a panel composed of members of the department's teaching staff, one of whom will be the student’s supervisor. Students will have 15 minutes to present their TFG and must respond to questions and suggestions from the panel.

The following competencies will be assessed:

  • Quality of oral expression

  • Quality of presentation materials

  • Adherence to the established time limit

  • Clear and coherent structure of the presentation

  • Ability to respond with reasoned arguments to the panel’s interventions

Students must submit a copy of their TFG to each member of the panel by the deadline established in the official calendar. Both the tracking application and the course Moodle include the corresponding assessment rubrics, which may be consulted at any time.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

  1. Both phases of the assessment must be passed independently in order to obtain an overall grade for the course.

  2. If a student formally disagrees with their final mark, they may request a review process involving both the assigned supervisor and the course coordinator.

  3. The TFG is subject to a single assessment period (June) and cannot be resat. Exceptionally, students who have previously requested to sit the final assessment period through Academic Management (generally between October and December) may submit their TFG in the February session. To request this final assessment period, students must be enrolled in all remaining credits required to complete the degree.

  4. If a clear case of plagiarism is detected at any point during the assessment process (copying, unauthorised use of artificial intelligence,etc.), the TFG will receive a mark of zero, in accordance with the academic integrity commitment students accept upon enrolment. In line with Model 2 (restricted use of AI) as outlined in the course protocol approved by the Academic Affairs Committee on 15/03/2024, the use of AI technologies is permitted solely for bibliographic or informational searches, text correction, or translation tasks. These uses must be discussed and agreed upon with the supervisor.

  5. Distinctions (MH) are awarded only during the ordinary June session. To grant an MH, panel members must propose it unanimously at the time of signing the final marks and record it in the relevant section of the report. If the number of proposed distinctions exceeds the maximum allowed according to UAB’s general assessment regulations, the Degree Coordination Team will appoint a committee of three members to determine the final award based on the following criteria:

    a. Overall mark for the TFG (up to 60%)
    b. Average academic record of the student for the last two years (3rd and 4th years) (up to 20%)
    c. Evidence from the first phase of the assessment process, including achievement of rubric criteria and compliance with the TFG requirements, features and format set out in this course guide (up to 20%)

  6. The TFG is not eligible for the single assessment system.

 


Bibliography

BEARD, David - Kenneth GLOAG (eds.) Musicology: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2005.

CHAILLEY, Jacques. Compendio de Musicología. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991 (1958).

CHIANTORE, Luca - Áurea DOMÍNGUEZ - Sílvia MARTÍNEZ. Escribir sobre música. Barcelona: Musikeon Books, 2016.

ECO, Umberto. Cómo se hace una tesis doctoral. Barcelona: Gedisa, 2010.

GARCÍA LLOVERA, Julio Miguel. Musicología. Campos y caminos de una ciencia. Zaragoza: Libros Pórtico, 2005.

GONZÁLEZ GARCÍA, Juana María. Cómo escribir un Trabajo de Fin de Grado. Madrid: Síntesis, 2014.

FALCES-SIERRA, Marta - GÓMEZ-JIMÉNEZ, Eva María. While the music lasts. A workbook for students of english for musicology. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2016.

MACONIE, Robin. La música como concepto. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2007.

RODRÍGUEZ SUSO, Carmen. Prontuario de Musicología. Barcelona: Clivis, 2002.

Every tutor will recommend the necessary bibiliography for developing the specific project. 


Software

Without specific software.


Groups and Languages

Please note that this information is provisional until 30 November 2025. You can check it through this link. To consult the language you will need to enter the CODE of the subject.