History of Western Music III: 1900 to Today
Curriculum guideline
Instruction will be primarily by lecture, enhanced by audio and visual materials. Flexibility in class presentation will allow for students to engage actively through question, comment, and discussion. Students will be assigned listening and reading for each class. Lectures will provide general contexts for detailed study of representative pieces of music. Supplementary library and online resources will be recommended. Students will be informed of live performances of course-related music by professional organizations such as Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver New Music, or the Canadian Music Centre, for the purpose of curriculum enrichment. One or more appropriate field trips may be planned.
- Paths to modernism in Europe and America up to World War I, including impressionism in Paris, expressionism and atonality in Vienna, primitivism in Russia, and experimentalism in New England.
- Musical developments between the Wars, including neo-classicism, twelve-tone technique, individual paths, folk-based sources, socialist realism, American jazz and popular music, and the liberation of sound.
- Crosscurrents in music in Europe and America after World War II, including total serialism, chance and indeterminacy, complexity and virtuosity, new sound sources, electronic music, non-western influences, quotation and collage; the rise of rock.
- Increased diversity in the later twentieth century, including mixed media, performance art, minimalism, neo-tonality, neo-romanticism; the emergence of polystylism and post-modernism, extended vocal and instrumental techniques, digital synthesis and computer music, electro-acoustic music, and women in music.
- Aspects of music in Canada including colonialism, internationalism, nationalism, musical institutions, environmental music, multiculturalism, and east-west synthesis.
- Towards a global musical culture in the twenty-first century.
At the end of the course, the successful student will be able to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of stylistic developments in music in Europe and the Americas from 1900 to the present by the following means: aural identification of characteristics of representative pieces of music; visual analysis of representative musical scores; and written discussion of terms and topics appropriate to the period and its music. The student will also be able to discuss general social, cultural, and political aspects of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Finally, the student will be able to demonstrate competent research and critical thinking skills in the completion of writing projects on topics appropriate to the period being studied.
| Regular short in-class quizzes (5-8) | 10% |
| Completion of library tasks, online viewing, and/or event attendance | 5% |
| Research and writing project on a major twentieth-century work | 15% |
| Research and writing project on a major Canadian composer | 10% |
| Major listening tests (2) | 20% |
| Major written tests (2) | 20% |
| Final examination (listening and written components) | 20% |
| Total | 100% |
Students will be required to purchase the current edition of a standard text and anthology of scores, such as the following, along with online access to recordings.
Hanning, Barbara Russano. Concise History of Western Music (Norton).
Burkholder, J. P., and Palisca, Claude V. The Norton Anthology of Western Music. Volume Three: The Twentieth Century and After (Norton).
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