MUS2301 – Song Cultures Before 1600
Schedule, syllabus and examination date
Course content
Songs created before 1600 are now silent as, often, are the witnesses to their cultural contexts and circumstances. Who composed them? Who sang them? When, where, and for what purpose? How and why were they written down?
This course engages with early European cultures of song-making and singing before 1600. It considers relationships between music and text and the alchemy that occurs when poetry is proscribed in time and supported—or undermined—by an accompanying melody.? The course addresses questions of compositional craft and creativity, of authorship and identity, as well as practices of quotation and intertextuality. Although the sounds of these ancient songs have been lost forever, this course seeks to find ways of understanding them and appreciating them, and of illuminating or reconstructing the cultural and performative contexts in which they were created and received. It gives a glimpse of an intriguing and ingenious musical past, revealing striking and sometimes surprising continuities with our musical present.
Learning outcome
On passing this course, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate ways in which music is created, performed, and understood within chronologically distant and often unfamiliar historical and cultural contexts.
- Develop critical and analytical skills to approach primary historical and musical evidence as well secondary scholarly literature.
- Acquire discipline-specific knowledge that enables them meaningfully to describe music’s relationship to its texts and cultural contexts, as well as recent scholarly understandings of this music and its contexts.
- Identify and explain ancient musical notations, musical compositional techniques, and interactions between poetry and text. Students will be able to relate this to the historical contexts and contemporary creative cultures of these notations, techniques, and music-text interactions.
Admission to the course
Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for?in Studentweb.
If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about?admission requirements and procedures.
Teaching
- 9 double lectures
- 3 double seminars
The seminars will occur at or towards the end of the course. They consist of discussions and clarifications of course concepts, workshopping and presenting essay ideas, and oral presentations.
Compulsory activities
- Oral presentation (10 minutes)
- First draft/essay plan of the term paper
Information about assignments and the deadlines are available in Canvas. Students have to hand in the assignments within the given deadline, and are responsible for familiarizing with the requirements for the compulsory activities.
The compulsory activities are only valid within the current semester. All compulsory activities must be approved in order to sit for the exam. Students are responsible to keep track of registered absences and check that everything has been approved.
Read more about compulsory activities here.
Apply for a valid absence from compulsory activity or attendance.
Examination
- Term paper (10 pages, each containing approx. 2,300 characters, spaces not included).
The students investigate a relevant topic arising from the materials and readings covered in the course, to be agreed with the instructor(s) and discussed in an in-class presentation.
You have to fulfill the requirements of the compulsory activities to sit the exam.
Language of examination
The examination text is given in English, and you submit your response in English.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F?is a fail. Read more about?the grading system.
Resit an examination
More about examinations at UiO
- Use of sources and citations
- Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
- Withdrawal from an exam
- Illness at exams / postponed exams
- Explanation of grades and appeals
- Resitting an exam
- Cheating/attempted cheating
You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.