MUS10200 Listening to Music
Listening to Music offers students the opportunity to develop critical listening skills through the close study of a number of musical works from diverse traditions and practices. Each week, a listening ‘challenge’ is introduced alongside a specific case study, and students are provided with the materials necessary to understand and work through these challenges. General topics covered include teleology and time, development and dissolution, motive and narrative, absolutism and individualism, and hearing difference. The case studies are taken from Western and Indian classical music, film music, traditional song, and popular music. Lectures are given by different faculty members from week to week, ensuring that students will always be learning from real specialists about musical examples they love.
This module is open as both a general elective and a first year music option module. First year music students may take this module if they have mastered the skills covered in MUS10210 (Musicianship). Please see that description for more details. While the ability to read music notation will enhance the experience of this module, it is not required for the kind of critical listening skills that we focus on, and it will not impact assessment.
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REVIEWSMODULE INFO
The lectures were all so interesting, and while certain weeks were harder than others the lecturers were very easy to understand and made everything as accessible as possible! It was made up of short continuous assessments, and every week involved new music (from Amazing Grace to Old Town Road to horror film soundtracks) so you could leave trickier topics in the past. Having done Leaving Cert music definitely helped.
Tough module but very engaging lectures. From a complete novice viewpoint with no background in music except for a passing interest in listening to it, the module was quite complicated usually balancing musical themes with cultural contexts in order to establish why pieces or genres are the way they are.