This course introduces students to the different ways of thinking about music that bind together our Conservatorium culture. It is a course concerned with 'big' questions: What exactly is a musical work? What do we hear when music is played? How do we go about making new music and how do we make old music new again? In grappling with these questions, students learn how to formulate persuasive arguments about the nature of music in general and the significance of musical works and artists in particular. The course is broken into four three-week episodes: Talking about Music, Making Music, Listening to Music and Learning about Music. Lectures from performers, composers, music educators and musicologists comprise each of these episodes and cover the wide variety of music genres and approaches to music making taught at the Conservatorium. As students hone their philosophical positions in relation to the course's 'big' questions, they are therefore simultaneously introduced to the constellation of ideas that constitute our musical world.

Embracing popular music and examples of traditional and contemporary music in Australia and its region, this unit offers an introduction not only to the genres themselves, but to the themes prevalent in the work of contemporary music scholars. These may include gender and race, ownership and appropriation, reception and transmission, technology and globalisation, music as social behaviour, and music and place. Such themes are considered across the three topic modules: Popular Music (including contemporary Aboriginal music); Traditional Music (Australia, Melanesia) and Australian Music (place and identity, from colonialism to the present day).

This unit surveys some of the major developments in the history of western classical music from the Medieval period to the present, and relates them to broader historical and artistic trends. In addition to analysing individual musical works, students will engage with musical historiography and develop a critical understanding of some influential techniques of music analysis.

This unit explores major topics in the history of Western art music from the 9th century to c. 1750 in a broad historical context. Beginning with Gregorian chant and the invention of music education notation, we investigate a wide range of genres and styles of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque eras, as well as innovations including the development of music printing, developments in musical instruments, and the emergence of opera, sonata and concerto. Musical works for analysis and discussion include examples by Hildegard of Bingen, Machaut, Dufay, Josquin, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Lully, Purcell, Vivaldi, Handel and J.S. Bach.

This unit will survey the main lines of musical development between 1750 and 1890, with primary focus on the composition of music, and how this relates to the social and aesthetic currents of the time. The overview given in the lecture series will be reinforced by detailed focus on individual works in the tutorials from both historical and analytical perspectives. Topics will include the emergence and codification of classical form and syntax; style and genre in the works of the first Viennese School; Beethoven's 'heroic' and 'late' styles; national opera traditions; symphonic poem and music drama; nationalism and exoticism; and the conflict between progress and tradition.

Traces the essential developments in Western art music from the very end of the 19th century to the start of the 21st, and relates them to broad socio-historical and artistic changes. The overview given in the lectures is reinforced by the analysis of key works in tutorials. Areas covered include Late Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Free Atonality, Rhythmic Innovation, Neo-classicism, Serial Music, Political Music, American Experimentalism, Electro-Acoustic Music, Chance composition, Textural Composition, Minimalism, influences from Popular Music, Collage and Polystylism, East-West Encounters, Neo-Romanticism, Post Modernism and Spectralism. Works analysed include compositions by Andriessen, Bartok, Cage, Debussy, Ligeti, Messiaen, Part, Schoenberg, Strauss, Stravinsky, Stockhausen and Webern.

Jazz History 1 provides the student with a practical understanding of the roots of jazz and the music developed, played and composed from the late 1800s - early 1930s and the historical context in which it was created. The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A recommended listening list, reading list and audio examples will be provided.

Jazz History 2 provides the student with a practical understanding of the Jazz styles developed, played and composed from the early 1930s to the mid-1940s and the historical context in which it was created. The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A recommended listening list, reading list and audio examples will be provided.

Jazz History 3 provides the student with a practical understanding of the Jazz styles developed, played and composed from the mid-1940s through to 1960 and the historical context in which it was created.
The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A recommended listening list, reading list and audio examples will be provided.

Jazz History 4 provides the student with a practical understanding of the Jazz styles developed, played and composed from the early 1960s onwards and the historical context in which it was created.
The classes will be structured around the use of sound recordings and by practical application. Students will be expected to be able to recognise, write about and discuss the major musical contributors of this period and their music, the cultural and socio-economic influences upon and of this music. Aural examinations will be of the 'Blindfold Test' variety. Students will transcribe notable performances from recordings and will direct ensemble performances of these. A recommended listening list, reading list and audio examples will be provided.

This Unit of Study will introduce key analytic concepts and terminology pertinent to contemporary jazz practice, culture and aesthetics. The aim of the Unit of Study is to explore issues relating to the way artists and audiences create and consume jazz music, and how themes such as ideology, race, gender, globalism, media and cultural studies, economics, modernism and postmodernism, structuralism and poststructuralism affect and reflect jazz culture.

This unit is designed to equip students with a working knowledge of current music theory and analysis practice, impart analytical skills that can be applied across a broad spectrum of activities and different musical genres and types, and develop an understanding of related concepts such as what analysis actually is, different types of analysis (functional, descriptive, surface, aural/perceptual vs. score based) and an understanding of working at different levels of abstraction.

Musicology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of musicological work, and the opportunity to gain a broad perspective on the discipline. Many Musicology Workshop activities are built around the Conservatorium's fortnightly Musicology Colloquium Series lectures, presented by SCM staff and visiting national and international scholars speaking on a wide range of topics. Occasional class projects explore areas such as music criticism, controversies in recent music literature, visits to local libraries or archives, and conference attendance and reporting. Students are expected occasionally to attend other musicological activities such as the Conservatorium's About Music and Alfred Hook lecture series. During classes students also have the opportunity to present and gain feedback on their own research topics.

Musicology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of musicological work, and the opportunity to gain a broad perspective on the discipline. Many Musicology Workshop activities are built around the Conservatorium's fortnightly Musicology Colloquium Series lectures, presented by SCM staff and visiting national and international scholars speaking on a wide range of topics. Occasional class projects explore areas such as music criticism, controversies in recent music literature, visits to local libraries or archives, and conference attendance and reporting. Students are expected occasionally to attend other musicological activities such as the Conservatorium's About Music and Alfred Hook lecture series. During classes students also have the opportunity to present and gain feedback on their own research topics.

Listening to music performance is an everyday occurrence, yet expert listeners possess tacit knowledge about performers' sound and little is known about how they process sensory information from a performer to conceptualise, recognise and verbalise the sound they hear. This unit of study will focus on recent empirical research studies and examine the ways in which we listen to music performers by sound and sight, how we assess music performance, and how we describe the sounds we hear.

Since its beginnings around 1600, no genre of Western art music has been more innovative or influential than opera. It has inspired devotion and disdain, and led to innumerable theoretical debates. In this unit, 400 years of changing operatic practices will be explored through a series of seminal works. These will be treated as documents of specific historical circumstances (including contemporaneous singing and staging practices), and as aesthetic objects which have been reinvented continuously down to the present.

Students will learn about, discuss and play different musical forms from East Asia - ranging from ancient guqin music to contemporary K-Pop. They will develop an understanding of key aesthetic concepts, musical instruments and musical features of the music cultures in this region. Students will be encouraged to develop awareness of the diversity of East Asian musics and cultures, and of music's interrelation with and great significance to East Asian societies both in the past and today.

Paleography of Music introduces principles and issues of some different types of western musical notation in use during the medieval and Renaissance periods, and contributes to the development of an understanding of original sources of music of these eras. Through studying original notations and sources, students can develop an understanding of the characteristics and problems of medieval and renaissance musical repertories not otherwise available. Among the notations to be studied are likely to be several chant notations including that of the musical sources of Hildegard of Bingen; white mensural notation as used in sources of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century vocal polyphony with examples likely to include music by Dufay, Ockeghem and Byrd; French and Italian lute tablatures; and German keyboard tablatures. Understanding the notations studied forms the main emphasis of this course, and students learn to read and transcribe from the original notations into modern musical notation. In addition, there may be a class project focussed on chant manuscripts in Sydney.

The New German School was a controversial term coined in 1859 to legitimise the self-consciously progressive art of figures such as Wagner and Liszt. This course explores the music and aesthetic theories of these two composers against the backdrop of contemporary debates and reception politics. Their personal relationship will also be scrutinized in detail. Works to be studied include selections from Liszt's symphonic poems and piano works, Wagner's Tristan, Die Meistersinger and Ring tetralogy.

This unit aims to provide students with a framework for analysing African-American musical products. An historical survey of research into African-American performance is followed by a discussion of current critical debates and scholarship. Students will apply existing theoretical models to the analysis of jazz, funk and hip-hop works. In turn, they will develop original research methodologies for the analysis of an African-American expressive work of their choice.

Since the early 20th century, the period c.1750-1830 has been associated with the idea of Classicism in European music, but it was also a period of rapid development and transformation in both music and society. This unit offers an in-depth examination of the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and their contemporaries in this historical context, and provides an opportunity to explore topics that will deepen and extend students' understanding of this highly significant period. Students will explore important repertoire, become acquainted with scholarly and performance issues associated with the style by studying a selection of critical writings about the period, and choose one topic to research in depth.

This seminar is designed to prepare students for undertaking their own research projects in music in the Honours Program. It will introduce and develop students' awareness of recent musical scholarship and research methodologies and equip students with skills to design and conduct research across a wide variety of musical topics. Students will develop strategies for locating and reviewing information efficiently and effectively and begin exploration of their chosen research topic. The seminars culminate with a series of student presentations, in which students present their research proposals to students and staff for discussion.

Music has been dramatically shaped and reshaped by every major change in communications technology in the 20th century from vinyl discs to MP3s. In this unit of study we will analyse such issues as the ways in which the early recording industry transformed jazz, the blues and country music, how the presentation of music on radio and television changed the ways the music industry created new musical celebrities, and the challenges the music industry faces as digital technology transforms the creation, distribution and consumption of music.

So how do musicians achieve and maintain their health? This unit of study explores the science of music health and wellbeing through investigation of health promotion, a range of health issues (including mental health) and by giving students practical examples of how to incorporate healthy lifestyle and strategies into their everyday life. It includes a detailed exploration of age-old and millennium debates in the scholarly and practice-based fields of music and health. Topics include: mindfulness; music psychology; Alexander Technique/Yoga/Tai Chi; performance science; growth mindset programs; music therapy; mental health; work-place safety; physiotherapy.

Psychology of Music examines music cognition and behaviour to explore the way music is created, produced and perceived. This unit will introduce recent interdisciplinary research as a way to explore music as a social activity. It will consider the methods used by sociologists and psychologists to investigate music and encourage students to think conceptually about their own musical activities.

This unit is an introductory survey of the history and aesthetics of film music from the late 1890s to the present day. Topics for discussion will include the dramatic function of music as an element of cinematic narrative, the codification of musical iconography in cinematic genres, the symbolic use of pre-existing music, and the evolving musical styles of film composers.

The history of Australian popular music presents us with a long and complex heritage. It reflects, in its very constitution, the lives of those who create it and is underscored by the dynamic relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. This unit of study will explore the continuing experience and influence of a wide range of music made in Australia, from songlines to bush ballads and dance anthems, Countdown and Rage. We will examine the folk revival of the 50s, pub rock of the 70s, reggae, punk and indie rock of the 80s and 90s as well as the emergence of the multiplicity of styles and expressions that mark the contemporary Australian music scene.

This unit of study offers students a comprehensive understanding of interrelations and convergences between music and politics from a variety of musical genres and political circumstances. Students will be introduced to theoretical models for examining the social agency of musical expression, they will analyse the politics of convention and innovation within musical traditions, and examine musical dialogues that have reflected and influenced momentous social and political movements. No formal musical training necessary.

What do we study when we study music? What kinds of stories do we tell about the history of music? What are the central issues, questions, and concerns that drive the study of music? This unit of study begins to answer these questions and provides an overview of musicology as an academic discipline. The readings cover the field of musicology from its beginnings in the 1880s up to the present day.

Films in the 'classical' style are still being made, but increasing numbers of films veer from tradition, and often their communicativeness depends on innovative uses of music and sound. This upper-level seminar involves intense scrutiny of soundtracks of works by Philip Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, and other twenty-first-century filmmakers.

What can we learn from non-textual approaches to understanding music? The primary goal of this unit of study is to study music not as a composer, producer, performer, listener or audience member, but as an ethnographer. That is, analysing music through an observational, experiential and intellectual understanding of how people make and take meaning from music.

The range of media channels through which we experience, popular music has prolifereated in recent years. The emotive power of music is used to tell stories, sell products and connect people to one another. This unit will analyse the use of popular music in a broad range of multimedia forms from film and television to video games and the use of digital media to disseminate a multitude of musical multimedia productions.

The act of performing music creates a multitude of social relationships between listeners, audiences, musicians, performers, and the industries and institutions that surround them. This subject will ask students to study acts of performance historically, theoretically, and observationally. They will examine a wide range of situations and circumstances and try to work out how the expression of music is also an expression, affirmation, and contestation of social power. This subject will appeal to those who wish to study subjects such as music, performance studies, sociology, anthropology, and gender and cultural studies. It cuts across all of these areas of inquiry in the attention that is paid to the complexity and subtlety of how music is perceived and experienced across multiple social scenes and communities. This subject is not about performance practice or assessment. Instead, it seeks to allow students to gain some insight into the experience of performance as multifaceted and perspectival. The case studies will focus primarily on popular music, but will also include boundary riding performances from the avant garde and experimental music traditions of the 1960s and 70s.

Latin American music has become a powerful force in today's music industry, but its rich diversity and cultural contexts are not always known or acknowledged. This unique unit of study surveys a number of Latin American popular, folk and indigenous musical traditions in terms of their cultural milieu and historical development. These include Afro-Cuban traditions, samba, salsa, tango and Andean music. Various musical, historical and cultural concerns are examined alongside a practical and creative involvement with the compositional characteristics and the repertoire pertinent to these traditions.

This unit of study deals with the different ways in which we comprehend music and with the different ways in which that comprehension might be explained. It deals with modes of hearing and musical analysis for the purpose of leading students towards a deeper knowledge of how music in various genres (ranging from the classical mainstream to the twentieth-century avant-garde, from Tin Pan Alley songs to punk rock and hip-hop) is understood. This is a required unit of study for a music major in an Arts degree.

Musicology Workshop Advanced provides a forum for discussion of musicological work and provides experience in the spoken presentation of ideas and research, and in discussion of ideas and research in a group context. It also provides a broadening of students' experience in the field through contact with the work of other students, staff, visiting scholars, and musicology graduates, as well as through class projects when time permits, in areas such as publication, music criticism, visits to local libraries or archives, and conference attendance and reporting.

This unit of study will enhance the students musical knowledge and learning through placement in a professional practice context within an arts sector environment. An Internship is a system of on-the-job training and as such, this unit of study will seek and select the most appropriate places for students to gain valuable experience and training in the Arts industry. These places may and will change from time to time and according to the students' interests and expertise and the availability of suitable hosts. Included in this Unit of Stduy is the 'Buddy' Program that sees SCM students placed in NSW regional conservatoriums where they play a significant role in enhancing the local musical community through work with staff, students and specific outreach programs of the regional conservatorium (e.g. regional and remote schools).

Professional Practice Internship 2 provides students with an opportunity to undertake a second internship program (on successful completion of Professional Practice Internship). An Internship is a system of on-the-job training experience that provides future career related musical work. This unit of study enhances students' musical knowledge and learning through placement in a professional practice context within a creative industries sector environment. In particular, students are afforded the opportunity to work in regional NSW in partnership with one or more of the seventeen NSW Regional Conservatoriums and/or locals schools. The unit seeks and selects the most appropriate places for students to gain valuable experience and training and these places may and will change from time to time and according to the students' interests and expertise and the availability of suitable hosts.

This unit is designed for third year students to undertake a project that allows them to work with one of the university's industry and community partners. Students will work in teams on a real-world problem provided by the partner. This experience will allow students to apply their academic skills and disciplinary knowledge to a real world issue in an authentic and meaningful way. Participation in this unit will require students to submit an application.