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Unit of study_

MCGY3629: Romanticism and the Fantastic

This unit will explore the fantastic as a central aspect of romanticism in its various manifestations, including the uncanny, the daemonic and the alienated. In music, this meshes fruitfully with the fantasy as a genre, which is similarly dependent on the imagination and the evasion of clear boundaries. A range of Lieder, operas, symphonic and solo works by composers such as Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Schubert will be studied against the backdrop of literary and artistic innovations by Goethe, Hoffmann, Byron, and Friedrich. Theories of the fantastic by Todorov, Freud and others will also be examined.

Code MCGY3629
Academic unit Musicology
Credit points 6
Prerequisites:
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None
Corequisites:
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None
Prohibitions:
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None
Assumed knowledge:
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It is expected that students will have some knowledge of harmonic and formal practices up to 1850

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. discuss the nexus of aesthetic ideas associated with ‘the fantastic’, both as manifested in music and in other art forms
  • LO2. recognise and contextualise a number of significant musical works from the romantic era
  • LO3. analyse various types of formal and tonal structures used in the romantic period
  • LO4. evaluate critically both primary texts and secondary scholarship
  • LO5. conduct original research on topics of your own devising
  • LO6. engage respectfully but critically with the views of others

Unit outlines

Unit outlines will be available 2 weeks before the first day of teaching for the relevant session.