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Unit of study_

MCGY3639: Modernism in Austria and Germany 1889-1914

Between 1889 and 1914, certain Austro-Germanic composers played a crucial role in the emerging modernist movement. Richard Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg engaged with past musical traditions and contemporary trends in visual art, literature and philosophy to produce a distinctively new type of music. Works to be studied include Strauss's tone poems, Mahler's symphonies and Schoenberg's chamber music, as well as Lieder and stage works. Among the issues which will be explored are the way in which traditional formal structures were invoked and destabilised, the changes the musical language underwent and how music was conceptualized in this era of change and crisis.

Code MCGY3639
Academic unit Musicology
Credit points 6
Prerequisites:
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MCGY2612
Corequisites:
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None
Prohibitions:
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None

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

  • LO1. discuss turn-of-the-century German modernism as manifested in music, art, literature and philosophical ideas of the period
  • LO2. recognise individual works by Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg, and be familiar with scholarly modes of engaging with this music
  • LO3. analyse developments in harmony and form at the end of the common-practice era
  • LO4. evaluate critically both primary texts and secondary scholarship
  • LO5. conduct independent research on topics of his/her own devising related to the themes of this unit
  • LO6. engage respectfully but critically with the views of others through in-class discussion and through online fora

Unit outlines

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