Aims

Musicianship is the understanding and application of a set of creative and technical skills which guide your work as a musician. This module is designed to improve your musicianship through a foundational understanding of music theory as it applies to arranging, notating, composing, improvising, and performing music in the contemporary, professional world.

Musicianship skills include:

1) Recognition: your ability to recognise and identify by ear essential components of a musical language, and to notate them where appropriate.
2) Classification: your ability to understand musical forms and ideas, both aurally and using notation, as belonging to particular styles.
3) Contextualisation: your ability to study pieces of music and to relate them to each other, their written representations, and their contexts.

By the end of the module you will be confident working in different tonal styles and communicating with other musicians in the contexts of composition, musicology, analysis, and performance.

Outline Of Syllabus

Students build their musicianship skills over two semesters through a study of the harmonic and melodic aspects of tonal music. Starting from a basic understanding of how consonance and dissonance create forward motion in music, students will work through more and more advanced musical techniques to build skill and confidence in tonal styles. Students can then apply these skills across their studies in composition, arrangement, performance, and musicology.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Musicianship skills will be introduced in Semester 1 as a way of embedding the knowledge outcomes, and these will become more visible in Semester 2 as students continue to develop their skills. The skills outcomes are central to the project workshops after the Easter Vacation when students demonstrate what they have learnt through the skills they have developed as they work towards the final assessment.

The curriculum is devised with a mix of whole cohort and two-group activity throughout the year in recognition of the different levels of prior experience in musicianship which the students bring to the module. At the close of the module all students should be able to communicate, construct, and create musical materials with their peers in a professional and/or undergraduate academic environment.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Portfolio 1 is due during the assessment period at the end of semester 1. The weighting is set at 40%. This reflects the relatively short time that students will have had to get used to university-level study and to assimilate the content of the module so far. This submission focuses on the knowledge outcomes and will therefore be relatively technical and factual in nature.

Portfolio 2 is worth 60% of the module and is due in the assessment period at the end of Semester 2. The larger weighting reflects the longer time frame that students will have had to learn and assimilate the content of the module, and the more wide-ranging nature of the assessment, which will give students more scope to explore musical materials in different musical styles and settings. Students’ work towards Portfolio 2 is supported through small group sessions after the Easter Vacation. The emphasis will be on the skills outcomes and the knowledge outcomes will serve to support these activities creating future-focussed skills that can be transferred into Stage 2 and external professional musicianship activities.