Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.
Semester 1 Credit Value: | 10 |
Semester 2 Credit Value: | 10 |
ECTS Credits: | 10.0 |
European Credit Transfer System | |
•To explore contemporary ideas and interpretations of Beethoven in the light of recent scholarship
•To develop strategies for negotiating historical and analytical approaches to Beethoven, and to develop an understanding the tensions between those methodologies
•To consider changing perceptions of Beethoven over time alongside changing historiographical approaches
•To explore Beethoven’s musical language and to develop a familiarity with the music-analytical methodologies that have been used to understand Beethoven’s music and his musical legacy
•To formulate methodologies aimed at understanding Beethoven’s cultural significance, particularly regarding issues of gender and sexuality, romanticism and “the work concept”
•To develop familiarity critical theoretical models of gender and creativity in nineteenth-century Europe
The name of Beethoven conjures up a whole set of culturally loaded images – tortured genius, sensitive humanist, radical revolutionary – as if our very notion of what a composer might be had been invented with the advent of his music. This module will look at the life and works of Beethoven and, as the title suggests, look at how the legacy of Beethoven has been viewed, shaped or managed by key musical and political figures in the 150 years after his death. The romantics, for example, took Beethoven as a figure to emulate, a figure that seemed to exemplify their notion of ‘creative genius’. For Richard Wagner, moreover, Beethoven stood for ‘the unfettered creative force of the German people’. For the modernists, however, he was a fellow radical that broke boundaries and allowed them to cast off the constraints of bourgeois culture. It is only with the advent of so-called ‘postmodernism’ that Beethoven has come to stand for what is ‘wrong’ or problematic with so-called ‘classical’ music: he was overbearing, pretentious, pompous, and, worst of all, elitist. The module will look at all of these ideas and subject them to critical scrutiny.
The module will involve developing familiarity Beethoven’s key works, reading scholarship about them and thinking about the ways in which the ‘idea’ of Beethoven has changed since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Category | Activity | Number | Length | Student Hours | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Guided Independent Study | Assessment preparation and completion | 104 | 1:00 | 104:00 | N/A |
Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Lecture | 12 | 2:00 | 24:00 | N/A |
Guided Independent Study | Directed research and reading | 60 | 1:00 | 60:00 | N/A |
Scheduled Learning And Teaching Activities | Small group teaching | 12 | 1:00 | 12:00 | Seminars - Two Seminar Groups |
Total | 200:00 |
The lectures cover key reportorial and cultural-historical topics, and seminars help students deal with close musical details or discuss topics arising from the weekly scholarly/critical readings
The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners
Description | Semester | When Set | Percentage | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|
Essay | 2 | M | 100 | Summative research essay 4,000 words |
Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.
Description | Semester | When Set | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Portfolio | 2 | M | Portfolio of formative assignments during Semesters 1 & 2 |
The formative assignments for the portfolio enable students to practice close analytical readings of Beethoven’s work, undertake musical analyses, write critical responses to scholarship and to shape their ideas. The formal feedback students get on these will all help them to determine the kind of final essay they want to write and will help them understand the formal feedback process. The essay tests students’ ability to engage with critical scholarship, develop ideas, form and test arguments and utilise a range of primary and secondary sources, and , where appropriate, to deal in detail with musical materials.