Module Catalogue 2024/25

MUS3025 : Beethoven and his legacy (Inactive)

MUS3025 : Beethoven and his legacy (Inactive)

  • Inactive for Year: 2024/25
  • Module Leader(s): Professor Ian Biddle
  • Lecturer: Professor David Clarke
  • Owning School: Arts & Cultures
  • Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters

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
Pre-requisite

Modules you must have done previously to study this module

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co-Requisite

Modules you need to take at the same time

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

•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

Outline Of Syllabus

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.

Learning Outcomes

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

•Familiarity with recent scholarship on Beethoven as it relates to the ‘canon’ of Beethoven studies
•Understanding of Beethoven’s contemporary significance in the area of cultural history and cultural theory
•Familiarity with methodologies for studying music as a cultural signifier
•Familiarity with core analytical strategies for approaching Beethoven’s music and its musical legacies

Intended Skill Outcomes

•Ability to deploy methodologies developed from cultural history and theory
•Ability to deploy analytical methodologies to Beethoven’s music and his musical legacies
•Ability to discuss Beethoven’s music as a cultural signifier
•Ability to relate note-based analysis to cultural ideas

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities
Category Activity Number Length Student Hours Comment
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesLecture122:0024:00N/A
Guided Independent StudyAssessment preparation and completion1041:00104:00N/A
Guided Independent StudyDirected research and reading601:0060:00N/A
Scheduled Learning And Teaching ActivitiesSmall group teaching121:0012:00Seminars - Two Seminar Groups
Total200:00
Teaching Rationale And Relationship

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

Reading Lists

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment
Description Semester When Set Percentage Comment
Essay2M100Summative research essay 4,000 words
Formative Assessments

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
Portfolio2MPortfolio of formative assignments during Semesters 1 & 2
Assessment Rationale And Relationship

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.

Timetable

Past Exam Papers

General Notes

N/A

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Disclaimer

The information contained within the Module Catalogue relates to the 2024 academic year.

In accordance with University Terms and Conditions, the University makes all reasonable efforts to deliver the modules as described.

Modules may be amended on an annual basis to take account of changing staff expertise, developments in the discipline, the requirements of external bodies and partners, and student feedback. Module information for the 2025/26 entry will be published here in early-April 2025. Queries about information in the Module Catalogue should in the first instance be addressed to your School Office.