• Offered for Year: 2026/27

• Module Leader(s): Professor Paul Fleet
• Lecturer: Dr Bennett Hogg, Professor Magnus Williamson, Dr Christopher Tarrant

• Owning School: Arts & Cultures
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

Musicianship is the understanding and application of a set of skills which students can use in their cognitive, creative, intellectual, critical, practical, technical, and contextual activities as a musician. These skills are inextricably linked to composition, performance, musicology, and studio work, as well as theoretical and analytical practice. This module is designed to improve students’ musicianship through a foundational understanding of music theory and musical practices, which include notated composition, improvisation, and performance practice as they have been used historically and in the modern, professional world.

Musicianship skills include:
1) Recognition: the ability to recognise and identify by ear essential components of a musical language, such as intervals, rhythms, motifs, modes, metres, and qualities of sound and to notate them if and where appropriate.
2) Classification: the ability to recognise and describe musical organisation, style, genre or tradition, whether aurally or by studying a written score.
3) Contextualisation: the ability to study the sounds of music and to relate them to each other, to their written representations, and to their contexts.
4) Reconstruction: the ability to read and imaginatively reconstruct music that has been written in some form of notation and to hold music in the memory.
5) Exploration: the ability to confront, explore and assimilate unfamiliar musical sounds, concepts, repertoires, and practices.

The module will enable students to recognise, notate, arrange, and compose features essential to different tonal practices. By the end of the module students will be confident working with tonality in the contexts of composition, musicology, analysis, performance and communicating with other musicians.

Outline Of Syllabus

The module spans two semesters, covering four interconnected themes:

·       Horizontal
·       Vertical
·       Closure
·       Motion

These themes transcend barriers of genre and are intended to apply to a range of different musical styles and traditions that are beneficial to all musicians. The module begins with an introduction to species counterpoint, which establishes a foundational knowledge of consonance and dissonance, and vertical and horizontal motion. Early in Semester 1, students begin working in groups that will focus on their collective specific learning requirements. As the module progresses to more developed techniques of harmonic and melodic organisation specific techniques of Species Counterpoint return throughout the Semesters to inform the four interconnected. The module therefore combines the value of small group teaching to recognise the diversity of musical experience that students arrive with, and whole group teaching for cohort cohesion. All groups will then study the four broad themes of the module through tailored lenses recognising their prior musicianship training opportunities.

Western European Music Theory comes from a privileged background, it was formulated and proposed by those that had access to a formal education, monies to be able to publish their treatises, and was most likely expounded by white, upper-class, males. As such, it should be a considered a theory rather than the theory of music. That said, it is a theory which has held prominence across art musics since the 16th Century and its presence can often be found in the multitude of globally rich musics in the 20th and 21st Century; this makes it a topic worthy of critical study for all undergraduate students.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Semester 1 workshops will focus on IKO1, IKO2, IKO3, and IKO4, and this knowledge base will be supported and deepened through small group work.

ISO1, ISO 2, and ISO will begin to be introduced in Semester 1 as a way of embedding the knowledge outcomes, and 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 to enable the student at the close of the module to be able to communicate, construct, and create musical materials with their peers in a professional and/or undergraduate academic environment.

Assessment Methods

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

Other Assessment

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.

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 IKO1, IKO2, IKO3, and IKO4 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 – ISO1, ISO2, and ISO3 – 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.

The formative computer assessments create a trialogic feedback principle where the student, educator, and e-learning package (Musition) form a partnership where ‘technology and pedagogy drive each other’ (Fawns, 2019, p. 136) and become equal agents of real-time formative feedback throughout the learning journey. For more information see DOI: 10.4324/9781003360254-3

Reading Lists

• MUS1101's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• MUS1101's Timetable