Unit information: Music, Technology and Cultural Change, 1900 - present day in 2017/18

Unit name	Music, Technology and Cultural Change, 1900 - present day
Unit code	MUSI20117
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. Kate Guthrie
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of Music
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

DESCRIPTION: How has technology affected the way we think about, create and consume musical culture? This unit explores this question by examining how sound reproduction technologies have impacted on musical culture from the early twentieth century to the present day. Focusing on Britain and the USA, it considers how technologies such as the gramophone, radio, Walkman, iPod and digital download have evolved within specific social, political and intellectual contexts. In addition, it uses sound reproduction technologies to introduce key cultural debates of the twentieth century, including the relationship between art and popular, and between music, democracy, and national identity.

AIMS: Students will have the opportunity to:

1. Expand their knowledge of how sound reproduction technologies emerged and evolved within specific political, social, cultural and intellectual contexts.
2. Think critically about processes of cultural change.
3. Engage in critical discussion about key issues in twentieth-century music studies.
4. Develop their ability to assess the relative value of primary and secondary source materials.
5. Improve their skills in writing about musical style and reception.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Having completed the course, students should be able to:

1. Explain how a variety of sound reproduction technologies developed and evolved in Britain and the USA from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.
2. Assess how recorded sound shaped and was shaped by wider musical practices.
3. Critically analyse key issues and discourses in the intellectual history of sound reproduction technologies.
4. Write clearly about how technological advances impacted the creation, dissemination and reception of specific pieces of music, making appropriate use of both primary and secondary sources.

Teaching Information

The unit will be delivered through 11 2-hour seminars.

Assessment Information

Students will be assessed through two summative assignments:

1. A portfolio of 3 x 550 word critical responses to 3 seminar texts of their choosing (40%). This exercise assesses ILO 3.
2. A 3,000 word research-based historical essay assignment (60%). This exercise assesses ILOs 1, 2 and 4.

Reading and References

Adorno, Theodor. Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Boschi, Elena; Kassabian, Anahid, & Quinones, Marta Garcia. Ubiquitous Musics: The Everyday Sounds That We Don't Always Notice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

Edgerton, David. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. London: Profile Books, 2006.

Goodman, David. Radio’s Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Gopinath, Sumanth and Stanyek, Jason. The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies: Volume 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Lacey, Kate. Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age. Cambridge, 2013.

LeMahieu, D.L. A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain Between the Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. London: Duke University Press, 2003.

Sterne, Jonathan ed., The Sound Studies Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.