Unit information: The Romantic Imagination in 2019/20

Unit name	The Romantic Imagination
Unit code	MUSI30130
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Hibberd
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of Music
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

What function does the imagination play in our appreciation of music? This research seminar will consider the claims of the early romantics for music as a ‘pure’ art form, to be listened to with reverence, in relation to the tenacious hold of narrative, and the explosion in visual technologies that both mediated musical perception and permeated the language used to discuss its effects. Through a series of case studies we will explore music’s ability to evoke different voices, to negotiate between real and imaginary worlds, to move back and forwards through time and to engage our imaginations. And we will consider the critical strategies of historical commentators and modern scholars as well as our own responses. The main aims will be to understand ways in which music works in relation to other arts; and the meanings that emerge from the gap between music and its ‘texts’. Classes will include discussion, debates and listening/viewing.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. demonstrate a working knowledge, as appropriate to level H, of the various forms, contexts and functions of music in relation to other arts during the romantic era
2. demonstrate a thorough understanding of the works selected for the unit as appropriate to level H
3. demonstrate a good overview of the strategies of nineteenth-century commentators writing about music’s effects as appropriate to level H
4. demonstrate good knowledge of the scholarly literature and methodologies around music’s effect as appropriate to level H
5. evaluate and analyse nineteenth-century writings about music as appropriate to level H
6. construct coherent arguments in written form as appropriate to level H
7. present information and coherent critique in verbal form as appropriate to level H

Teaching Information

Weekly two-hour lecture-seminar

Assessment Information

• 3,000 word essay (60%). ILO 1 - 6

• 10-minute video presentation (40%). ILO 1, 3, 4, 5, 7.

Reading and References

David Charlton, ed. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings (Cambridge, 1989)

Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, 1992)

James Johnson, Listening in Paris (Berkeley, 1995)

Deidre Loughridge, Haydn’s Sunrise, Beethoven’s Shadow (Chicago, 2016)

Ernest Newman, ed./trans., Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, from 1803 to 1865 (London, 1960)

Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA, 1995)