Music

This course takes music in the context of pop culture as the research object, and systematically teaches music concepts, music industry and music culture. The course content will cover the rise and fall of the record industry in the music industry, the production of music variety shows, film music, musical music, rock music and other topics, in order to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of popular music course experience.

The course offers a comprehensive exploration to some of the main areas of music study that students encounter during subsequent years of their study. These include an exploration in music and music history from the Middle Ages to ca. 1780; music and music history from ca. 1780 to the present day; jazz and popular music (broadly defined); ethno-musicological issues, and to music cognition. This course covers ethnomusicology and film music. All students must be able to read music fluently.

This is a practical course offering students the opportunity to work in small groups in the Music Centre's Electronic Music Hub to create music from electronic sources. Accompanying lectures and seminars examine the history of electronic music, amplified music, and computer music and look at works by significant composers and innovators who have worked in these genres, from Stockhausen to Jimi Hendrix. The course also offers tuition in the music software package Reaper. No prior experience in electronic music is necessary in order to take the course, but some knowledge of music notation or music theory would be advantageous.

The course introduces students to the study of music history, broadly understood to encompass any historical period, geographical era, genre, style, and tradition. Through specialistic study of two or three specific historical contexts or phenomena the course intends to foster an understanding of music as a cultural practice by identifying and articulating the ways in which musics have historically been embedded cultures and societies.

In this course, major musical styles and genres of the 20th century, within and beyond the Western canon, are presented and discussed from the theoretical, aesthetic, and socio-cultural points of view. The first part of the course focuses on the mutual influences between jazz and classical music in the first half of the 20th century. An analysis of musical ensembles, forms, and other structural elements leads to an understanding of how and to what extent these two distinct musical worlds influenced each other and in some cases even blended, making the stylistic categorization of some works uncertain. The second part of the course provides an in-depth study of musical genres and listening approaches in relation to the radical technological transformations of the 20th century, which leads to a reflection on the concept of art music and the problem of value in music. Students learn to identify and distinguish musical trends; assess how musical movements have informed contemporary society and recent history, and how society and history have fostered certain musical movements and for what reason; and evaluate how the dialogue between music and technology has evolved over the past decades, and predict potential future scenarios. 

This course introduces a wide range of repertories within the history of music. It stimulates students to relate features of musical compositions and performances to their wider historical contexts and gives students a fundamental knowledge of specific musical cultures. It provides students with opportunities to develop skills in research and information retrieval and in critical reading of primary and secondary literature, to receive formative feedback on those skills, and to build a foundation for higher-level study. 

The complex daily living and high stress caused by the progress of human civilization and the development of science and technology have greatly increased the interest and demand for music therapy. Because music can transcend external limitations to soothe fatigue and sadness of body, mind and soul, it can also rebuild and renew people's lives. This course crosses disciplines through the effectiveness of music, combined with psychological and medical theories. The course content combines the cultivation of musical literacy and practical application of music perception, injecting beauty and vitality into life through music, thereby gaining spiritual balance and satisfaction and improving moral cultivation. 

This course explores social themes in Taiwan’s recent history through the concept of “musicking.” It seeks to discover the communal meanings and effects created through a variety of sonic activities by people living on this island in recent history and contemporary times. Through careful listening and participation, the course aims to gain different perspectives and a more reflexive, embodied, and affective understanding of the social organizations and changes over the last 150 years that shape Taiwanese society today. 

This course does not to fully cover or define “Taiwanese music," but rather endeavors to understand how various themes--including community building, migrations and rights, settler-colonialism, colonial-modernity, politics and economy, ethnic identity, multi-culturalism and indigenous sovereignty, gender and sexualities, space and environments, and social activism--are voiced and enacted through diverse genres of music and dance, by the indigenous, Han, newly immigrated and visiting communities of people living in Taiwan. 

This course examines the dynamic between music and politics from the Haitian and French Revolution until Black Lives Matter, or, alternately, from Beethoven to Beyoncé. Large thematic topics will include the Enlightenment, liberalism, nationalism, fascism, the Cold War and globalization. Musical case studies will include opera, symphonic tone poems, ballet, film scores, folk and pop songs, hip hop and punk, as well as global genres such as Afrobeat and Tropicalia.