Music

This course provides a study of the lives, society, culture, and history of modern composers through a medium called film. Composers discussed include Mahler and Shostakovich, Debussy, George Gershine, Penderetsky, Riggety. The course also examines the influence of modern society on works of art and changes in musical dialect.

This course provides students with both a thorough introduction and an experiential immersion in the music of Ireland, and encompasses all its richness and variety. No previous knowledge of Irish musical history is required and neither is it necessary to be able to read musical notation. The course engages with the music of Ireland from the medieval period to the present day and encompasses three principal types of music – traditional, classical, and popular. The music of Ireland is examined in its historical context and is situated within the wider international context. The music's historical, social, cultural, and political dimensions are discussed.

This course offers students the opportunity to consider the ways in which the arts, and specifically music, can play a part in relation to the challenges we face in contemporary society, including climate change, mass migration, civil unrest, social exclusion, and navigating power relations. Students explore ways in which citizens can engage in the arts to engender social change. They question whether artists have an obligation to serve communities and how they might do this. Students are guided from engagement with theoretical concepts, multidisciplinary literature, and real-world examples (in the lectures), through action, creation and communication (the in-person music creation sessions and the group assignment), to reflection (the individual assignment).

This course presents the study of intermediate piano repertoire and application of harmony at the keyboard. Students learn various important keyboard skills and techniques that enhance their understanding of and experience in making music. Such skills include harmonization, transposition, figured bass, improvisation, piano techniques, score reading, musical interpretation, solo and ensemble playing.

Musical instruments are central to all forms of music. This course introduces the study of instruments, introducing methods and methodologies that can be used to inform ongoing studies across the music curriculum. Through considering instruments from around the world as socially and musically located craft objects that are tools for music making, a decolonized approach is central to the ethos behind this course. The course touches on the history of instruments; the history of studying instruments; how instruments are made, preserved and used; the meanings that instruments gain through association; and the materials available to makers in different contexts. The course is grounded in the University's Musical Instrument Collection.

The content of the course is a cultural history of popular music from 1900 to modern times. This course examines the social and political conditions that influenced the development of genres in popular music by evaluating key releases from influential artists. Students analyze the growth of popular music from the turn of the 20th century onwards. They study the development of successive genres from delta blues and early jazz onwards, exploring the dynamic relationship between popular music, popular culture, and social change. The course also provides an introduction to critical approaches to culture and popular music such as postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism, and Marxian analysis.

This course offers students a chance to play and perform music from different cultures. The focus of the course will change from semester to semester allowing students a chance to participate in different traditional music each term.

The course offers a broad introduction to some of the main areas of music humanities study that students encounter later in their studies. These include 1) an introduction to a key selection of music and music history from the Middle Ages to the 21st century; and 2) an introduction to contemporary topics and methodologies, such as jazz studies, ethnomusicology, or sound studies.

Ireland’s symbolic and gendered construction as a musical nation offers a starting point for discussions of music, gender, and Ireland. Following that, the course surveys a range of genres, performers, and performance platforms from the 19th century onwards to explore the relationship between gender and music in the Irish context. Particular emphasis is given to traditional and popular music examples. 

Jazz music is one of the 20th century's most important and enduring art forms.
It is an original American musical art form which emerged around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It developed out of the interchange between African and European music traditions. Jazz has also evolved into many styles while absorbing the elements of other music genres and has also influenced other cultures, such as theater, dance, and literature.

One of the basic elements that sets jazz apart from other types of music is improvisation, which is the instant composition of a new melody.
This course addresses the basic theory and foundation for jazz improvisation, through playing, singing, listening, writing, analyzing, and tapping. Through performance practices, the course aims to teach how to apply the theory and how to build a jazz vocabulary. Upon completion of the course, students will have the basic tools to create jazz melodies at a simple harmonic level.

Admission is by audition only, which is held on the first class. The audition will comprise of the following: 
(1) All applicants except the drummer will be required to play the major scale and the harmonic minor scale in a few keys; eighth notes at a tempo of 120 BPM.

(2) Playing session: medium up tempo swing blues in the key of Bb

For the horn player and stringed instrument player: improvised solo
For the pianist and guitarist: accompaniment with reading chord symbols and improvised solo
For the bassist: walking bass line with reading chord symbols
For the drummer: swing beat accompaniment