 | Use this page to view syllabus information, learning objectives, required materials, and technical requirements for the module.
As a result of College adapting your modules to combine face-to-face on campus and online teaching and learning support, the breakdown of notional learning hours set out under the heading “Technical Requirements” below may not necessarily reflect how each module will be delivered this year. Further details relating to this will be made available by your department and will be updated as part of the student timetable. |
| MU 2411 - Music, Environment and Ecology |
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Associated Term:
2024/25 Academic Session
Learning Objectives:
This course aims to introduce students to a rich variety of often unfamiliar sonic expressions, musics and contextualised musical case studies that highlight (or question the limits of) music’s relationship with particular physical (or natural) environments. It will also introduce students to, and encourage critical engagement with, music specific and interdisciplinary literature relating to the environment, place, landscape, acoustic ecology and indigeneity.
The course asks a range of key musical questions: Are certain musics more at home in some environments than others? If so, why? How do musical practices relate to broader aspects of the environment and associated ways of life? How do music making and ideas about music figure in peoples’ relations with, for example, the places, earth, seasons, weather, machines, animals and plants with which they interact, and upon which their welfare may depend? What happens when music, music technologies or musicians travel to different environments? How do music or other sounds create environments?
In considering these questions the course will consider themes such as, environmental acoustics, acoustic ecologies and noise; notions of ‘dwelling’, ‘place’, ‘acoustemology’, ‘animism’ and ‘interanimation’; music’s origins & evolution/ environmental determinism and its dangers; theories of landscape/soundscape; ontologies of sound and silence; zoomusicology and attitudes to the musical metaphysics of plants; musical creativity and its associations with the natural world/nature; the musical practices of shamans, hunter gatherers, herders and farmers;
and, threatened musics/environments: music and environmentalism/climate crisis.
These issues will be examined in the context of concrete case studies. Besides considering the structure of a range of environmental sounds, including those of animals, birds, machines and urban spaces, the course will explore a rich range of musical repertoires. Examples may include ‘long songs’ and horse herding music (Mongolia), rainforest songs and instrumental musics (Amazonia, Papua New Guinea), nature spirit songs (Malaysia), agricultural and herding musics (Andes), aboriginal gathering and hunting songs (Taiwan) aboriginal dreamtime songs (Australia), shamanic songs and examples from Western art and popular musics.
Pre-requisites:
None
Learning Outcomes:
1. Analyse how specific musical repertoires intersect with human experiences of particular physical or acoustic environments and ways of life.
2. Develop appreciation for how particular musical/sonic forms, understandings or technologies develop in relation to given environments or transform in response to migration.
3. Discuss the relationship between musics and other forms of sonic expression or environmental sounds/noises.
4. Exercise skills in investigative thinking, researching and writing informed by ethnomusicological perspectives.
Required Materials: Click here for the reading list system Technical Requirements: The total number of notional learning hours associated with the module is 150. These will normally be broken down as follows: 20 hour(s) of Lectures across 10 week(s) 130 hour(s) of Guided Independent Study Formative Assessment: soundscape recording (1-2 mins) and commentary (150 words), and discussion of other students’ soundscape recordings Summative Assessment: Essay/Research project (2500 words) - 70% Presentation and reflection (5 / 500 minutes and words) - 30% |
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