Fundamentals of Western music I
C J De Wilde
6 points * 3 hours per week * First semester * Clayton
The subject examines fundamental questions such as how composers write music, how music is performed in concerts, and how music is organised in an historical framework with respect to form, style and genre. Students are guided in the appreciation, enjoyment and assessment of selected works from the Renaissance to c. 1800. In the improvisation classes, students are encouraged to explore new musical ideas by improvising in groups, either by discussing or notating a plan beforehand or by experimenting in spontaneous fashion and feeding off ideas from each other. Improvisation heightens participants' aural sense and response to the rhythms and timbres of the environment around them, which can become the source of new compositional ideas.
Assessment
Written (1000 words): 20% * Examinations (3 hours): 60% * Listening tests: 20%
Prescribed texts
Kamien R The Norton scores: An anthology for listening vol. 1, 5th edn, Norton, 1990
Machlis J The enjoyment of music 6th edn, Norton