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This module introduces students to musical sources and texts and how they provide both an insight and a challenge to researchers and performers alike. It will begin by asking ‘what is a musical text?’ and will, through case studies, address key issues such as the problem of musical notation, contemporary and historical ideas of creativity and authorship, musical ‘borrowing’ and quotation in music of the past and present, and the varied mediatized dissemination of music and its sources today.
Students will engage with a wide range of different source types such as manuscripts, printed music, and audio and audio-visual recordings. Key analytical skills and methodologies will be introduced in order to decipher these texts, including palaeography, marginalia studies, rastrology, musical analysis, and audio-visual analysis. Through the application of these and other methods, students will be guided through a variety of intriguing case studies, with a view to challenging and questioning typical notions of authorship, interpretation, creative process, and audience reception.
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