Courses Offered in Spring 2021 (109AY 2S)

先修科目或先備能力：
依據新的「修業規章」：//本所研究生於學年開學時須參加音樂史檢定測驗，未通過者須於畢業前依指定補修一至二門之音樂史課程。而通過檢定者或已通過一門補修課程者，方可修習「音樂研究導論」。//
A core course for first year students of our institute. As musicians, passion, participation, and punctuality are expected.
Class will be conducted in Chinese, but teaching materials will be mostly in English.

課程概述與目標：
Our main tasks are professional and academic writings; the skills involved are bibliographical, evaluative, and communicative. The aim is to train ourselves to be an up-to-date musician-scholar-intellectual, able to make music and make sense of music creatively and critically.

Our course is designed as a cycle of four stages:

1. RESEARCH MATTERS: We'll start our intellectual journey by "musing" on who we are, what we do, and why we need to do scholarly research. Then we'll learn the craft of thesis-writing thru criticism and methodological reflections.
2. SUBJECT MATTERS: The first subject of research for musician is our CVs and performance portfolio (posters, bios, program lists and notes).
3. STYLE MATTERS: We'll learn to meet our "audience" by written and oral presentations, considering the aspects of form and style.
4. REVIEW MATTERS: Finally, we'll come to present our term project and review what we've accomplished or could be improved. Then we'll preview the perspective of a musician-scholar-intellectual. The journey has just begun ...

On the whole, we'll be doing a lot of thinking, reading, talking and writing, in and out of the classroom. Our TA will arrange with you to hold a weekly group tutorial hour. In addition, please don't hesitate to make an appointment with me at my office hour. Concrete "products" at the end of the semester will be a mini-conference and an anthology of selected written work.

This course focuses on a number of the most significant and controversial issues in the recent scholarship of early-mid 19th-century music. We will complement our discussion of scholarly debates with issues in music scholarship. This focus is intended to help students develop independent and critical judgment on these issues, to strengthen their research and academic writing skills, and to sustain these skills with the aid of their performance background.

We will begin by examining critical concepts and issues related to weekly topics and prepare for more in-depth discussion of these issues. Between week 4 and week 15, students will then take turns leading the discussion. Each student will be assigned one of the required readings, introducing, demonstrating, and evaluating the arguments included in the article in question. Each presenter will decide which repertory to focus on. He/she will also be in charge of selecting a recording of the relevant musical works and providing musical examples for the rest of the class. Presenters are strongly encouraged to demonstrate their points on their major instrument as an alternative to playing a recording. The required reading assignments are due at the beginning of each class meeting. Those not presenting in a given week will be expected to raise questions about, and to provide criticism of, the presenter’s viewpoints.

This course is primarily for music graduates. Non-music majors and undergraduates are highly recommended to talk to the course instructors first.

Co-taught by two faculty members of the institute of music, this seminar explores music’s relationship to vision (visual perception, visual representation) and its interaction with space (for example, acoustical space). In addition, the inclusion of physical movement (such as dance and choreography) into music in operas, musicals, and instrumental music, and composers’ special ways to deal with timbre will also play a significant role in this course.

The repertories that we will delve into (cf. repertory list below) range from European music from the mid 19th century to the present. The theories that we will cover include discussions of music’s association with vision and space, including works by by Goethe (color theories), Young (visual perception), Helmholtz (sound studies), Wagner (the spatial and acoustic design of his Festival Theatre), Scriabin (synesthesia), and theories in theatre and drama by Brecht. Using these primary sources as a point of departure, we will discuss how European composers from mid-late 19th century on treated music’s incorporation with multimedia in various ways, and how that enriches our discussion of music beyond “music in and of itself.”

To practice the basic scholarly skills of reading, writing and editing, and to discuss individual research projects of senior students. Two highlights are the preparation of abstracts for TWMF 2020 and the editing/writing of program notes for the institute's chamber recital.