Music and Philosophy BA

The recording studio is one of the key spaces where technology and creative musical practice meet.

You'll develop professional skills in:

• applications of microphones and their placement within a variety of acoustic spaces, and for a variety of instrumentation.
• mixing techniques with reference to current standards
• audio processing, signal paths and workflows
• file-types applicable to recent trends in musical consumption

You'll work in small groups to allow you to specialise in techniques and styles for your particular music interests such as chamber music, jazz ensemble, rock or ethno-music groups.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Music production covers creation, performance, recording, mixing and delivery.

You’ll look at current production processes and explore:

• artistic expression via musical direction and arrangements
• factors affecting performance (such as acoustic environment)

Through examples and discussion you’ll assess the impact of the role of Producer and its application within various genres and fields of practice.

Specific topics you'll cover include:

• Arrangement (linear and vertical)
• Sonic, stylistic and artistic considerations
• Microphones: types, polar patterns, theory and practical application of techniques
• Recording media and considerations of their respective workflows
• Signal path
• Multi-track recording technique
• Mixing: dynamics, EQ and FX; ITB and OTB
• Mastering, files and formats: recording and delivery

Practical work will give you:

• an understanding of demands and expectations of commercial project briefs
• the capacity to produce creative product to a precise brief and deadline

This module is worth 20 credits.

Build on your performance skills developed in your second year.

You will work with a dedicated tutor, agreeing pieces to work on at the appropriate level.

Repertoire:

• at least two items from DipLRSM level or equivalent (Trinity, Rockschool)

You will combine 20 hours of individual tuition with group masterclasses and workshops, and personal practice using our specialised facilities. Workshop topics covered will include rehearsal strategies, diversifying repertoire choices, musician’s wellbeing, and writing programme notes.

Final assessment is through an end of year recital and supporting programme notes, in which you will have the opportunity to work with a collaborative pianist, funded by the department.

This module is worth 40 credits.

Develop your creative voice by composing at least 15 minutes of original music.

In this module, you will receive individual support in regular tutorials, alongside group sessions exploring different aspects of composition. You will also have the chance to work with a professional guest ensemble.

The module will culminate in a performance of your own work that you'll organise yourself.

Your compositions will be judged on both technical merit and originality.

By the end of the module you will have an advanced understanding of the practical realities of contemporary composition.

This module is worth 40 credits.

Your opportunity to pursue an extended individual project in the areas of musicology, analysis, or transcribing and editing.

The topic covered will be your choice and agreed before you start with the module convenor.

Supported through a series of seminars and tutorials, you'll demonstrate original research and critical thinking in producing a 8,000‒12,000 word written project (or equivalent).

You'll give a presentation on aspects of your project at a Finalists Conference and get additional on-the-spot feedback from staff and students

This module is worth 40 credits.

This module is blends music and computer science to introduce you to the diverse approaches we can take to combine music and audio with mixed reality. This can be through immersive technologies, artificial intelligence or virtual reality.

In this module, you’ll work in groups to create your own music and mixed reality project which will be performed in public or online.

Hollywood musicals have been hugely popular from the invention of “talkies” to the present day. But how are they different to musicals written for the stage?

We'll use a range of case studies, from The Jazz Singer (1927) to The Greatest Showman (2017), to consider specific issues such as:

• theatricality and “backstage narratives”
• star casting
• dance on screen
• the role of animation in developing the form.

You'll develop a broad knowledge of the:

• range of musicals produced
• key figures in their development
• musicological debates around them.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module looks at musical scores as material (or virtual) objects, from the earliest medieval songbooks to IMSLP and the PDF, via five centuries of music printing.

With attention to objects in the Nottingham library collections, as well as famous items online and in facsimile, we will be asking what do scores tell us about their makers, their owners and their users?

Classes will think about matters including literacy, musical interpretation and cultural memory, as well as intersections between music books and race, gender, power and social class.

This module will explore a broad range of eighteenth-century repertoires, from historical, critical, and analytical angles. It will explore social settings and the music profession as well as contemporary techniques of composition, improvisation, and performance. The repertoire covered will extend from Bach and Pergolesi to Beethoven and Rossini. Development of skills in aural perception, critical assessment, reasoning, and enhanced awareness of historical, commercial, artistic, cultural and social factors in eighteenth-century music and related arts. Ability to present evidence-based arguments effectively both orally and in writing.

This module will introduce students to the art of writing for orchestral instruments including strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and keyboard with some coverage of writing for popular instruments.

This module introduces you to the musical cultures and communities of sixteenth-century England. We focus on not only the activities of famous Tudor monarchs, but also the more ordinary soundworlds of homes, streets, taverns, and parish churches.

You’ll learn about the musical implications of the printing press, Renaissance humanism, and the English Reformation, as well as issues of education and literacy, diplomacy and politics, class, race, and gender.

Genres to be discussed include broadside ballads, Latin polyphony, lute songs, metrical psalms, English madrigals, and music for the theatre up to the time of Shakespeare.

You will also have the opportunity to join workshops on editing Tudor music.

This module offers a survey of musical cultures from the Asian continent. You will study a range of styles including traditional, contemporary and art music from the major cultural centres of the region. You will also examine different meanings, practices and theories of these cultures.

We approach music both on its own terms and in relation to other aspects of culture, politics, history and social life. The cultural areas are explored through a series of short ethnographic studies focusing on particular musical repertoires, genres, styles, musical instruments and musicians.

Develops core skills in digital composition.

Using Logic Pro software you'll gain professional technical skills in:

• creation of sounds using synthesis
• audio recording and sampling techniques
• audio and MIDI programming and editing
• scoring (inc. exporting to Sibelius)
• mix techniques such as dynamic processing, time-based effects (reverb, modulation), equalisation and automation to attain width, height, space and depth
• audio files and formats
• mastering (metering, loudness)

As well as technical skills you'll also:

• look across genres at how different techniques are used in particular settings
• learn to work in a professional way using industry specific composition briefs.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Using a variety of technologies this module explores sound theory and sonic husbandry in order to cultivate an organic approach to sound creation. Deepening on topics first introduced in Digital Composition, students probe ever more diverse and adventurous synthesis, sampling, sound to picture and mix techniques as they work towards completing a digital portfolio of music constructed from sounds composed, curated and created entirely from scratch.

To provide further depths of knowledge and advanced skills in sonic manipulation. To:Demonstrate ability to adapt and apply compositional techniques in the digital realm. Attain a deep understanding of appropriate synthesis techniques. Program and manipulate digital samples creatively. Compose music relevant to industry related project briefs. Record and edit audio and MIDI creatively. Work with music/sound design alongside digital video formats. Apply core and creative mix techniques in the completion of projects. Adhere to industry standard audio file and project file formats.

This module centres on participation in primary school music teaching in partnership with the Nottingham Music Hub. Students attend weekly in-school sessions throughout the autumn and spring semesters, assisting with Nottingham First Access mentoring (In Harmony and/or Whole Class Ensemble) or contributing to the direction of post-first-access ensembles. In the spring semester, fortnightly classes will supplement the in-school experience with sessions on topics such as: the national music plan and music hubs; different teaching and learning styles; Musical Futures; musical inclusion and teaching in inner-city schools; and special educational needs.

Get an introduction to composing music that responds to and interacts with work by non-musical artists.

By the end of the module you'll have composed two short pieces:

• a choral work on an English-language text of your choice
• a score for a short film clip

In past years, students have chosen a wide variety of texts for their choral compositions, from Romantic poetry to political speeches. Students have composed new scores for film clips from a range of films, from Dziga Vertov's pioneering Man With a Movie Camera to BBC nature documentaries.

For an example of the final work you might produce see this video - 'Apotheosis' by George Littlehales

This module is worth 20 credits.

Jazz covers a multitude of styles from trad to free, plus any number of contemporary ‘fusions’.

We'll start by looking at its origins in ragtime and blues and then delve into a wide range of contrasting styles from 1917 to the present day. These might include:

• New Orleans and Chicago ensemble jazz
• Harlem stride piano
• swing bands
• be-bop and hard bop
• the ‘cool’ school
• modal jazz
• free jazz
• symphonic jazz
• jazz-rock and other fusion styles

We'll also take a look at jazz film scores.

Throughout the module we'll explore cultural, racial, analytical and aesthetic issues at each stage in jazz's development.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Music and philosophy are frequently intertwined. Musicians have often engaged with philosophical issues in their playing and composition while philosophers have been challenged and shaped by music.

Through a series of lectures and seminars you'll:

• become familiar with the history and the methods of philosophical discussions about music
• learn to apply critical and interpretative skills, and relate philosophical issues, to music studies

In particular we'll examine:

• the foundations of modern aesthetics in the writings of enlightenment and nineteenth-century philosophers, including Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche
• the key twentieth-century contributions from thinkers including Adorno, Barthes and Lydia Goehr

This module is worth 20 credits.

The last few years have been rife with anniversary events commemorating conflicts of the last few hundred years: the Battle of Waterloo (1815), World War One (1914-1918) and World War Two (1939-1945), to name but a few. New books have been published, concert series have taken place (the Wigmore Hall’s ‘Music in the Shadow of War’ series, 2013) and broadcasts on the topic are a regular feature on the airwaves (for example, the Radio 3 series ‘Music in the Great War’, 2014). The course uses this timeliness to explore a previously neglected aspect of modern warfare, but one that is increasingly becoming a scholarly concern: the role music and sound have played in conflict and its representation. Beginning with the Battle of Waterloo, the course will track various conflicts of the past two centuries—including the battle noise of World War One and the use of music as propaganda in World War Two, and will culminate with the use of music as torture in the detention camps of the so-called ‘war on terror’. We will consider composers such as Beethoven, Schoenberg and Ireland; popular song and ephemeral ditties; and aspects of broader auditory culture. Our main aim is to explore the role that music and sound have played in how war has been represented, imagined and memorialised.

Music is often integral to the success of a film. It can set the mood, heighten drama, enhance emotions and provide a sense of continuity. Together we'll look at the various styles of film music developed during the history of cinema, and consider aesthetic and technical issues around them. You'll also develop an awareness of historical, commercial and social factors in the entertainment industry, including music for television and videogames.

Topics will include:

• silent film
• the golden era of Hollywood
• characteristics of different genres (such as animation, musical comedy, film noir, science fiction, etc.)
• European cinema
• animation
• documentary film
• uses of pop, jazz and classical music in film scoring

In your coursework, you'll be encouraged to apply the general lessons learnt from seminars and lectures to specific areas of film you are particularly interested in.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Look at the development of the Broadway musical from the 1920s to the present.

Examine themes including:

• adaptation
• stardom
• collaboration
• commercialism

Sessions will include:

• Rodgers and Hammerstein and the musical play
• Stephen Sondheim and the art musical
• the Disney musical on stage

The aim of this module is to provide you with an opportunity to write an 8,000-word dissertation on a philosophical topic, the precise subject of which is by agreement with the supervisor. At the completion of the module, you will have had an opportunity to work independently, though with the advice of a supervisor. 

This module investigates different kinds of contemporary logic, as well as their uses in philosophy. We will investigate the syntax and semantics of various logics, including first order logic, modal logics, and three-valued logics, as well as ways to apply formal techniques from these logics to philosophical topics such as possibility and necessity, vagueness, and the Liar paradox.

We’ll cover ways to reason and construct proofs using the logics we study, and also ways to reason about them. We’ll look at proofs regarding the limits of formal logic, including proofs of soundness, completeness, and decidability.

This module will focus on a critical examination of core aspects of Buddhist thinking, with emphasis on some of its basic psychological, spiritual, and metaphysical conceptions.

These include, in particular: the origin and nature of suffering; the no-self thesis; enlightenment; consciousness; experiential knowing; and the doctrine of Emptiness (the lack of inherent nature in all things and impermanence).

This module will teach you how to communicate philosophy through a variety of different mediums, assessing them in each. We will look at how philosophy can be communicated through legal documentation, press releases, handouts, lesson plans, webpages, funding bids and posters (with optional presentations).

A number of the sessions will be delivered by professionals from outside the university, with support from the module convener. Seminars will be used to develop each of the items for assessment. You will be invited to draw upon your prior philosophical learning to generate your assessments, except in the case of handout where you will be set a specific philosophical task and asked to complete some (very basic) independent research.

Karl Marx's thoughts and words have had an enormous impact on history. Revolutions have been fought, economic policies pursued and artistic movements established by followers (and opponents) of Marxism.

Together we'll examine some of Mark's original writing and explore his thinking. Specific themes we'll cover include:

• alienation
• the materialist conception of history
• ideology
• the labour theory of value

By the end of the module you should have a good overview of Marx's attempt to synthesise German philosophy, French political theory, and British economics.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Illness, ageing, death and dying are universal experiences. Yet discussion about them often only happens in times of emotional distress.

Together we'll explore philosophical issues related to human mortality in an open, supportive and compassionate way.

As well as a deeper understanding of the issues you will also build capacity to think sensitively and humanely about the human experience of ageing, illness, and dying.

Typical topics might include:

• experiences of being chronically ill
• psychiatry and mental health
• the oppression of ill persons · illness narratives
• the moral and spiritual significance of illness
• the experience of dying
• empathy, grief, and mourning
• death and the meaning of life
• the significance of human mortality to wider philosophical issues and concerns

This module is worth 20 credits.

In this module we'll ask questions like:

• How should human beings interact with the non-human natural world?
• Is nature intrinsically valuable, or does it possess value only by being valuable to us?

As part of this we'll cover topics such as:

• the moral status of animals
• the ethics of zoos
• responsibility for climate change
• whether there is any connection between the twin oppressions of women and nature
• the environmental impact of having children
• the ethics of restoring nature after it has been damaged by human development

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module is a discussion of some philosophical problems pertaining to art. Topics could include definitions of art, the objectivity versus the subjectivity of aesthetic evaluations, emotional response to art, the ontological status of artworks, and Walton's theory of make-believe.

This module aims to promote a deeper understanding of philosophical issues pertaining to art. By the end of the module, you should be able to discuss and evaluate different views of the expressive power of art, to explain certain current views on the status of aesthetic evaluations, and to present the main contemporary viewpoints pertaining to the nature of artworks.

Politics and truth have always had a complicated relationship. Lies, bullshit, spin, and propaganda are nothing new.

Polarization is on the rise in many democracies and political disagreements have spread to disputes about obvious matters of fact.

But have we really entered the era of 'post-truth' politics? Is debate now framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the facts?

In this module, we'll explore questions such as:

• Should the existence of widespread disagreement in politics make us less confident in our own views?
• Are voters morally or epistemically obligated to vote responsibly?
• Is it rational for citizens to base their political views on group identity rather than reasoned arguments?
• Should we have beliefs about complex policy questions about which we are not experts?
• Is democracy the best form of government for getting at the truth?

This module is worth 20 credits.

Education plays a fundamental part in all our lives. It shapes who we are as individuals, our value systems, our political and religious outlooks. As a consequence it changes how society looks, how it operates, and what we think society ought to be like. Education then, is of the most profound importance.

As philosophers we are uniquely placed to think long and hard about education:

• what is its role?
• what should its role be?
• who gets to decide what is taught?

Rising to this challenge this module creates the space, and provides the tools, for you to do just this.

This module is worth 20 credits.

Much of our life is filled with compulsory work but when free of obligation, when at leisure, we play in many different ways. We voluntarily chose to engage with the arbitrary rules and restrictions of games. We roll dice and push the pieces round a board. We twiddle thumbs and shoot fictional computer game zombies. We get involved in organised physical activities, sports such as football or athletics. We seek to escape our everyday lives by hiking up mountains in the wild, or by drinking and dancing in nightclubs. We may play with others, seeking friendship, intimacy or sex. We may relax alone, reading literature or practising art. We may mix these different activities together. 

This module brings together philosophical, historical and sociological approaches to Buddhism. Students will learn about Buddhism as a philosophical and religious tradition – or set of traditions – with particular attention to the relation of Buddhist doctrines and teachings to the contemporary world. They will also learn about Buddhism as a living community, with particular attention to Buddhist life and practice. 

In society we do things with words. We can use language to lie, to praise, to convince, and to insult. This course will consider the ethical and political ramifications of speech and language.

We will use methods from the philosophy of language to investigate these issues. Representative topics include:

• how we should define and use certain terms (for example: 'sex', 'gender', 'woman', 'disability', 'race', 'class', 'queer')
• accounts of what it is to lie
• accounts of the social effects of language (for example: slurs, dogwhistles and propaganda)
• how terms can be “claimed”
• the harms of speech and how to balance those with the right to speech, silencing, epistemic injustice.

This module will consider mind, psychology, and mental health from a philosophical angle. The module will cover a range of exciting and fundamental topics in the philosophy of mind and psychology (chosen from topics such as, the social mind, animal minds, the nature of consciousness, the mind-body problem, the emotions, imagination, pain, will and action, belief, perception, mind as machine, and artificial intelligence - selected topics will vary from year to year). We will always ask how these relate to mental health.

But the module will also have a more specific focus on mental health as we will take the tools of philosophy of mind and psychology to mental health: we will consider how philosophy of mind and psychology can help us better understand mental health, but also how reflection on mental health can impact work in philosophy of mind and psychology.

So the module will also cover content chosen from topics and areas such as the nature of mental health (and mental illness), delusion, thought-insertion, therapy, self-deception and the philosophy of specific mental disorders (for example., addiction, schizophrenia, depression) - specific topics varying from year to year.

So, in sum the module will combine focus on specific topics in:

• philosophy of mind and psychology (with a mental health angle)
• philosophy of mental health (with a philosophy of mind and psychology angle).

This module covers questions such as:

• What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
• Can artificial intelligence be creative?
• Can artificial intelligence understand, think or have phenomenal consciousness?
• What would a paradigm shift in the way we understand intelligence and artificial intelligence look like?
• What are the ethical constraints on the research and methods of artificial intelligence?
• What are the dangers associated with the wider use of AI in human society?
• Who is responsible for actions/decisions taking by AI systems or algorithms'', 'How should we interact with AI systems?

This module is about the ideal of authenticity, roughly: The ideal of being true to oneself. 

We will be asking questions like:

• what authenticity is
• what it requires of us
• why it matters
• whether being moved by it need be narcissistic
• what its connection is with other philosophically interesting concepts like free will, autonomy, morality, and self-creation.

We will explore such questions a-historically, but we will also look at how they have been handled by certain historical thinkers and schools of thought, especially the 19th and 20th century Existentialists.

Philosophers liable to be on the agenda include:

• Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir (from the Existentialist School)
• Frankfurt, Watson, and Wolff (from the Contemporary Compatibilist School)
• Kantians such as Korsgaard and Velleman
• contemporary theorists preoccupied with authenticity and self-expression, such as Bernard Williams.

What are the proper concerns of an egalitarian society? If we’re concerned about equality, what kind of world should we be working towards? What does it mean to treat one another as equals? Should we treat each other that way? If so, why? And what are the political implications of such obligations? 

In this module we will be exploring these and other questions at the heart of the egalitarian project. Subjects will include equality of condition, relational equality, moral equality and political equality. We will also touch on issues around welfare, luck, rights, dignity, status and democracy. Writers covered may include Dworkin, Sen, Parfit, Anderson, Kant, Rousseau, Scanlon, Christiano and Rawls.