Music and Philosophy BA

Build on your performance abilities developed in the first year.

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

Repertoire:

• one item at DipABRSM level or equivalent (Trinity, Rockschool)
• one work by a female or female-identifying composer

You will combine 18 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 20 credits.

There is also a 10 credit version of this module available for part-time students and students who take the opportunity to study abroad for one semester in their second year.

Get a thorough introduction to the fundamental techniques and practical skills of instrumental, orchestral and choral conducting.

You'll explore the problems and challenges conducting poses from a variety of angles and gain practical experience both in class and in front of an ensemble.

Some of the topics examined will be:

• rehearsal techniques
• score literacy, knowledge and preparation
• interpretation
• psychology of conducting
• technical issues such as stance, movement, beating patterns and other relevant gestures

Through supportive workshops with your fellow students you'll practise specific pieces, with feedback coming from both group discussion and the tutor.

If you want to learn conducting this is an ideal introduction.

If you don't want to be a conductor this is a perfect way to understand more about what your conductor is doing and saying and so increase your understanding of what you are meant to be playing.

This module is worth 20 credits.

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.

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.

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

Doing an arts and humanities degree means you’ll gain the skills which are essential for changing the world we live in. Not only that, you are uniquely positioned to understand people, processes and culture.

This module lets you apply that knowledge to solve a real-life problem. The aim is for you to develop your understanding of your degree, and the range of careers open to you.

You will work in an interdisciplinary team on a real project connected to impact, which we define as our ability to ‘make change happen’. These projects have been designed by individuals, groups and organisations that are looking to make a difference to our world. This might be about sustainability, business, equality, culture, politics or society.

Teams will be given a project brief. You will then be guided through how to shape a project, and how to work as a team and deliver results. This will give you the employment skills and experience to show how you can make an impact as an arts and humanities graduate.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module involves employability skills training in the Autumn semester followed by a part-time placement (one day a week, or equivalent, up to eight weeks) in an external organisation in the spring semester. The module is aimed at developing hands-on work experience and enhancing employability skills in a workplace relevant to arts graduates. Skills developed during the placement will be intrinsically relevant to various work environments.  

Students will apply for placements in relevant local organisations from an established list created by the faculty placement team, but may also use personal contacts to arrange their own placement, subject to approval. Placements will be provided across a range of sectors relevant to the arts including the creative and cultural industries, media, marketing, heritage and museums, the music industry, education, charitable and third-sector organisations, but are subject to change each year. In the autumn term lectures and workshops will be organised across the faculty, with input by the Careers and Employability Service to provide learning support on professional development and skills assessment, networking, successful applications and interviews, self-presentation and self-reflection.   

Assessment will comprise an online portfolio of materials, including application materials, reflective writing and a research report situating the work and function of the placement organisation in the context of the wider sector of which it is a part. Throughout, students will be encouraged to reflect individually and in groups on their own employability, and plan for their ongoing professional development. 

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.

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 realmAttain a deep understanding of appropriate synthesis techniquesProgram and manipulate digital samples creativelyCompose music relevant to industry related project briefsRecord and edit audio and MIDI creativelyWork with music/sound design alongside digital video formatsApply core and creative mix techniques in the completion of projectsAdhere to industry standard audio file and project file formats.

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.

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.

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 introduces the art of orchestration. 

You will:

• learn how to write for orchestral instruments, including strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and harp
• investigate diverse approaches to writing for orchestra in different historical periods.

For the final coursework, you will undertake an original orchestration and write an analytical essay on your creative approach.

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.

This module examines how Muslims have addressed fundamental theological and philosophical questions relating to their faith. These questions concern the foundations of religious knowledge and authority, God's unity and attributes, God's relationship to the world, divine determinism and human freedom, prophecy, and human destiny beyond death.

Key figures will include the Mu'tazili and Ash'ari philosophical theologians, the philosophers Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Isma'ili esotericism, and the influential medieval intellectuals al-Ghazali, Ibn al-'Arabi, and Ibn Taymiyya. Selections from primary sources will be read in translation, and special attention will be given to the integration of late antique philosophical traditions into Islamic thought about God, God's relation to the world, and human destiny. 

The module begins with an exploration of various theories of naming, paying particular attention to the works of Frege, Russell (including the theory of descriptions), and Kripke. We then turn our attention to various puzzles concerning the nature of meaning, including the distinction between analytic and synthetic sentences.

In the final part of the module, we move on to a discussion of some of the mainstream theories of meaning; particularly, a truth-conditional semantics, and we explore how this might be developed to take into account indexical terms such as 'I', 'now', and 'here'. Some of the skills acquired in Elementary Logic will be applied in this module.

We all have opinions about moral matters. But for most of us, our moral opinions are not very well-organised. Indeed, upon reflection we may discover that some of our beliefs about morality are inconsistent.

Normative ethics is the branch of moral philosophy that attempts to systematize everyday judgements about the rightness and wrongness of actions.

It's a wide area of study and we'll focus on two traditions within it:

• contractualism - which holds that the rightness and wrongness of acts depends on principles no one could reasonably reject
• character ethics - which emphasises the relationship between right action and good and bad character

By the end you'll have a clear understanding of:

• the aims and methodologies of involved
• some of the main theories, such as consequentialism, deontology, contractualism and virtue ethics (and some of their influential variants)

You'll also be able to:

• reason to a well thought-out position on various topics in ethics
• develop your own views, drawing upon the sources on which the module focuses

This module is worth 20 credits.

Where does the mind meet the world? In sensory perception.

By perceiving, we become conscious of a reality beyond our minds. Or do we?

Mind and Consciousness explores perception and perceptual consciousness.

It asks question such as:

• Do we really perceive a world beyond our minds?
• What are the theories of perception and perceptual consciousness?
• How do we distinguish different senses – what makes seeing different from hearing?
• Can our perceptions be biased? Do our prejudices change the way we see things?
• Is dreaming perceiving, or does it belong to another category of mind like imagining?

By the end of this module, you'll be able to:

• understand the main positions in the philosophy of perception
• analyse and evaluate rival views on these topics

This module is worth 20 credits.

Aristotle declared that “All men by nature desire to know”. But we apparently live in a ‘post-truth’ era characterized by fake news, alternative facts, and scorn for expertise. These are major dangers to our way of life and dealing with them requires epistemology—the study of such topics as knowledge, evidence, justification, and reliability.

In this module, we will explore issues such as: the nature and value of knowledge, the relationship between knowledge and justification, the threat of skepticism, the role of testimony in acquiring knowledge, and various intellectual virtues and vices. Some questions we will tackle include: What is knowledge? Why should we care about it? What is our justification for believing things? Do we know that we’re not brains in vats? Do we know anything at all?

Metaethics is about how ethics works. It's not about judging whether something is morally good or bad in any particular instance but critiquing the foundations used to make the judgements. Some of the questions we might ask are:

• Are there moral facts?
• What is moral truth?
• Do psychopaths really understand moral language?

Like many areas of philosophy metaethics has several branches and by the end of this module you'll be able to:

• understand the main positions in contemporary metaethics
• analyse and evaluate rival views on these topics

This module is worth 20 credits.

For a good pre-module introduction to the subject have a read of chapter six of Ethics for A level by Mark Dimmock and Andrew Fisher. It's an open-source resource so free to access.

Can we understand the world as an integrated whole? Is modern society ultimately a prison? Is philosophy, history, language, or life in general is established on masculine values? This module aims to provide in-depth and critical understanding of the important themes that surrounds Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophical pessimism, Michel Foucault’s political anthropology, and Luce Irigaray’s feminine project.

This module addresses issues in social metaphysics and social epistemology. We will examine the metaphysics of social kinds and explore different accounts of social kinds that have been offered. We will also examine how the fact that we are situated in a social world can affect what we can or cannot know or understand about ourselves, each other, and the social world itself. We will also address ethical and/or political issues that arise once we take account of social metaphysics and social epistemology.

In particular, we might consider whether there are special kinds of injustices that arise due to our social reality. What is epistemic injustice and how does it relate to social injustice? How do certain privileged groups structure the social world that create and maintain privilege and patterns of ignorance that perpetuate that privilege? What are some obligations that we have, given metaphysical and epistemological concerns we have explored? 

• Are you obliged to obey the law even when you disagree with it?
• What features must a state have in order to be legitimate?

In this module we will approach these classic questions of political philosophy by examining the work of a number of important past political philosophers. This might include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau but this isn't a fixed list - it may vary according to particular issues and student input.

We will look at both:

• why the thinkers' works have been open to different interpretations
• evaluate their arguments under these different interpretations

This module is worth 20 credits.

We look at some fundamental metaphysical questions about the cosmos. A selection of the following topics will be studied:

• Objects: concrete vs. abstract; existence and nothingness
• Sets and mereology
• Properties, Property bearers, Relations
• States of affairs and non-mereological composition
• Modality (including counterfactuals) and possible worlds
• Time, persistence, change, and the non-present

• What is art?
• Is there a relationship between art and ethics?
• What is the relationship between art and emotion?

Together we'll explore these philosophical issues and more. By the end of the module you'll:

• have a good awareness of many of the critical debates in the philosophy of art
• recognise and judge for yourself the strengths and weaknesses of arguments on the issues

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module takes formal logic beyond the basics (as covered in first year Reasoning, Argument, and Logic). We’ll cover Propositional Logic, First-Order Logic, and Modal Logic (going into more detail where these were covered in first year).

We’ll learn about existence, identity, possibility, and necessity, and we’ll learn formal techniques for testing the validity of arguments. We’ll apply these logical techniques to help us make sense of challenging concepts and arguments in metaphysics and philosophy of language.

What is the nature of space, time and motion? Is space/time/motion relative or absolute? How can we come to know? These are some central questions in the philosophy of space and time which this module explores. 

This module will discuss how thinkers such as Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Du Chatelet, Mach and Einstein have used philosophical arguments to try to answer the question about the nature of space, time and motion.

We'll examine the Asian philosophical traditions, especially those of India, China, and Japan.

These Asian traditions address familiar philosophical themes - in ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics - but often approach them in ways that seem unfamiliar.

You may well find your culturally inherited presuppositions challenged. This is good! As global power relationships change understanding culture is vital to meaningful communication.

Topics we may cover include:

• Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism the relationship between morality and religion
• etiquette, ethics and aesthetics
• the family and moral life
• social and political philoosophy
• animals, natural environments, and human flourishing
• the nature of ultimate reality and the good life
• the relation of Asian philosophies to the Western tradition

This module is worth 20 credits.

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.