Module Specifications.
Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025
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Date posted: September 2024
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Coursework Only |
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Description This module will explore, via a combination of lectures, lecturer-led and student-led seminars, and composition workshops, the creative approaches to text and text setting employed by composers of choral music, with a focus on repertoire from the late 20th century to the present day. Students will engage with a wide variety of primary sources (both textual and musical) and compositional approaches to develop a deep understanding of text-setting considerations when composing, performing, or conducting choral music. This module incorporates an ‘analysis through composition’ approach to the topic of text-setting, which encourages the students to engage with these ideas as composers and thus enabling a ‘composer’s-eye’ view of the repertoire. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Learning Outcomes 1. Analyse and evaluate a given text in terms of its literary content and its capacity to serve as the basis of a compositional sketch for choral forces. 2. Identify devices of musical rhetoric used by composers to convey their personal understanding of a text. 3. Analyse and interpret standard and non-standard approaches to text-setting in the work of a range of contemporary composers. 4. Evaluate the effect of creative approaches to text-setting in performance. 5. Demonstrate the practical application of creative (both standard and non-standard) approaches to text-setting in the composition of a choral work. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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Indicative Content and Learning Activities
Music and RhetoricRelative patterns of stress and metre in a variety of languages; rhetorical features; types of accent: metric, agogic, dynamic, melodic (contour and melisma); open and closed vowels; vowel modification; open and closed syllablesTextTypes of text (poetry, prose, and phonetic; nonsense texts); the condition of the text; the vocal style(s) employed; the intelligibility of the textText/Music RelationshipsTypes of music/text relationships: direct mimesis, displaced mimesis, non-mimetic relationship, arbitrary association, synthetic relationship, and anti-contextual relationshipAnalysis seminarsAnalysis seminars in which students present their own research on their choice of contemporary choral compositionsComposition workshopsComposition workshops in which students present, conduct, perform, and critique their own creative outputs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indicative Reading List
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Other Resources 64589, Score, Contemporary Music Centre, 2012, Choirland: An Anthology of Irish Choral Music, 64590, Score, Agnew, Elaine, 0, Bread, 64591, Score, Barry, Gerald, 0, 'Long Time' and 'The Coming of Winter', 64592, Score, Britten, Benjamin, 0, Rejoice in the Lamb, 64593, Score, Clarke, Rhona, 0, The Old Woman, 64594, Score, Cleary, Siobhan, 0, Theophilus Thistle and the Myth of Miss Muffett, 64595, Score, Dellaira, Michael, 0, The Campers at Kitty Hawk, 64596, Score, Gee, Erin, 0, Mouthpiece, 64597, Score, LeFanu, Nicola, 0, On the Wind, 64598, Score, MacMillan, James, 0, Seven Last Words from the Cross, 64599, Score, Pärt, Arvo, 0, Tribute to Caesar, 64600, Score, Rautavaara, Einojuhani, 0, Ludus verbalis, 64601, Score, Saariaho, Kaija, 0, Nuits Adieux, 64602, Score, Shaw, Caroline, 0, Partita for 8 Voices, 64603, Score, Walsh, Jennifer, 0, Duration & its Simple Modes, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||