The Classical Style (UG Module 2011-12)

MUS2077: The ClassicalStyle

Module Handbook(Semesters 1 and 2, 2011-12)

Contents

Module Summary..............................................3Intended Knowledge Outcomes.................................3Intended Skill Outcomes.....................................3Methods of Assessment.......................................4Notes on the Examination....................................4Notes on the Essay..........................................4Deadline for Hand in of Essay:..............................4

Lecture schedule............................................5Semester one................................................5Semester two................................................5

SEMESTER ONE................................................6Week 1. Introduction: what is the ‘classical’? Aesthetics and

philosophy in the eighteenth century (IB).........6Week 2. Pre-classical styles (DC).........................7Week 3. The London Bach and the Early Classical Style (RS)8Week 4. Haydn’s Symphonies (BL)...........................9Week 5. Mozart and the Concerto (DC).....................10Week 7. Haydn and the String Quartet (BL)................11Week 8. Early Beethoven (IB).............................12Week 9. Beethoven’s Piano sonatas (DC)...................13Week 10. ‘Middle period’ Beethoven (IB)...................14Week 11. Church and sacred music (DC).....................15Week 12: Beethoven’s late string quartets (IB)............16

SEMESTER TWO...............................................17Study Groups (draft list)..................................19Reading list...............................................20

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Module Summary

This module covers some of the landmark works and repertoiresof the so-called ‘Classical’ era, with particular emphasis on the Vienneseclassical style (VCS). The course covers the mainphilosophical and historical contexts for the rise of the VCSand situates the musical repertoires of the Enlightenmentwithin that framework. We concentrate in the course onWestern Classical Music, although we also mention othermusical repertories, especially folk and other vernacularmusical forms. We will also look briefly at the visual arts,literature and poetry of the period in order to gain a firmgrasp of the political trajectories of France and Germany inparticular. The second half of the course in semester 2 givesstudents the opportunity to explore in more depth some of thekey ideas and works introduced in semester 1.

Aims to build familiarity with the wider European music

repertories from the so-called ‘classical’ period, with a particular emphasis on the Austro-German tradition

to enrich understandings of contextual studies embedded within these repertories;

to provide an intermediate-level training in the study of a key phase in music history, and so to prepare students for advanced-level contextual studies in their final year;

to cultivate independent learning through student participation in seminars and student-led presentations.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes A general knowledge of the musical repertory, 1750-1827,

and specific knowledge of selected composers and sub-repertories;

General knowledge of the wider historical field and specific knowledge of salient political and social contexts;

Awareness of historiographical issues arising from the study of these repertories.

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Intended Skill Outcomes The ability to evaluate a variety of musical repertories

from the long eighteenth century; An understanding of the compositional and theoretical

structures which underpin these repertories; The ability to relate such repertories to

political/social/ contexts and ideas, in a competent andwell-informed manner;

The ability to write about these repertories subtly, butalso to give clear and well-considered oral presentations on them;

The ability to undertake academic research, both alone and as part of a team.

Methods of Assessment 40% Written Examination in Semester 1

Unseen exam 60% Essay in Semester 2

2500 words

Notes on the ExaminationThe written examination (unseen) will be sat at the end of semester 1 during assessment week. Details to follow

Notes on the EssayThe topic of the essay will be determined by you, with the approval of the module leader (tutorials to discuss your essay topic will be available from early in the new year).

Deadline for Hand in of Essay:

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Permission to submit work after the formal deadline will be considered only in the following circumstances: you are ill (and have a medical certificate) you have a genuinely extenuating personal reason

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Permission ultimately rests with the Degree Programme Director foryour programme, but you may need first to discuss the matter with the Module Leader.

If you believe you have grounds for an extension you must completea DPD Extension Application Form (contact the Office for a copy) and email it to your DPD. Your Degree Programme Director will sendyou an email to tell you if the application has been approved or not. If it has, you must submit your work by the new specified date and attach a ‘late submission’ receipt form to your work whenyou hand it in at the School Office.

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Lecture scheduleSemester one

Week Date Staff

Content

1 4/10/2001 IB Introduction: what is the ‘classical’? Aesthetics and philosophy in the eighteenth century

2 11/10/2001 DC Pre-classical styles 3 18/10/2011 RS JC Bach and concert life in the eighteenth

century4 25/10/2011 BL Haydn’s Symphonies5 1/11/2011 DC Mozart and the Concerto67 15/11/2011 BL Haydn’s mature string quartets8 22/11/2011 IB Early Beethoven9 29/11/2011 DC Beethoven’s Piano sonatas10 6/12/2011 IB ‘Middle period’ Beethoven11 13/12/2011 DC Church and sacred musicvacation12 10/1/2012 IB Beethoven’s late string quartets( and

introduction to exam paper)

Semester twoIn Semester two, we will have smaller group seminars and student presentations on key themes and topics covered in semester 1. The final schedule will be determined once the number of students registered on the module has become clear.

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SEMESTER ONEWeek 1. Introduction: what is the ‘classical’? Aesthetics and

philosophy in the eighteenth century (IB)This lecture introduces the cultural and historical context forthe rise of the idea of the classical in music. We will cover some of the key philosophical terms that attend the idea

of ‘classicism’ and try to understand how those ideas spread throughout Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. What, for example, did exponents of classicism understand it to be about? What did they think they were reacting against? One of the key ideas we will deal with thisweek is the idea of the ‘aesthetic’.

Keywords: philosophy, painting, cultural history, the Enlightenment, Aufmerksamkeit, aesthetics.

Reading: None set for this week

(available on blackboard via JSTOR).

Listening: None set for this week

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Week 2. Pre-classical styles (DC)

In this lecture we will consider how one style period (the high Baroque) gives way to another (the classical), and the kinds ofhistorical narrative we might construct in the process. We’ll look at various styles that pre-datethe mature classical style –such as the ‘galant’ style, empfindsamer Stil, Sturm und Drang – as well notions of the rococo and the style of

the Mannheim school.

Keywords: Sturm und Drang, baroque antecedents to the classicalstyle, periodisation, rococo style, Mannheim orchestra

Reading: Charles Rosen, 'The coherence of the musical language', The Classical Style (|London: Faber and Faber,1971), 57-73.

Listening: music by the following composers (available through ASP): C.P.E. Bach, J.C. Bach, Galuppi, G.Monn, Sammartini, C. Stamitz, G.C. Wagenseil

Scores: available on blackboard

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Week 3. The London Bach and the Early Classical Style (RS)

Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian, is known as the London Bach as a result of spending mostof his adult life in Britain. His musical style was an amalgam ofthe German style with which he grew up, and Italian, French and English influences; hiscompositions show many of the facets of the early Classical style and influenced, amongstothers, Mozart and Haydn.

Keywords: early classical style; influences on Mozart and Haydn; concert life

Reading: Roe, Stephen, ‘Johann Christian Bach’, Grove, www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Listening: works by C. P E. Bach from ASP


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http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/

Week 4. Haydn’s Symphonies (BL)

Haydn’s reputation as a Classical composer is sometimes overshadowed by those of Mozart and Beethoven, even thoughhis highly successful composing career stretched from 1749 to1803 and took him fromprivate employment with a rich family to fame across several European countries. Inthis lecture we will explore his impressivesymphonic output, fromits influences and origins, through the dark drama of the Sturm und Drang style,

and into the culmination of his ingenuity in the later Londonsymphonies.

Keywords: Haydn symphonies, Sturm und Drang, symphonic style

Reading: J. C. Robbins Landon, 'Haydn's Precursors' from Haydn’s Symphonies (London: BBC, 1966), 7-16.

(to be available on Blackboard)

Listening: Haydn, Symphony No. 104 in D major (on ASP)

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Week 5. Mozart and the Concerto (DC)

In this lecture,we will discuss and analyse someof the key musical featuresof Mozart’s concerti. In particular, we will discuss thedevelopment of virtuosity, bothas a practice and as a style, and how this

relates to the broader development of the classical style.

Keywords: Mozart, concerto, virtuosity, cadenza, the ‘bravura’ style

Reading: please provide

(to be available on Blackboard)

Listening: DC please provide where appropriate


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Week 7. Haydn and the String Quartet (BL)

'In this class we will investigate the "new and special style" of Haydn’s mature period of string quartets, particularly op. 33, and the subversive humour which runs throughout his output. The intensityof motivic working, which might be seen to anticipate Beethoven, is

illustrated by the so-called 'Fifths' quartet (op. 76, no. 2)from Haydn's later output. We will also consider the critics'changing response to Haydn, from Keats's comment "Haydn is like a child, for there is no knowing what he will do next" to Robin Holloway's characterisation of Haydn as "a still small voice telling of the strange within the normal".

Keywords: string quartet, chamber music, Haydn’s mature period, motivic working,

Reading: Gretchen A. Wheelock, 'Engaging Strategies in Haydn's Opus 33 String Quartets' Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Autumn, 1991), 1-30.


Listening: Haydn's Quartet op. 33 no. 5 in G major, the first movement, with the score

Score: Available on Blackboard

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Week 8. Early Beethoven (IB)

In this lecture we will look at some key early works by Beethoven, notably the Sonata Pathétique (Op. 13) in C Minor, and the First Symphony (Op. 21) in C Major. The lecture will cover some of the key conceptual issue Beethoven was working through in this ‘first’ period, most notably hisrelation with Haydn, hislove and admiration for Bach (both J.S. and C.P.E.) and his growing familiarity with the

wild and dangerous enfant terrible Mozart. Beethoven’s negotiation of these musical styles, and his ongoing experimentation with extended tonality are of particular noteand will be examined in detail.

Keywords: tonality, extended sonata form, symphonic form, thesonata principle, choromaticism

Reading:EITHER:


Listening: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 13 “The Pathétique” in C Minor

(available from ASP)]

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Week 9. Beethoven’s Piano sonatas (DC)

In this lectuire, we will look in some detail at Beethoven’s piano sonatas. How doe Beethoven’s [piecesdeviate from existing keyboard sonata modeal? Whatkinds of development do theyundergo throughout his compositional output? How are they ‘classical’?

Of particular interets in this bosy of work is the ongoing exoerimenatation with lower-pitch sonority and the extensive use of the full dynamic range of the piano. In addition, the sonatas represent a coherent and sustained workshop for Beethoven’s compositional style more broadly.

Keywords: blah blah and blah

Reading: dense stuff about difficult music


Listening: DC please provide


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Week 10. ‘Middle period’ Beethoven (IB)

The notion of periodisation, of parsing the output of acomposer into stylisticchunks, is an old one and goes back at least a far as early seventeenth century theses on musical practice. In the reception Beethoven, however, this tendency becomes almost

pathological with commentators vying with each other to develop what they perceived to be the most rigorous, nuanced or ‘accurate’ periodisation. In this lecture we will examine these tendencies as part both of the ‘problem’ that Beethovenposed for his contemporaries and of the Historiographical complexities inherent in this kind of practice. In particular, we will look at the Eroica and the middle period string quartets.

Keywords: periodisation, historiography, ‘heroic ‘style, Bonaparte trope

Reading: choose ONE of the following

Daniel K. L. Chua, ‘Beethoven's Other Humanism’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Fall 2009), 571-645.

Nocholas Cook, ‘The Other Beethoven: Heroism, the Canon, and the Works of 1813–14’, 19th-Century Music, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Summer2003), 3-24.

(available on blackboard via JSTOR and ProjectMuse).

Listening: Beethoven’s Eroica

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and your own selection (a few movements) from the following quartets: Quartet in B flat major op. 18, no. 6 Quartet in F major, op. 59, no. 1 Quartet in E minor, op. 59 no. 2 Quartet in C major, op. 59, no. 3 Quartet in E flat major, op. 74 " Of the Harps "

( All available on ASP)


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Week 11. Church and sacred music (DC)

In this lecture we will examine church and sacred music of the second half of the eighteenth century, withparticular reference to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.How, in this ‘age of secularisation’ did religious music continue to flourish? What does this tell us about attitudes to religion and ritual in the late Enlightenment? What kinds of impact did the so-

called ‘classical style’ have on music for the church?

Keywords: secularism, late Enlightenment, liturgy

Reading: DC please supply

Listening: Haydn’s Harmoniemesse


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Week 12: Beethoven’s late string quartets (IB)

Much ink has been spilled trying to make sense of Beethoven’s late string quartets. Indeed, the debates continue to rage asto what they signify, how they work and the enigma they pose to analysts, historians and cultural commentators alike. We willlook in some detail int his

lecture at the very idea of ‘lateness’, and will look at Beethoven’s late quartets as models for thinking about that concept. How do they challenge ideas about the classical style? To what extent might they be said to belong to anotherepoch? What do they tell us about changing compositional practice in the third decade of the nineteenth century?

Keywords: secularism, late Enlightenment, liturgy

Reading: From: Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Work (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1991). Scan available on b;ackboard/

Listening: Make a selection of a few movements form one or two of the following:Opus 127: String Quartet No. 12 in E flat major (1825) Opus 130: String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major (1825) Opus 131: String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor (1826) Opus 132: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor (1825) Opus 133: Große Fuge in B flat major for string quartet (1826)Opus 135: String Quartet No. 16 in F major (1826)All available on ASP


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SEMESTER TWO

ScheduleSee schedule on blackboard

Learning culture

The spirit of the second semester’s teaching and learning is this:

The emphasis is on student-led activity: this is to helpyou improve your skills in managing your own learning, presenting your ideas to others, and participating knowledgably in discussion.

The focus is on individual pieces: this is to help you develop your skills in analysing what is going on in a piece of music, and in relating this to wider historicaland aesthetic issues.

There will be four seminars (schedule below), which willhelp you build up your skills and knowledge, giving you time to make mistakes and to improve from week to week.

The experience you gain through this process will prepare you for the final assessed project. The brief for this will be issued after the last seminar, and the project is due in some time in week 10 (date to be confirmed).

You work on your project independently. However there will be a ‘clinic’ in week 7, so that you can bring questions to, and ask for advice from, the module tutors.

Here’s how the seminars will work week by week: You will be assigned to a tutor group of 5 or 6 students Everyone prepares for every seminar (all the topics are

formative for the final project), but one group will be given particular responsibility for leading part of eachsession

An assignment sheet for each seminar topic will be posted in advance on Blackboard; There will be two tutor

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groups allocated to each set work and each group will complete a different assignment

the onus is now largely on you to decide how best to goabout getting to grips with the music being considered

To this end you should refer back to the corresponding lecture(s) from semester 1, reminding yourself of issuesrelevant to each piece, applying and extending analytical approaches taken (or finding alternative ones), re-visiting readings that were set, and/or finding additional supporting literature

Each seminar will be led by a different group of students (details in schedule below). The role of the lead group is to prepare a short presentation (20 minutes), and to devise points for further discussion bythe full group. Again, this assumes that every class member will have prepared: the presentation forms only part of the session; everyone else will be expected to contribute to the wider discussion.

It is up to each lead group to arrange their own time and place to meet to prepare their presentation for the class. You may want to use the Communication facility onBlackboard to help enable this.

The lead group may wish to use suitable audio-visual support. You can ask the office staff to photocopy handouts, provided you pass material to them 48 hours before the class. If using technology be sure to have a backup plan (e.g. if you want to use PowerPoint slides, have them on your network drive and on pen drive).

The following table shows who is in which lead group foreach week. It is not permitted to change group unilaterally. However if you and a person in another group wish to swap weeks, you may email the module leader (IB: [email protected]) to request approval for the change, by no later than one week before the earlier seminar date.

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Study Groups (draft list)

Please contact the module leader if your name is not on this list

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Reading list

These sources are listed here for reference purposes. Obviously, you are not expected to read them all. You are expected to keep up with the weekly reading, however (listed above).

Attali, Jacques, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

Blackmer, Corinne E. & Smith, Patricia J. (eds.) En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

Botstein, Leon, ‘Toward a History of Listening’, The Musical Quarterly volume 82, number 3/4 (special double edition: “Music as Heard”) (1998), 428.

Chartier, Roger, Cultural History (Ithaca, New York: Polity Press, 1988).

Chua, Daniel K. L., ‘Vincenzo Galilei, modernity and the division of nature’, Suzannah Clark and Alexander Rehding (eds.) Music Theory and Natural Order: From the Renaissanceto the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17–29.

Citron, Marcia, Gender & the Musical Canon (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Clarke, David, ‘Musical autonomy revisited’, in Clayton, Martin, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton (eds.), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 159–170.

Ericson, Margaret, Women and Music: A Selected Annotated Bibliography onWomen & Gender Issues in Music, 1987-1992 (New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1996).

Geiringer, Karl, ‘The Milan and London Bach’, The Bach family: Seven Generations of Creative Genius (Da Capo Press: New York, 1981), 404-444.

Gramit, David Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770-1848 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002).

Greenblatt, Stephen, 'Capitalist culture and the circulatory system', in Murray Krieger (ed.), The Aims of Representation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).

Greenblatt, Stephen, 'Culture' in Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (eds.), Critical Terms for Literary Study

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(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990),225-32.

Greenblatt, Stephen, 'Resonance and Wonder', in Peter Collierand Helga Geyer-Ryan (eds.), Literary Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 74-90.

Hodson, Daren Ivan, ‘The institutionalisation of literature in eighteenth-century France and Germany: the functions of reading in Rousseau, Novalis, Fichte and the Ecole Normale’ (PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 1995).

Johnston, William M., The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History,1848–1938 (Berkeley,

Leppert, Richard, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Leppert, Richard, The Sight of Sound : Music, Representation and the Historyof the Body (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1995).

Lippman, Edward A., (ed.), Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader - The Nineteenth

Maunder, Richard, ‘J. C. Bach and the Early Piano in London’,JRMA, Vol. 116, No. 2 (1991), 201-210.

McClary, Susan, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender & Sexuality (Universityof Minnesota Press, 1991).

Purdy, Daniel Leonhard, ‘Reading to consume: fashionable receptions of literature in Germany, 1774-1816’ (PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, 1992).

Roe, Stephen, ‘J. C. Bach, 1735-1782: Towards a New Biography’, MT, Vol. 123, No. 1667 (Jan. 1982), 23, 25-6.

Simon, Edwin J., ‘A Royal Manuscript: Ensemble concertos by J. C. Bach, JAMS, Vol. 12, No. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn, 1959), 161-177.

Tomlinson, Gary, 'The web of culture: A context for musicology', 19th-Century Music, VII/3 (Apr 1984) 350-62.

Treitler, Leo, Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1990).

Warburton, Ernest, ‘Lucio Silla: By Mozart and J. C. Bach’, MT, Vol. 126, No. 1714 (Dec. 1985), 726-727, 729-730.

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The Classical Style (UG Module 2011-12)

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