5th Form Possible Reading and Listening

Thinking about music in different ways:

Issue: What is ‘music’; what is music ‘for’; who is music for?

 Music: A Very Short Introduction (Nicholas Cook, 1998). Oxford.

o Chapter 1: Musical Values
 pp. 1-18
Issue: How should we ‘hear’/perform musics from the past: recent and distant.

 Early Music: A Very Short Introduction (Thomas Forrest Kelly, 2011). Oxford.
o Chapter 1: What does Early Music mean?
 pp. 1-15
 Music at Court (Christopher Hogwood, 1977). The Folio Society.
o Prologue: Intrada
 pp. 6-15
o Chapter 4: Annus mirabilis (1685!)
 pp. 66- 79
Issue: ‘Music, the cult of ‘great’ men’: The Canon of Composers in Western Music

 Music: A Very Short Introduction (Nicholas Cook, 1998). Oxford.

o Chapter 2: Back to Beethoven
 pp. 18-38

Following a musical analysis

 Thinking about analysis:
o The Infinite Variety of Music (Leonard Bernstein)
 pp. 28-47
 Read along with the ‘podcast version’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRKw8MENoCs
 Analysing Orchestral Music:
o Leonard Bernstein on: Beethoven: Symphony no. 3 (Eroica), i.
 pp. 195-210
o Keeping Score: Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
 https://www.keepingscore.org/interactive/berlioz-symphony-fantastique
o Keeping Score: Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
 https://www.keepingscore.org/sites/default/files/swf/stravinsky/full
 Analysing fusions:
o Leonard Bernstein on: Jazz in Serious Music. (N.B. Very old fashioned tone… Fast forward through the
1950s adverts!)
 pp. 49-64
 Read along with the TV version: https://vimeo.com/138996684

The History of Modern Music

1890-1914

Issue: Where did ‘Modern Music’ come from? The ‘fin de siècle’: Composers experiment and look for new
directions after Wagner, at the ‘end of the long 19 th Century’.

 The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Alex Ross, 2007)
o Chapter 1: The Golden Age
 pp. 3-11
  Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez (Paul Griffiths, 1978). Thames and Hudson.
o Chapter 1: Prelude
o Chapter 2: The Late Romantic Background
o Chapter 3: New Harmony
o Chapter 4: New rhythm, new form
 pp. 7-52

 The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Alex Ross, 2007)
o Chapter 2: Doctor Faust – iii. Paris 1900, iv. Schoenbery, v. Scandal, vi. Atonality
 43-66
o Chapter 3: Dance of the Earth – i. The Rite, iii. Stravinsky and the Rite
 105-113
1918-1945

Issue: ‘Music’ becomes ‘musics’: Forging new paths, Popular Music, High Art/Low Art, Recorded Music, Film Music,
World Music, Fusions.

 Music: A Very Short Introduction (Nicholas Cook, 1998). Oxford.

o Chapter 3: A State of Crisis

 The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Alex Ross, 2007)
o Chapter 6: City of Nets – iii. Music for Use, vii. Twelve-Tone Music
 pp. 198-200, 211-215
o Chapter 8: Music for All – ii. Radio Music, vi. Hollywood Music, vii. Exile Music
 pp. 286-290, 316-328
1945-1970

Issue: ‘Avant garde’ music, Searching for new Timbres, Music and Electronics, Aleatoric Music

 The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Alex Ross, 2007)
o Chapter 11: Brave New World: i. The Cold War and the Avant-Garde of the Fifties, ii. Radical
Reconstruction: Boulez and Cage
 pp. 386-404
 Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez (Paul Griffiths, 1978). Thames and Hudson.
o Chapter 11: Electronics
o Chapter 12: Chance
 pp. 156-181