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MUS20400

Academic Year 2025/2026

Early European Music (MUS20400)

Subject:
Music
College:
Arts & Humanities
School:
Music
Level:
2 (Intermediate)
Credits:
5
Module Coordinator:
Dr Matthew Thomson
Trimester:
Autumn
Mode of Delivery:
On Campus
Internship Module:
No
How will I be graded?
Letter grades

Curricular information is subject to change.

This module invites students to investigate European musical cultures between 750 and 1750, encompassing styles which are often divided into the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque eras. We will begin by considering the opportunities and challenges encountered when we try to understand musical cultures that are historically distant from us. Students will be encouraged to engage with questions about the kinds of evidence required to understand such musical cultures, and how we should go about interpreting that evidence.

We will then examine three key topics, which are spread across the historical period covered by this module. Students will first investigate the troubadours and trouvères, whose twelfth- and thirteenth-century songs of love and desire form the earliest written repertoire of song in the vernacular (that is, languages other than Latin) in Europe. Second, we will examine the role of sacred polyphony within the turbulent political and religious context of sixteenth-century reformations. Finally, we will investigate opera and its social contexts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tracing it from its beginnings as an entertainment for noble patrons to its development as a commercialised entertainment industry. In all three of these topics, we will begin by considering the musical repertoire as it was practised within Europe, and then move to thinking about its use in colonial or quasi-colonial situations outside Europe. In addition, students will be encouraged to consider the repertoires studied from numerous different angles, thinking both about how this music was used in society and about how it was put together technically.

Folders containing preparatory reading and listening materials for each week will be available on Brightspace. Students will be expected to use these materials to prepare for lectures, which will include numerous opportunities for active engagement and discussion. Students will be encouraged to develop an interest in one of the three topics under consideration with a view to writing a final research essay on a topic of interest.

This module uses the yellow ("Check") mode of the College of Arts and Humanities "traffic light system" with regard to the use of AI (see https://www.ucd.ie/artshumanities/study/aifutures/trafficlightsystem/). Specifically, its use for translation and brainstorming are permitted (see the webpage for details). However, each use must be documented in an appendix (indicating which AI app was used, the date of access, and citing the specific prompt(s)).

About this Module

Learning Outcomes:

On completion of this module students should be able to:

– Explain and examine the opportunities and issues presented by studying early music.
– Identify and describe important genres, styles, musicians, and composers of the period in question.
– Recognise, analyse and compare selected compositions in terms of their style and origin.
– Evaluate the relationship between music and its cultural and historical context.
– Discuss and explain key aspects of each topic in the light of contemporary musicological scholarship.
– Conduct research using a variety of reliable sources and write a coherent essay engaging with relevant scholarship.

Indicative Module Content:

Thinking about Early Music: opportunities, challenges, questions
The troubadours and trouvères: songs of love and desire
Sixteenth-century polyphony: the religious and political uses of church music in the age of reformations
Opera in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: patrons, divas, and commercial success

Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

22

Specified Learning Activities

36

Autonomous Student Learning

42

Total

100


Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Lectures with extensive opportunities for group work and discussion.
Close readings of primary sources within group work.
Engagement with individual songs, pieces of polyphony, and operatic scenes.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade In Module Component Repeat Offered
Assignment(Including Essay): Abstract for the final essay. This will be informed by a personal meeting with the module co-ordinator in Week 7, and will be submitted at the end of Week 8. Week 8 Graded No
5
No
Assignment(Including Essay): Essay: Research essay of between 2,000 and 2,500 words. See separate assessment for abstract. Final essay due at end of trimester. Week 14 Graded No
35
No
Participation in Learning Activities: Preparation of set reading (assessed by completion of weekly reading reflection quizzes) and participation in group discussion in class (assessed by summarising one discussion a week on Brightspace). Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12 Graded No
15
No
Quizzes/Short Exercises: Multiple Choice Questionnaire: Assessment 1 focusing on the lectures of weeks 1-4 Week 4 Graded No
15
No
Quizzes/Short Exercises: Multiple Choice Questionnaire: Assessment 2 focusing on the lectures of weeks 5-7 Week 7 Graded No
15
No
Quizzes/Short Exercises: Multiple Choice Questionnaire: Assessment 3 focusing on the lectures of weeks 9-12 Week 12 Graded No
15
No

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 

Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students' approach to the abstract for the essay will be informed through feedback given orally in a meeting with Dr Thomson in Week 7. They will then receive written feedback on their abstract after submitting it. Students will receive feedback on all other assessments post-assessment.

Textbook (used every week and accessible via code)
Burkholder, Grout and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 10th edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019).
Burkholder and Palisca, Norton Anthology of Western Music. Vol. 1, Ancient to Baroque. 8th edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019).

Further Reading (to be used in preparing individual projects)

Troubadour and Trouvere Song
Akehurst and Davis, A Handbook of the Troubadours (Berkely: University of California Press, 1995).
Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn, ‘Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours’, Speculum 67/ 4 (1992): 865–91.
Egan, Margarita, The Vidas of the Troubadours (London: Routledge, 2019).
Gaunt, Simon, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge, 1995)
Rachel May Golden, Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Grau and Colton (eds), Female-Voice Song and Women’s Musical Agency in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2022).
Huot, Sylvia, From Song to Book: the Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987)
Kay, Sarah. Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Leach, Elizabeth Eva, ‘Do trouvère melodies mean anything?’, Music Analysis, (2019), 38/1–2: 3–46.
Mason, Joseph W., ‘Structure and process in the Old French jeu-parti’, Music Analysis (2019), 38/1–2: 47–79.
Mason, Joseph W., Extreme Vocality and the Boundaries of Song in the Medieval Crusades. Journal of Musicology 1 January 2024; 41 (1): 73–114.
Peraino, Judith, Giving voice to love: song and self-expression from the troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Saltzstein, Jennifer, Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023)

Sixteenth-century polyphony
Baker, Geoffrey, Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008).
Blackburn, Bonnie, ‘For Whom do the Singers Sing’, Early Music 25 (1997), 593–609.
Fisher, Alexander, Music, Piety and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria (New York, 2014)
Haar, James, European music, 1520-1640 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014)
Irving, D.R.M., Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manilla (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Leaver, Robin A., Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Lutheran Quarterly Books, 2007)
Leaver, Robin A., Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes: English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale to Utenhove 1535–1566 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991)
Lockwood, The Counter Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo (Venice, 1970).
MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003)
MacCulloch, Diarmaid, The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (Palgrave, 1990)
McCarthy, Kerry, Byrd (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013).
Monson, ‘The Council of Trent Revisited’ in The Journal of American Musicology 55 (2002), 1–37.
Oettinger, Rebecca Wagner, Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation (New York: Routledge, 2017)
Schmidt-Beste, ‘The Repertoire of the Papal Chapel after the Council of Trent: Tradition, Innovation, or Decline?’, Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn, ed. G. Filocamo and M.J. Bloxam (Turnhout, 2009), 109–120.
Sherr, Richard, The Josquin Companion (New York, 2000)

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera:
Carter, Tim and John Butt (eds), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Carter, Tim and Richard A. Goldthwaite, Orpheus in the Marketplace: Jacopo Peri and the Economy of Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013),
Cowart, Georgina The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014).
Cuisck, Suzanne, Francesca Caccini at the Medici court: music and the circulation of power
Heller, Wendy, Emblems of eloquence: opera and women's voices in seventeenth-century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
McClary, Susan, Desire and Pleasure in seventeenth-century music (Berkely: University of California Press, 2012).
Rosand, Ellen, Opera in seventeenth-century Venice: the creation of a genre ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)
Thomas, Downing A., Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647-1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
Autumn Lecture Offering 1 Week(s) - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 Tues 09:00 - 10:50