The course ‘Music History: A Survey’ aims to introduce first-year undergraduate students to the history of European music – from the Middle Ages to the present day – known as ‘serious music’, ‘classical music’ or ‘art music’.
The course presents, in condensed form, the thematic scope of the history modules covered in detail in subsequent semesters of the programme, thereby providing a framework for the entire first-cycle musicology programme. It enables those unfamiliar with the history of music to gain an understanding of its broad scope, which will be explored in greater depth during course modules devoted to specific historical periods.
As part of the course, students will become familiar with the basic chronological framework and characteristics of successive cultural eras, as well as a general outline of stylistic changes in the history of music. The course will cover the key phenomena and trends characteristic of individual periods (from the Middle Ages to the present day) that are fundamental to understanding the outline of music history, taking into account their respective contexts. Another key element of the course is an introduction to basic musicological terminology and familiarising students with the most important tools and descriptive categories used in the history of music.
The subject areas have been divided into three modules, taught by three specialists.
Block I
1. From the Fall of Constantinople to the musical flourishing of the Walloon South
- The medieval and Renaissance periods in music: periodisation, the main aesthetic and stylistic trends of the eras, and the most important centres.
2. Between St. Gallen and Padua
- Forms and genres of monophonic and polyphonic music of the medieval period
3. From compositional perfection to amateur creativity: what was sung and played in the 15th and 16th centuries
4. Institutions and patrons of early music in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Block II
5. Venice from Monteverdi to Vivaldi
6. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Leipzig
7. Vienna of the three classics (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven)
8. Paris of the Romantics
Block III
9. Warsaw from the era of Stanisław August Poniatowski to the 20th century
- Kamieński – Kurpiński – Chopin – Zarębski – Karłowicz – Szymanowski – Bacewicz – Lutosławski – Szymański – Mykietyn
10. Paris as a centre of modernism and the avant-garde
- Satie – Debussy – Messiaen – Pierre Schaeffer – Boulez and others
11. Non-European figures
- Charles Ives – Edgard Varèse – Henry Cowell – Murray Schafer and others)
12. Political, social and technological changes and the music of the 20th and 21st centuries
- Totalitarianism, migration, democratisation, sound recording technologies – computer music – new media – the development of AI technology.
13. Independent study
14. Assessment