MODULE CODE NO: Examiner: Professor Michael Spitzer

MUSI130 Department: Music

Telephone number: 794 3078

DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

2022 ASSESSMENT

INTRODUCTION TO WESTERN MUSIC

Assignment 2: Essay

Weight 45% of final mark

Format 2000-word essay
Deadline 09/01/2023, 2pm
Submission  TurnItIn electronic submission only (link provided in module page)

2000 word Essay (45%)

Write a 2000 word essay considering one of the following questions:

1. Why is it appropriate to begin a history of Western music with Monteverdi?

2. Compare and contrast the secular and sacred sides to J.S. Bach’s music.
3. Despite his Romantic rhetoric, Beethoven invented nothing. Is that a fair assessment?
4. In what respect is Mozartian opera only possible because of the Classical Style?
5. Assess Schubert’s contributions to Romantic Lied, and to lyricism in general.
6. Brahms and Wagner took opposite roads to the same destination. Discuss.
7. In what ways is Debussy the ‘father’ of 20th-century music?
8. Describe the separate compositional personalities of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg.
9. Did Stravinsky remain the same composer throughout his successive stylistic phases?
10. Write about three major experimental composers, detailing the significance of their stylistic
achievements.

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Credit will be given to work which refers to a range of (properly cited) secondary sources, as
well as specific examples of music.

Feedback
Feedback will be supplied via TurnItIn within three weeks of the submission deadline.

Important notice
Please note that it is not acceptable academic practice to repeat material between
assignments in this or other modules. If you repeat the same material, more or less word for
word, then this will be deemed extremely poor scholarship and you will be penalised,
depending on the nature and extent of the overlapping material. In some cases, presenting
overlapping material might lead to a result of 0.

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