MUSIC: A GENERAL INTRODUCTION - BMEGT43ZZZZ

The course aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the concept of music, exploring various aspects of its creation, performance, and reception, while examining the similarities and differences between different musical genres. The topics discussed and perspectives offered can enrich the musical understanding of both casual listeners and those with formal music training.

1. Solid knowledge of the important elements and contexts of European, Western cultural development, and related regulation in the EU.
2. Basic knowledge of the legal, political etc. norms regulating communication and media phenomena
3. Basic knowledge of social science methodologies

1. Skills of making independent analysis, knowledge claims, explanations and drawing valid conclusions.
2. Ability to make independent decisions in academic activities
3. Reliable use of professional language

1. Critical self-reflections and eagerness to learn.
2. Awareness of the historical and social embeddedness of cultural processes and institutions
3. Critical openness to innovation

1. Self-awareness of using the methodologies of one’s professional field, accepting the different ones of other fields
2. Constructiveness and assertiveness in the context of institutional operation
3. Striving to create a historically and politically coherent worldview

Lectures and class analyses.

• Theodor Adorno, “Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening”, in Andrew Arato–Eike Gebhart, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Continuum, 1985), 270–290.
• Nicholas Cook, Music – A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
• Kathryn Kalinak, Music – A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Bruce Johnson, “Jazz as cultural practice”, in Mervyn Cook (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 96–113.
• Richard Shusterman, “The Fine Art of Rap”, New Literary History 22 (1991)/3, 613-632.
• Mark Slobin, Folk Music – A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Richard Taruskin, “On Letting the Music Speak for Itself”, in Text and Act – Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 51–67.

Participation is mandatory. Maximum 3 missed classes.

In-class activity, assessment of oral and written contributions.

• class: 50
• assignments: 50
• sum: 100

Participation

Retake and make-up test options are defined by the valid regulations of the University’s Code on Education and Examination.

Consulted with the Faculty Student Representative Committee, approved by the Vice Dean for Education, valid from: 02.06.2024.

As I walk through Budapest, I can listen to African drum music from ancient times, contemporary North American hip-hop or a European motet from the Middle Ages —through my headphones. What connects these musical cultures? How can I relate to them, if at all? What has the word music actually meant throughout history? How does it intersect with written or acoustic records, history, or society? How can music be meaningful to a particular community, how can it tell a story? What do composers do when they create music, performers when they perform it, listeners when they hear it? How does the institution of the concert work? What philosophical premises and intellectual frameworks define the basic musical genres that surround us —such as traditional music, classical music, jazz, pop or film music?