Skip to main content

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Trinity Menu Trinity Search

Current Students

You are here Orientation > Visiting and Erasmus Students

Music
Module Code & Name ECTs credits Duration and semester Prerequisite Subjects Assessment Contact Hours Contact Details

(MUS187 Heavy Metal)

 (10 ECTS credits) 11 Weeks MT NA 1 x 3000 word essay (80%) and Class participation, attendance, presence (20%) 2 hours per week Richard Duckworth

Description and Learning Outcomes

This module will explore the origins and development of the Heavy Metal genre, from its beginnings in classic rock to modern day forms. The aesthetics of the genre will also be discussed, and some focus will be given to some of the more prominent movements within the genre, such as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Death Metal, and Black Metal. students who complete this module should:
  • · understand the history of Heavy Metal, how the genre was born and branched out into different sub-genres
  • · be able to accurately differentiate between different types of metal sub-genres with knowledge of their defining characteristics
  • · be aware of sociological and aesthetic factors which help define the genre
  • · be capable of producing a piece of academic writing that engages with the themes of the module in a competent fashion
    		•
    Module Code & Name ECTs credits Duration and semester Prerequisite Subjects Assessment Contact Hours Contact Details

    MUS191 – Opera and Gender

    		 5 11 Weeks HT None Essay assignments amounting to 3000 words (60%), class presentation (30%) attendance and contribution (10%) 2 hours per week Michael Lee

    Description and Learning Outcomes

    In the nearly forty years since Catherine Clément’s landmark feminist study, Opera and the Undoing of Women, first appeared, the study of opera as a separate inter-discipline has itself developed, bringing musicology alongside theatre, literary, and cultural studies. This module offers the opportunity to consider the production and reception of gender roles in opera at different historical periods, an issue with which this art-form has come to be particularly associated. Starting from theatrical issues of cross-dressed roles, gender and narrative, and the development (and signifying power) of voice types, this course will also look at theoretical approaches to ideas of voice and performativity. Drawing on critical theory, as well as work in gender, sexuality, and reception studies, we will also discuss issues of spectatorship and ‘diva culture’, and the ways in which the politics and poetics of power and powerlessness have become inscribed within operatic narratives. students who successfully complete this module should be able to:
  • · show familiarity with a range of operatic texts
  • · recognise how opera has functioned as an agent of gender construction over time
  • · demonstrate an understanding of different theoretical approaches to gender, culture, and opera
  • · appraise key concepts in theatricality and performance
    • Module Code & Name ECTs credits Duration and semester Prerequisite Subjects Assessment Contact Hours Contact Details

    MUS192 – Open Scores

    		 5 11 Weeks HT None Open Score Composition & Commentary (80%), Individual presentation (20%) 2 hours per week Evangelia Rigaki

    Description and Learning Outcomes

    This module presents a historically oriented survey of seminal works and practitioners involving improvisation and open score practices. It examines the evolution of conventions and generative processes through critical examination of individual cases. These creative processes should be reflective through creative individual and group projects. A public concert will result as a result of those experimentations, with the participants acting as performers. students who successfully complete this module will be able to:
  • show familiarity with and an understanding of the broad history of improvisation in contemporary classical music
  • show familiarity with some of the main approaches and composition practices
  • show awareness of seminal practitioners
  • reflect the case studies examined in the lectures through individual and group creative work
    • Module Code & Name ECTs credits Duration and semester Prerequisite Subjects Assessment Contact Hours Contact Details

    MUS199 – Hollywood Film Musical

    		 5 11 Weeks HT None Part 1 (50%) Weekly blog – 200 words reflecting on subjects covered in class and Part 2: (50%) Project 2 hours per week Simon Trezise

    Description and Learning Outcomes

    This is a historical study of the Hollywood film musical from its early history and precursors to around 1960. students who successfully complete this module should
  • • be familiar with the genres and sub-genres of the Hollywood film musical up to 1960
  • • be familiar with the development of film technology as it affects the musical up to 1960
  • • have an insight into various topics in the musical, including dance, song forms, the depiction of women, race and ethnicity, ‘camp’, and animation
  • • have an insight into the manner in which musicals are constructed
  • • have encountered a wide range of musical films and film musicals
  • • understand the relationship of the film musical to related stage genres, including the stage musical, operetta, and ballet
    • Module Code & Name ECTs credits Duration and semester Prerequisite Subjects Assessment Contact Hours Contact Details

    MUS168 – Adaptation: Theory & Practice

    		 5 11 Weeks MT None 1 x written assessment (20%), term essay (50%), class presentation (20%) and attendance and contribution (10%) 2 hours per week Michael Lee

    Description and Learning Outcomes

    “Adaptation is a profound process, [which] means you try and figure out how to thrive in the world” (Charlie Kaufmann, Adaptation (2002)). Recent work in adaptation studies has moved beyond the simple conceptualism of source and end-product and speaks instead of adaptation as process, a model which usefully links reception and adaptation in an ongoing creative continuum. Mainly discussed in relation to film studies, adaptation is equally central to the making of opera. The process of adaptation is one which locates ongoing cultural tropes (as well as the immediate context of an individual production) within an expanding dialogue between related texts.

    This interdisciplinary course will offer students the opportunity to study theoretical approaches to adaptation, as well as ideas of imitation, reception, originality, appropriation, and intertextuality. Students will also study the survival and morphology of specific canonical narratives over time. These will include stories originating in classical, Renaissance, and more recent sources, both theatrical and literary, and could comprise scenarios such as Phaedra (Euripides, Seneca, Racine, Rameau), Dido and Aeneas (Virgil, Cavalli, Purcell, Berlioz), Othello (Cinthio, Shakespeare, Rossini, Verdi), and The Turn of the Screw (James, Archibald, Britten, Clayton, Amenábar). Students will be encouraged to engage with all modes of expression: musical, textual, dramaturgical, filmic, and so on.

    students who successfully complete this module should be able to:
  • · describe and discuss different theoretical approaches to adaptation
  • · engage critically with adaptations of texts across different creative media
  • · demonstrate familiarity with techniques of comparative analysis
  • · show awareness of the interpretive possibilities of different narratives, including implications for issues of identity, culture and aesthetics
    • Module Code & Name ECTs credits Duration and semester Prerequisite Subjects Assessment Contact Hours Contact Details

    MUS190 – Gender in Popular Music

    		5 11 Weeks MT None A combination of written and/or oral assignments totalling c3000 words 2 hours per week Jonathan Hodgers

    Description and Learning Outcomes

    This module focuses on popular music’s role in shaping ideas about gender and sexuality. It will interrogate pop’s construction of masculinity and femininity (or other identifications), and explore gendered and sexual identities as forms of performance. The module incorporates interdisciplinary approaches ranging from musicology, anthropology and sociology to feminist theory and cultural studies. The module will apply these disciplines’ theories to a range of popular genres. These include rock, disco, country, heavy metal and hip-hop. Through examination of genre norms, as well as case studies of individual songs, popular music’s gender politics may become more transparent. Students who successfully complete this module will be able to:
  • show familiarity with the key concepts relating to gender and music;
  • display a knowledge of how pop music genres represent gender and sexuality;
  • show awareness of pop’s formal components and lyrical themes;
  • relate pop’s gender politics to broader popular culture;
  • use textual and musical analysis to detect pop’s ideological undercurrents;
  • discuss gender and music’s key theorists and their major works;
  • reflect on pop music’s role in identity formation.