Music and Decadence at the Fin-de-siècle

Department of Music, School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music

College of Arts and Law

Details

Code 07256

Level of study Second Year

Credit value 20

Semester Not running Spring 2012. Further information available June 2012.

Module description

This course will study music and related literature from the ‘fin-de-siècle’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining such issues as the decline of Romanticism into sometimes ‘decadent’ hyperbole and the obsessive interest in extremes of emotion, often expressed by equally excessive musical means. The course will focus particularly on the music of Richard Strauss, Mahler, Busoni and Scriabin, and on literature such as Wilde’s Salome and Huysman’s Against Nature.

Teaching and learning methods

Seminars. Examined by two assessed essays.