Music and Philosophy, _MA

This compulsory evaluation is designed to find out if your academic writing is of a sufficient standard to enable you to succeed at university and, if you need it, to provide support to improve. It is completed on-line via MyAberdeen with clear instructions to guide you through it. If you pass the evaluation at the first assessment it will not take much of your time. If you do not, you will be provided with resources to help you improve. This evaluation does not carry credits but if you do not complete it this will be recorded on your degree transcript.

This course, which is prescribed for level 1 undergraduate students and articulating students who are in their first year at the University, is studied entirely online, is studied entirely online, takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete and can be taken in one sitting, or spread across the first 4 weeks of term.

Topics include University orientation overview, equality & diversity, MySkills, health, safety and cyber security, and academic integrity.Successful completion of this course will be recorded on your Transcript as ‘Achieved’.

15 Credit Points

How “real” is reality? How does the mind relate to the world? This course introduces two approaches to answering these questions: rationalism and empiricism. By reading Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, we learn about Descartes’ rationalist approach to knowledge, reality, mind-body dualism, and God’s necessary existence. Through David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding see how Hume grounds knowledge in experience. We read Hume on impressions and ideas, induction, causality, miracles and critically compare and examine Descartes’ and Hume’s arguments by drawing on readers and critics.

15 Credit Points

This course will examine key ideas and methodologies in music studies, incorporating approaches from a range of ‘disciplines’ such as musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, music education and community music. We will discuss a diverse range of topics including: cross cultural definitions of music; the role of music in society; different methodological approaches to the study of music history; how music is learnt in different places and times; and the relationship between music, economics and technology. The course will draw on case studies from musics both within the ‘western’ canon (such as European art music and popular music), as well as musical traditions from across the globe.

15 Credit Points

This course will engage students in practical music making, developing skills in performing and composing. Students will receive 10 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, and attend lectures on genre, performance style, composing / arranging techniques, rehearsal etiquette, and stagecraft.

In groups of 5-8 performers, students attend a series of rehearsal sessions, where they will plan and manage a group creative project, culminating in a 10-minute performance as part of a mini festival in December.

Students will be expected to attend concerts, join an ensemble, and participate in occasional workshops.

15 Credit Points

Combining key components in digital technology and musicianship, Digital Musicianship encourages music students to acquire basic digital skills that will help them explore a wide range of music making in the 21st century, through skill building in the applications of technology to the discipline of Music. This hands-on, project-based course introduces basic knowledge in digital music technology, and key issues related to the music making in the 21st century.

15 Credit Points

Building on “Performing and Composing 1”, this course will guide students to developing their own range of interests in creative musical practice. Students will work towards a portfolio of creative outputs, which can include a range of compositions and musical arrangements, and recordings of solo / ensemble performances.

Students receive 10 hours of one-to-one tuition on their chosen instrument / voice, and attend lectures and tutorials focussing variously on issues related to performance, composition, and music technology.

15 Credit Points

In this course, basic concepts of Western tonal music such as primary triads, cadences, idiomatic chord progressions, and voice leading are taught using exercises in harmonic analysis, figured bass, and part writing. More advanced concepts such as secondary dominants and chromatically-altered chords are also introduced. In parallel to lectures and seminars, students will work with software designed to reinforce key concepts such as clefs, intervals, key signatures, and scale structures.

15 Credit Points

In this course you will explore ways of writing and talking about music. Lectures will focus on recent work in music studies, showcasing the kind of scholarship you will encounter later in your degree. Tutorials will provide opportunities for experimenting in a range of formal and informal styles, working both individually and in small groups. By the end of the course you will gain a deeper understanding of both established writing conventions and emerging forms of multi-media communication.

15 Credit Points

We examine questions such as: Is eating animals immoral? Is being a good or bad person a matter of luck? If so, are we justified in punishing bad people? Should anyone be able to set limits on what you can do with your own body, even if it's ‘for your own good’? Should everyone be allowed to state their mind, even if their views are harmful or offensive? Is censorship ever justifiable? Do you have a moral obligation to help those worse-off? Are you unknowingly biased against underprivileged groups?

15 Credit Points

What does it mean to live a good life? How do we determine what is good or bad, right or wrong? Are some ways of living better or worse for us? In this course we will look at some central philosophical approaches to answering these questions. Traditions we may engage with include virtue ethics, Chinese ethics, deontology, consequentialism, and feminist ethics. Along the way, we will read the original work of some of the most important scholars in the history of moral philosophy. Students will be encouraged to think deeply, and to explore their own views about what it means to live a (morally) good life.

15 Credit Points

What makes an argument a good argument? What are the correct rules for reasoning? How should we revise our beliefs in the light of new evidence? What should we think about paradoxes?

This course provides an introduction to logic and tools for successfully evaluating arguments. Some of the topics covered include validity, soundness, consistency, entailment, provability, belief revision and paradoxes. The language of propositional logic and key ideas in Bayesian epistemology are introduced. The course develops the ability to symbolise English sentences into formal languages and to construct truth tables, truth trees and natural deduction proofs. Logical concepts are applied to everyday thinking as well as to philosophical puzzles and paradoxes.

15 Credit Points

We are living through an environmental crisis. This is well recognised and widely discussed. Most of this discussion focuses on what we should do to deal with the crisis, and rightly so. But it is also well recognised that the current crisis is deeply rooted in how we think of nature and the natural world and why we value it. Environmental Ethics helps us think about these foundational issues and get clear on why - and not just how - we should save the planet.