List of Recommended Reading for Music 2020
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List of Recommended Reading for Music 2020
This is a list of suggested reading that you might want to engage with before your studies
commence. You are not expected to purchase any of these books, but instead look for them online
or in libraries. If you can't get hold of these readings, please don't worry, as your college library
and/or the Faculty will have copies of these readings when you arrive.
General reading:
J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Jim Samson, An Introduction to Music Studies (Cambridge
University Press, 2009)
Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Please listen widely and inquisitively, and think critically about what you’re listening to. If it’s a piece
for which a score is available, do try to look at the score too.
The suggestions below relate to the core components of the course:
Special Topics
Machaut’s Songs
This Topic will introduce Guillaume de Machaut as a central and important composer of the Middle
Ages. The course will start by considering his creative persona as a poet and composer with a
developed interest in book-making. We will examine the surviving manuscripts of his work, their
notation, and ordering. The second half of the course will look at the specific forms of his music,
mainly love songs, and how we understand and analyse them today.
Suggested Reading: Either: Leach, Elizabeth Eva. Guillaume De Machaut: Secretary, Poet,
Musician. (Ithaca, 2011). Or: explore the various posts under the category ‘Machaut’ on
eeleach.blog.
Something to listen to: Guillaume de Machaut, The Mirror of Narcissus, Gothic Voices, dir.
Christopher Page. Hyperion CDA66087. Digital booklet (.pdf) available here (and on iTunes etc.).
Orlando di Lasso
This course uses Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594), the most prolific and versatile composer of his
time, as a hermeneutic window into the musical worlds of the later 16th century. The lectures
introduce a range of critical perspectives (from compositional technique and mediality to musical
representations of race), explore the reciprocal links between musics and their contexts and
challenge inherited dichotomies (sacred vs profane, elite vs popular, Latin vs vernacular).
Suggested Reading:
‘Made to Measure: Compositional Challenges behind the Penitential Psalm Codices from the
Munich Court’, pp. 103-115 and Appendix Plates 2.1-2.4. Available here.
Suggested preparation:
A model analysis of a madrigal by Lasso’s compatriot Cipriano de Rore on Elam Rotem’s
YouTube channel Early Music Sources. Available here.
Something to watch and listen to:
Lasso’s Penitential Psalms, copied into a deluxe choirbook, can be seen here.
There are several recordings available YouTube (to be found under titles such as Psalmi
Poenitentiales and Penitential Psalms).
Women and Music in the Nineteenth Century
This course explores the many and varied musical contributions made by women in the ‘long’
nineteenth century not merely as composers of art music but as entrepreneurs, salonnières,
virtuoso performers, operatic characters, and domestic performers.
Suggested Reading: Pendle, Karin (ed.), Women & Music: A History (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991, rev. 2001).
Something to listen to:
Radio 3: Resources and archive material about women composers. Available here.
The British Library’s Discovering Music web resource, featuring an article by Sophie Fuller
and digital items you can look at. Available here.
Music, Mind and Behaviour
Music is found in all human societies, and for many people music is one of the most intense and
memorable aspects of their lives. This course will look at some of the ways in which we might
understand how music engages with people’s experiences, emotions and behaviours.
Suggested reading: Eric Clarke, Nicola Dibben and Stephanie Pitts, Music and Mind in Everyday
Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
Something to listen to: ‘Explanation and thanks’ from Carpal Tunnel by Derek Bailey. Available
here.
Global Hip Hop
After tracing the complex diasporic flows that came together to produce hip-hop culture in 1970s
New York, we will examine how hip-hop spread worldwide, with specific attention given to hip-hop
scenes in Brazil, Cuba, France, Japan, South Africa and Tanzania.
Suggested Reading: Sujatha Fernandes, Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop
Generation (Verso, 2011).
Something to listen to:
Nega Gizza (featuring Leda Hills), 'Larga o Bicho' (Brazil)
Simi Lab, 'The Blues' (Japan)
Mos Def, 'Hip Hop' (U.S.)
(all available on the Music Faculty’s Spotify playlist)
Analysis
For a general idea of what analysis entails, have a look at the chapter on Analysis in An Introduction
to Music Studies (details in ‘General Reading’ above) and/or look at the following:
Kofi Agawu, ‘Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa’, in Audible Empire: Music, Global
Politics, Critique, ed. Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan (Durham, NC, and London:
Duke University Press, 2016), 334-354
Brian Hyer, ‘Tonality’, in Grove Music Online (Oxford University
Press), http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/28102; and
reprinted in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 726-752
Danuta Mirka, ‘Introduction’, in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, ed. Danuta
Mirka (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1-57
Techniques of Composition and Keyboard Skills
During the year, you will have tutorials in stylistic composition (Techniques of Composition) and
Keyboard Skills, designed to help you realize specific styles of tonal counterpoint both at the
keyboard and on paper. For Keyboard Skills we recommend the following useful introductory
guides:
David Ledbetter, Continuo Playing According to Handel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
R.O. Morris and Howard Ferguson, Preparatory Exercises in Score-Reading (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1931; reprinted 1995).
For Techniques of Composition, we recommend the following:
Anna Butterworth, Stylistic Harmony, 2nd edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Introducing the Faculty
Here are some suggestions from Faculty of Music lecturers of things you might like to read and listen
to before you arrive at Oxford, to give you a taste of their research.
‘Filial Enchaînements’
Suzanne Aspden (2016), Cambridge Opera Journal 28/2, pp. 119-25
J.A. Hasse, 'Per questo dolce amplesso', sung by Vivica
Professor Suzanne Aspden, Genaux
Jesus & Lincoln Colleges
‘On musical mediation: Ontology, technology and creativity’
Georgina Born (2005), Twentieth Century Music, v. 2, n. 1, pp. 7-36
Professor Georgina Born,
Mansfield College
‘Lost and found in music: music, consciousness and
subjectivity’
Eric Clarke (2014), Musicae Scientiae 18, pp 354-368
Professor Eric Clarke,
Wadham
‘Stravinsky in exile’
Jonathan Cross (2013), Igor Stravinsky and his World, Tamara Levitz ed.
(Princeton University Press), pp.1-17
Stravinsky, Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Professor Jonathan Cross,
Christ Church
Emotions
Samantha Dieckmann & Jane W. Davidson. (2018), Music and Arts in
Action, 6(2), pp. 29-44. Retrieved from
https://musicandartsinaction.net/index.php/maia/article/view/190
Professor Samantha Dieckmann
Somerville
Frances Hoad, Even You Song, performed by the choir of
Peterborough Cathedral (Spotify)
Professor Steven Grahl,
Organist at Christ Church
Martyn Harry, Fantasy Unbuttoned (1998-1999)]
Martyn Harry, Fantasy Unbuttoned, access:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iia8ajh3su8qixa/AACZ_vcse
QhYP-FD1vxyAcARa?dl=0
Professor Martyn Harry,
St Anne’s & St Hilda’s Colleges
‘The Dart of Love: An Analysis of Machaut’s Rondeau
No.5’
Elizabeth Eva Leach (2012), https://eeleach.blog/2012/06/12/the-dart-
of-love-an-analysis-of-machauts-rondeau-no-5/
Professor Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut, The Mirror of Narcissus, Gothic
St Hugh’s College and Exeter Voices, dir. Christopher Page. Hyperion CDA66087.
Colleges Digital booklet (.pdf) available here [and on itunes etc].
‘Made to Measure: Compositional Challenges behind the
Penitential Psalm Codices from the Munich Court’,
available here.
Christian Thomas Leitmeir, The Production and Reading of Music
Sources: Mise-en-page in manuscripts and printed books containing
polyphonic music, 1480 - 1530, edited by Thomas Schmidt and
Professor Christian Leitmeir, Christian Thomas Leitmeir (Turnhout, 2018).
Magdalen College
Orlando di Lasso, Allala pia calia. Recording available here.
‘Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in
Belfast’
Gascia Ouzounian (2013), Leonardo Music Journal 23, pp. 47 – 54
Omar Souleyman, ‘Warni Warni’ (available on the Music Faculty
Spotify playlist)
Professor Gascia Ouzounian, Okkyung Lee, ‘The Crow Flew After Yi Sang’
Lady Margaret Hall
Palestrina, Dum complerentur dies Pentecostes,
performed by The Choir of New College, Oxford.
Professor Robert Quinney,
New College
‘Reworking in the Motets of Francisco Guerrero’
Owen Rees (2017), Revista de musicología 40, pp. 17-56
John Sheppard, Media Vita, performed by Contrapunctus
Professor Owen Rees,
The Queen’s College
‘Chapter 13: The Orchestral Composer’
Robert Saxton (2003), The Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra,
ed. Colin Lawson, pp. 218 – 238
Robert Saxton, The Wandering Jew
Robert Saxton, Shakespeare Scenes
Professor Robert Saxton,
Worcester College
‘Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane’
Jason Stanyek & Benjamin Piekut (2010), TDR: The Drama Review,
54, pp. 14 – 38
Lauryn Hill and Bob Marley, 'Turn Your Lights Down Low'
(1999)
Professor Jason Stanyek,
St John’s College
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