An introduction to music research

After thinking about different kinds of musical knowledge and their relationship with various musical practices (including performance, composition, and listening), you'll be introduced to some of the digital resources and methodologies that inform music research. The next section, which constitutes the main part of the course, explores a variety of different resource types that can be the focus for music research including diaries, composer manuscripts, images, and instruments before the final section introduces you to a contentious area of current scholarship: the relationship between music and politics.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• Understand the ways in which musical knowledge may shape certain musical practices
• Identify the role digital methodologies play in music research
• Use, and make sense of, a number of online databases
• Understand the relevance of various different kinds of document for the study of music
• Understand something of the contentious relationship between music and politics, and its implications for the study of music.