COURSE OFFERED FALL 2025
Teaching institution: Royal College of Music, London
Faculty: Nicholas Moroz
Contact email: nicholas.moroz@rcm.ac.uk
Course level: UK FHEQ Level 7 (PG, but open to advanced UGs at CvA, MSM, MDW, RDAM)
Music, Sound, and Environment
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Aimed at both performers and composers, this course explores themes of Sound and Environment in music through recent scholarship and a diverse array of musical practices, from the twentieth century through to contemporary cultures, including examples from popular music, sound art, modernism, and experimental music. Students will encounter a range of perspectives that will enable them to critically and creatively engage with and reflect on topics including the aesthetics, techniques, and reception of site-specific artworks, modern spatial audio production practices, ecological thinking, soundscape, and field-recordings. Practical and creative tasks will also develop students’ listening skills while exploring their own experience of sound in different environments.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Reflect on a range of musicological perspectives that engage with themes of sound and space in music, and develop their own critical frameworks applied to subjects of their choice.
- Reflect and critically engage with a range of examples from music and sound art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
- Apply their knowledge to their own creative practice including but not limited to composition, sound art, soundscapes, field recording, digital storytelling, and sound walks