Free curricular options for the 1st semester – CESEM: Unfolding Early Music History through Its Sources

This Unit complements historical and art studies and widens the portfolio of international courses at FCSH with a brand new introductory course on early music. Specifically, this course aims to provide an understanding of early music documents (10th-17th cent.) and their historical and social context of production and reception. The broader goals of this Unit are 1) to pass on specific knowledge on early music scores and 2) to teach students how to analyse and engage critically with their sources. The teaching method is based on the observation of a selection of music documents (digital images or facsimiles) presented in chronological order. The teacher guides the students through the interpretation of the sources. Students will reconstruct, one piece at a time, the bigger picture of early music production, transmission and performance in Western Europe. The innovative aspect of this Unit consists in the fact that learning stems from the guided observation of the selected surviving documents, thus allowing the students to train as researchers working in uncharted territory.