Music at a higher education level (university level) is offered at one institution in Ice-land: the department of music at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. In the department, there are 82 students in five study programmes at the bachelor level: performance, creative music communication, composition, church music, and instrumental/vo-cal education in classiinstrumental/vo-cal music. From autumn 2018, instrumental/voinstrumental/vo-cal education in rhythmic music will be added to the department. At the master’s level there are 31 students in three study programmes: composition, instrumental/vocal educa-tion, and a performance programme titled “New audiences and innovative practice”.
Most of the faculty members in the department are active participants in the mu-sical life of Iceland as composers and/or performers in addition to their teaching commitments.
The Iceland Academy of the Arts, established in 1999, is a self-governing institu-tion and the first tertiary level arts academy in Iceland. Today the academy offers instruction at bachelor and master levels in five departments: the Department of Fine Arts, the Department of Design and Architecture, the Department of Performing Arts, the Department of Music, and the Department of Arts Education. The purpose of the academy is to provide higher education in the arts, to strengthen arts education in Iceland, and to convey to the public information about arts and culture.
Since the Department of Music was founded in 2001, it has gone through various changes, and because of its short life-span there have been constant developments.
Musicology or music theory is not offered as a special study programme but bachelor students take courses in these subjects, which amount to about one third of their studies. Some of them are compulsory (depending on the study programme) while others are mandatory-elective. At the master’s level fewer modules are compulsory but a variety of courses are offered to students. Perhaps because the composition pro-gramme is unusually large in the department (at least compared to traditional music conservatories), much emphasis has been placed on the music of thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries. The number of courses which focus on the music from this time period currently amount to approximately two thirds of the total courses being offered (the number of these courses has been gradually increasing since the founding of the department). However, in practical projects and individual work, including instrumental lessons, chamber music, ensembles, orchestras, and choir, instrumental and vocal students work with music from all time periods and learn the standard
repertoire for their instrument/voice. There is one larger ensemble, the department’s Sinfonietta, which focuses on music from the twentieth century.
All students are required to complete one music history course at the beginning of their studies. There are three courses offered, from which students choose de-pending on their study programme. These are “Classical Western music history”, which includes the twentieth century, “Popular music history”, and “Electronic mu-sic history”, of which the latter two focus exclusively on mumu-sic of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As these are overview courses they only touch upon the largest trends and developments, and their purpose is to provide students with some historical foundation in the subject which they are studying. Furthermore, students are offered three courses in Western art music literature, of which one focuses on the twentieth century. The music literature courses offer different case studies each year, but the twentieth-century course has investigated modernism through the lens of aesthetics, ideology, development, and impact. The two main textbooks for music literature of the twentieth century are Saga tónlistarinnar (The history of music) by the Icelandic scholar Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, and A History of Western Music by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca.
All of these courses are delivered in lecture form, for which students must read and listen to selected material for each class. The music literature courses are accompanied by four music theory courses, covering the same time periods (baroque, Classical, Romantic, and twentieth century). In the twentieth-century course the focus is on composers of the twentieth century and their approaches. The composers covered include: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Franco Donatoni, György Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, Gérard Grisey, Giacinto Scelsi, Salvatore Sciarrino, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, and Steve Reich. Younger composers, including Pierluigi Billone, Fausto Romitelli, Giovanni Verrando, Kaija Sariaaho, Magnus Lindberg, Martin Smolka, Christophe Bertrand, Bent Sørensen, Caroline Shaw, Riccardo Nova, Jennifer Walshe, and Jovanka Trbojevic, are then discussed in composition courses. The theory courses are of a more practical nature – not only delivered through lectures, but also through analysis seminars and workshops. These courses can be seen as the foundation of music history and theory in the department.
In addition to this core, there are courses which have been offered every other year for the last few years, which focus on music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These are often a mixture of lectures, seminars, and workshops, where students can trial the ideas being presented and/or develop their own work through the lens of the topics studied.
• “Film music”: studies the history of film music but also emphasises a more prac-tical approach in which film music methods and approaches are examined.
• “The opera in the twentieth century”: studies the development and changes to the opera form in the twentieth century and investigates the current state of the form today and its place in society.
• “Spectral music”: investigates the historical, aesthetical and technical conditions of spectral music by examining Gérards Grisey’s works and writings.
• “Music theory – tools and techniques”: focusses on composers from the latter half of the twentieth century, and of the twenty-first century with the objective of understanding their ideas and work processes.
• “Music in the twenty-first century”: investigates contemporary music and how it connects to society, culture, arts, and sciences today. Students are encouraged to find individual ways to listen, analyse, and think about contemporary music.
• “John Cage and the American experimental tradition”: explores John Cage’s new way of thinking about and making music.
• “Graphic notation”: studies the background and basics of graphic notations, why composers felt compelled to use different media, and how technological developments have impacted this.
• “Sound art”: covers the history of sound art form the beginning of experimental and avant-gardism at the beginning of the twentieth century to sound experi-ments taking place today.
• “Composer/performer”: investigates fluxus and experimental music from the 1950s in a practical course in which students compose and perform their own music according to the principles studied in the course.
These courses are open for all students in the department. It should be mentioned that composition students build on their knowledge of music history of the twen-tieth and twenty-first centuries in their individual lessons and seminars. They also attend masterclasses where faculty members and visiting composers and performers introduce their own practices and works.
Students who focus on rhythmic ( jazz or popular) music, in addition to the history of popular music, are required to take an analytical course, which focuses on a variety of genres and styles found in music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They are also required to take jazz theory, which is presented both in lecture and workshop form. Since rhythmic/popular music studies in the department are only relatively new, there are fewer students who focus on popular music, and as a result, there are fewer popular music courses. The following have been offered in the recent years:
• “Popular music and mediation”: an introductory module which examines the role popular music plays in contemporary society, highlighting complex issues including, but not limited to, concepts surrounding new musicology, critical musicology, and popular music studies. It focuses on the ways in which popular music is mediated through various platforms and media.
• “Popular music cultures”: explores what defines popular music, what influ-ences it, where it is rooted, and how we listen to it. The course covers Hin-di and Tamil film songs, Hin-different styles of J-pop, screamo from Myanmar, Hawaiian gangster rap, mandopop, cantopop, synthesized ragas, Vietnamese soul, enka, T-pop, V-pop, South African jazz and hip hop, Japanese psyche-delic rock, pop yeh yeh, Bollywood steel guitar, and Singaporean country.
• “Michael Jackson and the mainstreaming of black music”: investigates the music of Michael Jackson and his place within the US popular music indus-try. The course examines how Jackson’s music can encourage listeners to re-think political and social notions of race, colour, poverty, the politics of na-tions, the underprivileged, and ecological concerns.
The students who focus on composing popular music also receive individual lessons in which they draw on the popular music history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They also attend masterclasses in which working musicians/singer-song-writers share their approaches and artistic practices.
One of the department’s research strengths is in the field of Icelandic music. All of the bachelor students are required to take at least one Icelandic music history course.
Two of them cover the music history of Iceland before the twentieth century, one fo-cuses on the music of the twentieth century, and another investigates contemporary music practices in Iceland, across a variety of genres and styles. At the master’s level there is a course titled “Research on Icelandic music” in which scholars introduce their research on Icelandic music, including important Icelandic composers from the twentieth century, and topics in contemporary popular music.
As previously stated, during the last few years the proportion of courses which focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has increased, and popular music courses are a relatively new addition to the syllabus. Another recent change is the merging of theoretical courses (history or analysis) with practical projects in which students are expected to develop in practice the theory being studied. In some cases this merging leads to public performances.
The Department of Music is a very small department, and as such there will always be gaps in the syllabus, for we will never be able to offer the same range of courses offered by larger institutions. Nevertheless, under no circumstances is it possible to
teach everything, and in the department we emphasise the importance of giving stu-dents the tools, skills, and the critical perspective to obtain the knowledge and in-formation they require for their own studies. There is also currently a movement to empower students in order to make them more independent and responsible for their own studies. To this end, many of the music theory and history courses have ceased to be compulsory, and students now choose from a variety of courses to fulfil a cer-tain amount of theory/history ECTS. The hope is that students can choose pathways which best suit their needs and support their own practice. Because the department is small it is also flexible and reactive to the needs of students. We encourage independ-ent studies, and at the master’s level in particular, studindepend-ents may request to study spe-cific subjects/topics to strengthen their specialisation (main subject), which is granted if a suitable mentor is available in the department.
Wolfgang Marx