Requirements and Grading
Further notes
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You will have to design a lesson about a relevant topic (e.g. about a song, an album, a genre, an artist, etc.)
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Work in groups and contribute
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Get involved and participate in the course
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WR students can choose to take their final oral Matura exams in English based on the course’s content, as well as a broader selection of individually chosen English literary works.
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There will be no graded work in this course.
The course is aimed at students who not only enjoy listening to music, but who have a deeper interest in reading and interpreting musical texts (or lyrics) and who are curious about the cultural and political history of the last 100 years. It offers a revision of the main historical events from a new perspective.
English lyrics, biographies, documentaries and technical literature will expand your reading skills and text comprehension.
“Without music life would be a mistake.“
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889 Music is ubiquitous these days. On streaming plat- forms you can access millions of songs with one mouse click. But music is much more than just entertainment and a consumer good, it is an im- portant part of our cultural history, it is poetry and part of our oral tradition – it is an art form in its own right.
The aim of this course is to explore music in greater depth. We will get to know the genres of 100 years of British, American and Australian popular music and we will listen to songs and tracks that represent them. Our gateway to music is the language, the words or the lyrics of the songs, the biographies of the artists, documentaries, in short the writing of contemporary history of popular music.
The birth of popular music goes back to the invention of the radio and the shellac record, when music began to reach a wider audience. Our musical survey will start in the Jazz and Blues Age (1920- 1940), it will lead us to the post-war genres of Folk and Rock ‘n‘ Roll. In the 1970s Punk and Disco Music evolved from it. The earliest beginnings of Hip-Hop and Rap also go back to this time and have become most defining genres today, in combination with Techno and Electro Music originating in the 1990s after the Cold War.
Nick Golder Englisch
From Jazz to Hip-Hop – Reading Music
2021/22 Wahlkurse
Kursausschreibung
Kendrick Lamar –Rapper &
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Billie Holiday –Legendary American Jazz Singer (1915-1959)
