This course introduces students to a wide array of Russian musics - ranging from 19th century concert repertoire, to traditional practices, to mass-mediated popular forms - in each case relating specific pieces, genres and/or styles to important historical, political, and cultural contexts.

The approximate division of the course, regarding subject area, will be as follows:

• art music, 25%
• traditional music 25%
• popular music (broadly defined) 50%

The course should be of interest to students from a wide range of humanities and social scientific disciplines, including music, Russian language and culture, media studies, and gender studies.

On completion of the course the student should have the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

The student..

• has broad knowledge of representative styles and genres of Russian music from approximately the mid-19th century to the present day.

Skills

The student..

• has the skill to independently work with source material and analyze works of Russian music within specific historical and sociocultural contexts.

General competences

The student..

• has competence to contextualize broad stylistic and generic areas, as well as individual pieces, within a historical-cultural framework.

One semester of lectures including audiovisual examples.

• Participation in discussion seminar on students' term papers.

Self-study:

• In advance of each lecture, it is expected that the students read and prepare to discuss the required pensum readings assigned for that meeting.

• Attendance at lectures and seminars.
• All instruction is obligatory; absence of more than 20% leads to loss of right to take the exam.

All mandatory instruction and compulsory requirements must be completed and approved before the exam.

Approved obligatory activities are valid for 2 semesters after they are completed.

Term paper of ca. 4500-5000 words. This paper will focus on a specific work or corpus of works, and must exhibit that the student has been able to:

a) formulate a valid research question

b) find appropriate academic literature to support her/his thesis

c) correctly and convincingly contextualize her/his analysis with respect to historical (including political) and/or sociocultural variables

The lectures and the assignments will be given in English. The students are encouraged to write the papers in English, but can choose to write in Norwegian, if preferred.

Approx. 800 pages as well as audiovisual examples.

The literature list will be available by 01.06. for the Autumn semester and 01.12. for the Spring semester.