Carolyn Wilson Digital Collections (Lipscomb Univ.)
Not a member yet
1413 research outputs found
Sort by
Review of The Norton Guide to Teaching Music Theory, edited by Rachel Lumsden and Jeffrey Swinkin
Get PDFGalant Style Composition Using Koch\u27s Versuch and Voice-Leading Schemata
Get PDFRobert Gjerdingen’s 2007 study, Music in the Galant Style, offers today’s music theory teachers the possibility of using idiomatic voice-leading progressions from the eighteenth-century in the modern theory classroom. These progressions, currently identified as schemata, would have been taught to musicians using a methodology known as partimento, a cross between a thorough-bass exercise and a compositional sketch. One aspect that Gjerdingen does not cover, however, is how musicians from the period were taught form. Eighteenth-century theorists, like Heinrich Christoph Koch, are explicit in detailing the relationship of smaller forms like dances and songs to larger forms like sonatas, arias, and concertos; the latter are said to grow out of the former by means of expanding musical periods. In volume two of Koch’s Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (1793), the theorist features a series beginner’s exercises in the smaller forms intended to lead to larger compositions. Inspired by both Gjerdingen’s study and Koch’s treatise, this article argues for a historical approach to music theory pedagogy, chronicling the classroom experience of a second-semester theory course that featured a series of galant-style composition assignments. Starting with a four-measure phrase, students went on to compose eight-measure periods, sixteen-measure dances, forty-measure theme and variations, and sixty-measure rondos. Students used galant schemata borrowed from Gjerdingen to create original melodies that were stylistically idiomatic. The result was a method to teaching music theory whereby students acquired the ability to compose original works in an eighteenth-century style
Teaching Analytic Writing in the Form Classroom
Get PDFCourses on form can impart valuable skills in analytic writing through strategic scaffolding of writing assignments. Part I of this article provides six steps toward their first essay: teach the basic theoretical concepts; discuss the process for writing an analytic essay; model good analytic writing; assign the prompt; comment on a draft of the form diagram; and give precise feedback. Part II of this article divides the work of a larger final paper into five tasks: a proposal, a draft of the form diagram, an individual consultation, a rough draft, and the completed paper. Although among one of the most difficult skills to master, analytic writing remains an indispensable tool for synthesizing and applying theoretical concepts. Student gains in depth of understanding of the principles and repertoire at hand merit the time and effort of teaching analytic writing in the undergraduate form classroom
Embracing “the Teachable Moment”: Creative Warm-Ups, Pre-Teaching, and Their Role in the Music Theory Curriculum
Get PDFOne of the most common problems that music theory instructors seem to share is the lack of time to cover as many topics as they would like in a given class period. This lack can be from any number of causes, from theory coursework reinforcing related coursework such as keyboard skills and ear training, to acquainting students with foundational concepts of music theory and history, the technical, historical, and cultural foundations of our art. While no single approach can remedy this problem of time, I have developed various activities that utilize small pockets of typically unused time, and engage students from the moment they enter the room. I call these techniques and activities “preteaching.” As I will demonstrate, preteaching activities not only set a positive and engaging tone for the class, but they can enhance the entire music curriculum. As a result, instruction is not only more efficient, it extends across areas of music study, developing the whole musician
The Rule of the Octave in First-Year Undergraduate Theory: Teaching in the Twenty-First Century with Eighteenth-Century Strategies
Get PDFFrom the Neapolitan conservatories to Mozart’s Vienna, eighteenth-century musicians commenced the study of harmony by learning a rule of thumb for the harmonization of scalar basses known as the Rule of the Octave. This article presents a series of strategies to incorporate the Rule into the core music theory curriculum, including activities for analysis, keyboard skills, and singing improvisations. I suggest a parallelism between the Rule of the Octave and linguistic collocations (groups of words that typically go together), and turn to recent research on second-language acquisition to defend the importance of memorizing the Rule of the Octave. This initial, apparently rudimentary step conduces to significant learning of tonal harmony. Sharing my personal experiences with the Rule of the Octave in the classroom, I illustrate the potential pedagogical benefits of recovering and updating a teaching resource crucial in the history of Western music
The Discovery Channel: Using Techniques from Discovery Science to Teach Concepts in the Core Theory Sequence
Get PDFThe college music classroom has changed in recent years. Amidst upheavals in curricula, technology, and student populations, many of us have altered the look and feel of our teaching in profound ways. This paper presents my version of “the change”: a groupwork-based guided inquiry approach to teaching fundamental concepts in the core music theory sequence. My method shares features of its underlying philosophy with techniques of active learning proposed by previous scholarship and driven by a shift in our teaching towards the student-centered classroom and a pedagogical stance rooted in the theory of social constructivism. Many of these pedagogical methods hold it necessary for students to have a grasp of basic terminology and concepts before they can engage in active learning; here, I suggest that active learning can be most valuable when made part of the process of uncovering basic theory concepts itself and propose a protocol for doing so adapted from the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. I seek to make the process consistent with best practices for promoting student engagement and a deeper conceptual understanding of course content, particularly in classrooms that are heterogeneous with regard to students’ academic ability. As well, by having students recreate the intellectual processes of music analysis as they are undertaken by scholars in the field, the guided inquiry method promotes an understanding of what it is, in Michael Rogers’ formulation, to “do”—rather than simply to “learn”—music theory
The Case of the Tic Tac Toe-Playing Chicken: Programed Instruction and Behaviorism in Music Theory Pedagogy
Get PDFThe year 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Paul O. Harder’s Harmonic Materials in Tonal Music. The past half-century has witnessed the professionalization and expansion of the field of music theory, several shifts in pedagogical philosophies and methods, and a radical disruption in how people access, interact with, and store information via the internet and electronic devices. The tenth edition of Harmonic Materials in Tonal Music, revised by Greg Steinke and released in 2010, is a time capsule of pedagogical thinking about music theory. It simultaneously inspires wonder at discarded relics of the past and reveals the persistence of issues we are still grappling with today
Music Theory Remixed: A Blended Approach for the Practicing Musician
Get PDFI received a review copy of Kevin Holm-Hudson’s much-anticipated Music Theory Remixed: A Blended Approach for the Practicing Musician (hereafter MTR) just in time to include it in the textbook-review project for my graduate students in music theory pedagogy. Some of the questions I posed to the students included: Amid the ever- expanding sea of undergraduate theory texts, why might an instructor choose this text over another (or no textbook at all)? How do its ancillary materials compare to the growing number seemingly required of such products? Which students would this book reach that others might not? Will students find the text and its materials accessible, inviting, and fun? Throughout this review, I will shed some light on these questions, with a keen eye toward why an instructor may or may not adopt MTR over a few of its competitors