Carolyn Wilson Digital Collections (Lipscomb Univ.)
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Report on Pedagogy into Practice Conference
Get PDFOn June 1-3, 2017, the Gail de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy and the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy sponsored a conference title “Pedagogy Into Practice: Teaching Music Theory in the Twenty-First Century.” Held at Lee University in Cleveland, TN, the conference featured papers, poster sessions, and workshops dealing with varying aspects of music theory pedagogy scholarship
Incorporating Popular Music in Teaching: Ideas for the Non-Expert
Get PDFMusic theory instructors who center their teaching around common-practice music often do so because they believe this repertoire helps students learn broadly applicable skills. But incorporating some (broadly defined) popular music may help students make connections to other repertoires, form more robust and accurate knowledge structures, and exercise creativity. This article is addressed to instructors who do not feel expert in popular music who still want to engage these benefits. Such instructors can remove from themselves some of the burden of claiming expertise they do not feel they have and learning new repertoire every year in order to stay current by giving their students greater degrees of agency. These range from alternative assignments, which require more expertise on the part of the instructor, to student involvement in the priorities and emphases of a class, which opens up the class to the full range of student ideas and preferences
“Composers Are Born and Not Made”: Some Preliminary Thoughts On How To Construct A Pedagogy For Music Composition
Get PDFThis article explores how pedagogy in music composition in the United Kingdom has changed since the beginning of the twentieth century, and suggests a model which is effective in facilitating the development of today’s student composers in Higher Education, but could also be applicable for younger students. Firstly, I will examine a range of writers’ approaches to outlining how the act of music composition can be taught. I will then suggest a pedagogic model which is based on aspects of these approaches but informed by my own experiences as a composition teacher
Music Theory Undergraduate Core Curriculum Survey: a 2017 Update
Get PDFIn 2000, Richard Nelson conducted a survey of undergraduate music theory curricula at the request of the College Music Society (CMS). His survey included questions on faculty loads and leaves, and issues of undergraduate theory curricula (e.g., years required, class sizes, textbooks, solmization systems, topics covered, placement exams, and fundamentals and accelerated courses). A total of 248 responses were collected and reported in the College Music Symposium (2002). The results indicated prevailing tendencies in the teaching of music theory at the time. The present article provides a seventeen-year update to Nelson’s survey. It reports on a new survey that included many of the questions asked in the first survey as well as additional questions on new trends in the teaching of music theory. The new survey included questions on the inclusion of technology and online learning in theory and aural training classes; questions on the integration of writing, composition, improvisation, and performance in theory classes; and questions on content shifts, such as the inclusion of non-western music (e.g., film, jazz and popular music) and other types of notation and analytical systems (e.g. lead sheet symbols, Nashville numbers, Neo-Riemannian theory and Schenkerian analysis). The article compares the results of both surveys and reflects on changes and trends while considering other important scholarship on the state of the curriculum. Overall, this article provides useful information for music theory instructors as well as lays a foundation for future surveys on the state of the curriculum
Asking Good Questions: A Way Into Analysis and the Analytical Essay
Get PDFDeveloping an analytical conception of a musical work is typically difficult for students. A fruitful and rewarding way to address this challenge is to teach students to ask good questions about compositions, that is, questions that lead to further and more profound analytical investigation. In this article, I explain the four-step pedagogical procedure that I developed to teach students this skill. Tested repeatedly in many of my courses, this procedure has consistently yielded exciting class discussions and notable improvements in students’ essays and presentations
An Order-of-Procedure Approach to Linear Graphing
Get PDFThis article outlines an approach to outer-voice, linear graphs based on an order-of-procedure model. When analyzing music, the analyst moves around and through music in much the same way one moves through environmental spaces. The “order-of-procedure” model builds on this idea by orienting the analyst towards the spatial aspects of graphing environments. The article demonstrates how such an approach can be used to help beginning students produce credible outer-voice graphs that highlight connections between non-contiguous events in the middle ground
Chorales in J. S. Bach’s Pedagogy: Recasting the First Year Undergraduate Music Theory Curriculum in Light of a New Source
Get PDFInspired by new evidence about J. S. Bach’s teaching method, this article offers an historically informed perspective on teaching part writing while striving to achieve the College Music Society’s curricular goals of integration, creativity, and diversity. The key is an emphasis on transferrable skills, which are honed in the simplified context of hymn tune harmonization and then applied to more diverse settings through analysis and model composition. Transferrable skills sharpened in this method range from basic (figured bass, chord spelling, voice-leading, harmonic analysis, and vocal and keyboard experience) to more advanced (formal and cadential analysis, ornamentation, composition with compound melody, and reductive analysis). The resulting method is historically informed, pedagogically appropriate, internally consistent, fundamentally musical, and always contextualized
Post-Tonal Solmization for Post-Tonal Aural Skills: Implementing Ordered Pitch-Class Intervals
Get PDFScholarship regarding solmization systems is largely limited to tonal methods. The present article extends the discussion to post-tonal aural skills, citing the need for a separate, interval-based methodology that fulfills the same functional role for atonal repertoire as scale-degree numbers and moveable-do syllables achieve for tonal music. In Part I, we examine a tonal and atonal aural skills example as a means of justification for separate solmization methodologies. In Part II, we present an effective way to introduce our preferred system, ordered pitch-class intervals, in the classroom, as well as cite additional repertoire and teaching strategies that demonstrate the utility of adopting the new musical orientation. Finally, in Part III, we outline a sample curriculum for a 15-week undergraduate class and describe how to smoothly transition from tonal to atonal studies. The result is a repertoire- and skills-focused post-tonal aural skills course that equips undergraduates to more successfully understand and perform post-tonal compositions