Carolyn Wilson Digital Collections (Lipscomb Univ.)
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Strategies for Introducing Pitch-Class Set Theory in the Undergraduate Classroom
Get PDFEven as pitch-class set theory has been widely integrated into undergraduate music theory curricula, it has remained one of the more difficult topics of the typical undergraduate program for instructors to illuminate and for students to master. A number of factors contribute to this phenomenon: the atonal repertoire for which it was devised is shunned by many students; the overt affinity with mathematics in many presentations of the theory makes it anathema to some; the theory\u27s particular employment of inversional equivalence has no clear antecedent in musical theories already familiar to undergraduates; and the theory\u27s jargon seems mysterious and dense to the uninitiated. As Joseph Straus once put it, Atonal set theory has a bad reputation. My purpose here is to offer practical suggestions regarding the initial presentation of the theory to help students quickly acquire an easy fluency with both its fundamental tenets and its analytic value. The teaching ideas offered here, depending on the instructor\u27s own curricular priorities, may serve as a springboard to more advanced exploration of related theoretical concepts or to beginning analyses of post-tonal music. In either case, to be successful students must master the conceptual framework of the theory and develop some fluency in its fundamentals. These are my goals as I introduce this powerful analytic tool to my own students
Reflections on Music Theory Pedagogy- Virtual and Archeological Known Unknowns
Get PDFTeachers of music theory in the college sector fall into demographic groups, such as those who are notable researchers and those who are not, or those who call themselves music theorists and those who don\u27t. The familiar cross-currents of college life include what are perhaps more significant musical divergences also, those that may be revealed for instance by the sometimes elusive margin between Western art music and vernacular music. We may encounter, too, the sometimes sharply contrasting needs among different student groups. The performance major and the liberal arts student may subscribe to intersecting perspectives on music theory, the most common of common perspectives being the simple question - why am I being required to do this? - which is an anxiety not shared by the theory major. There are other, more obviously purposeful meeting points, for example the one that is gaining currency where teachers of markedly different stripes, and at least some of their students, ask what is to be learned from musical performance, usually meaning recorded performance, to deepen our theoretical and cultural understanding of the music. If intradisciplinary distinctions are not black and white, nevertheless they are familiar to most who have taught as well as studied music theory, and obviously readers would be able to think of more; representing more interesting tensions, it may be; or distinctions that are more relevant to individual professional experiences. The point about such an angle of approach, through contrasts and even paradoxes, is that even if it threatens a certain amount of agonizing and compromise pedagogically, it does deal in comprehensible challenges. It articulates unavoidable puzzles that we can realistically aim to address, if not solve
In Memoriam - Dorothy Payne
Get PDFDorothy Payne, Professor Emerita of Music Theory and former Dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, passed away on March 11, 2010, in Cincinnati. She was 75 and had suffered from Parkinson\u27s disease for several years
Schenkerian Analysis at the Sorbonne
Get PDFFor over fifteen years, an optional course in Schenkerian analysis has been offered to the third-year students in the Music Faculty at the Sorbonne. It consists of a one-semester introduction, proposed as a choice within a list of a dozen options that include other disciplines such as paleography, continuo playing, musical informatics, didactics, sociology of music, rock and pop music, etc. Beginning in fall 2010, however, it has been decided that part of the course in Schenkerian analysis would become compulsory for all third-year students
Report on the 2010 Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Get PDFNearly sixty participants, including college-level instructors and graduate students from more than thirty states and five countries, attended the second triennial Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from Monday, June 14 through Friday, June 18, 2010. Gary S. Karpinski, Coordinator of the Music Theory program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, brought together some of the most eminent and influential names in music theory pedagogy: David Butler (music cognition), David Gagné (Schenkerian theory and analysis), Gary S. Karpinski (aural skills), Stefan Kostka (harmony and twentieth-century), and Michael Rogers (form, analysis, and aesthetics). Each day, participants attended three fifty-minute presentations in the morning, then enjoyed a leisurely lunch, followed by two more fifty-minute presentations, and finally an hour-long breakout session of their choice. Every day, each faculty member gave one of the fifty-minute presentations and then hosted one of the breakout sessions. What follows is a summary of each faculty member\u27s presentations over the five days
Stravinsky\u27s Spring Rounds - Primer for a Twentieth-Century Musical Aesthetic
No full textWhen first assigned to teach an undergraduate twentieth-century theory course in the early 2000s, I decided to begin the semester with an informal, anonymous survey: I gave each student an index card and asked them to write a few words that would describe their notions about twentieth-century music. Many of the responses were discouraging, though hardly surprising: ugly, chaotic, can\u27t be analyzed, and no rules were among the most common. Some students went so far as to express fearfulness, while others conveyed a more positive--though still unhelpful--attitude: Now we can write whatever we want and call it \u27music!\u2
Error Detection in the Aural Skills Class - Research and Pedagogy
Get PDFThe past thirty years have seen a rapid increase in research on music perception and cognition, including the establishment of academic societies, research conferences, and scholarly journals. In general, this research focuses on exploring the mental processes involved in listening to, remembering, understanding, performing, and responding to music. These topics are inherently interdisciplinary, with scholars emerging and collaborating from a variety of research fields, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoacoustics, music theory, and music education
A Model of Common-Tone Connections Among Jazz Scales
Get PDFOne of the more difficult tasks confronting the jazz musician is the necessity of improvising over chord progressions that often imply many keys in quick succession. Even standards of the repertoire rarely employ chords from a single key only. The opening measures of Stella By Starlight are a familiar example