RN to BSN Program
The American Musicological Society's
Pedagogy Study Group,
AMS Midwest Chapter, AMS Allegheny Chapter,
and Edinboro University present the
AMS Teaching Music History Day 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Alexander Music Center
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
It's FREE and open to the public.
No Registration is required.
Lunch and Snacks will be provided.
9:15 – 11:00 a.m. Panel Discussion: Redesigning the Music History Survey (each person will deliver a 15 minute position paper, followed by a question-answer period initiated by the panelists (talking to one another) and expanding to the audience.
Reconceptualizing Music History: Some Thoughts on Categories Versus Chronology in Music History Survey Courses
Michael J. Malone, Ohio Wesleyan University
A chronological approach to history has many advantages. However, if courses on the history of music are *primarily* organized around a concept of history as a chronological progression, one limitation that inevitably emerges has to do with the relationship between an ever increasing historical timeline and limited class time. Keeping in mind Hayden White’s work on the “fictional” nature of historical constructions, one way to avoid the trap of asking “what do we leave out”—there is, of course, no good answer—is to rethink the question of chronology and focus instead on categories of function and reception (both historical and contemporary), thus avoiding issues of value (especially the idea that only the “most important” works ought to be included in a limited class time). This also enables a shift in focus from quantity to quality, and allows us to dedicate more energy to student motivation and the ways in which we can use limited amounts of time to develop their self-reliance and desire to learn on their own.
This presentation will draw together the philosophies of Hayden White, Rolland Barthes, George Lakoff, and others to investigate the potential advantages of such a non-linear approach to music history. While I am not proposing that chronology be abandoned completely (one can always include a unit on chronology), I will suggest an approach to learning based primarily on categories of music—which would focus on the ways in which music has been meaningful to people in the past, and how music of the past can continue to be meaningful in the future—and demonstrate what one of these topics might look like. This would be part philosophical paper and part lecture demonstration, requiring audio/video to be presented from my laptop (Mac).
Time for Reevaluation: Content v. Process in Teaching Music History in Tumultuous Times
Dane Heuchemer, Kenyon College
Given our current economic climate, with its potential long-term effects, colleges and universities will likely be looking to hold (or even reduce) additional faculty resources dedicated to (or including responsibilities for) teaching music history. At the same time, the breadth of style now being included in music curricula has expanded to include non-canon fields such as jazz and popular music. Much of the current discussion and criticism regarding music history classroom textbooks, for example, focuses on the issue of content: is the old, too-narrow concentration on the western art music canon being adequately addressed by today’s authors, editors, and publishers? Such discussions and debates are important, but also miss crucial points—namely, can academic programs maintain a viable expectation of even and thorough coverage of our expanded music history palette given limitations of student time, teaching load, faculty resources, etc.? This seems an unrealistic expectation.
This paper includes an alternative: rather than trying to cover all of our material at what would be a paper-thin level, perhaps we should balance covering breadth with deeper slices, in the form of case studies, heavily dosed with active learning strategies.
By demonstrating to our students the processes we use in studying music, are we not providing them with something far more important: a blueprint for finding answers on their own? Should we, as music history teachers, now find a new balance between content and process? What skills and knowledge should we really be giving our students as they prepare head towards post-collegiate life?
The ‘Teaching Self’ as a Central Concept in Music History Pedagogy
Dina Lentsner, Capital University Conservatory of Music
Sociologist Hans Mauksch asserts: “Beliefs about teaching, the nature of the reward and motivation structure, and general denial of the scholarly properties of teaching have devalued teaching and the teacher” (Mauksch, 1986). Conversely, other educational studies scholars suggest that many consider teaching a calling, and link teaching to the concept of prophesy (Bullough at al, 2002). This paper focuses on the notion of the “teaching self” (Olson and Einwohner, 2001) or one’s identity as manifested through his/her teaching, and the concomitant effects on the content, structure and flow of a music history course.
Designing such a course presents a crisis of inadequate time. Each music history professor resolves this crisis differently, focusing the syllabus to selectively reveal, emphasize, gloss, or neglect the content of the course. I argue that one’s experience and identity are the best tools to guide the course as well as approach to teaching. Thus, an eighteen-century specialist may structure a survey course around ideas of organicism and structural unity or a lack thereof, whereas a late-twentieth century music scholar may manipulate music history in the light of the post-modern all-inclusiveness of music styles and techniques.
I invite each music history professor to embrace and exploit our uniqueness as people, scholars, and pedagogues, everyday, thorough creating an unforgettable experience of discovering and rediscovering music with our students. Ultimately, it is not “where” but “whom you studied music history with” that really counts, and to this end the goal for our students is revelation, not mastery.
Broadening the Music History Curriculum: Suggestions for Success
Ann van der Merwe, Miami University of Ohio
For the past decade, colleges have sought to expand the study of music history to reflect the growing interest – among both students and scholars – in musical styles outside the western canon. This process has manifested itself in the integration of nonwestern and popular examples into existing courses and in the design of new courses devoted to such topics as jazz, world music, and rock and roll. Both of these methods have merit, but their value is dependent upon thoughtful approaches to the new material. Nonwestern and popular music can be effectively integrated into an existing course on the western canon, but only if they contribute to student understanding of the canon and its relationship to other musical traditions. Focus must be maintained, and connections between traditions must be demonstrated. Subject specific courses are perhaps the better choice when feasible, for they naturally enable instructors to explore previously underrepresented styles more comprehensively. Even so, a balance between focus and variety remains essential. If the scope of the course is too narrow, some students may enter the classroom with strong opinions that limit their willingness to learn while others will find such focus intimidating or even off-putting. If the scope of the course is too broad, instructors will struggle to present much meaningful detail on any of musical cultures explored or to establish cross-cultural connections.
11:15-12:15 Paper Session: Teaching Critical Thinking in Music History
If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em: Editing Wikipedia as a Research Project
Joshua Veltman, Union University
Like many professors, I view Wikipedia as both a blessing and a bane for my students. It puts an unprecedented wealth of information at their fingertips, and yet that very abundance can lead to over-reliance on it as a research tool, as if there were no longer any need to use such outdated sources as books and journals. I have also found that few students understand the full implications of Wikipedia's open editing policy, namely that any article has the potential to be incomplete, misleading, or even erroneous. However, an outright ban on the use of Wikipedia in the research process may be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. So, I devised a project that would help students embrace the positive aspects of Wikipedia, confront its pitfalls head-on, and motivate them to use traditional library resources, all at the same time. In my music history classes over the past two years, I have asked students to improve an existing Wikipedia article on a music-historical topic rather than write a standard research paper. The project involves fact-checking statements that already have citations, providing citations for those that don't, and writing new, well-documented statements to complement existing material. The final step is to write an essay reflecting on what was learned in the process. In my presentation, I will share with the audience all the parameters of the assignment as well as students' experiences in completing it. I will also discuss the mixed reactions to the whole endeavor from hardcore Wikipedians, and solicit suggestions for further improvements to the project.
Literacy vs. Critical Thinking in the Music History Survey
Benjamin Binder, Duquesne University
As a music history teacher in a conservatory environment, I've struggled to reconcile two equally important but often conflicting objectives whenever I teach the required survey course for undergraduates. Because college students increasingly possess a limited knowledge of the Western canon, my survey aims to familiarize them with as much of this repertoire as possible. Students expect to gain a basic music-historical literacy that will serve them well in future professional situations, not to mention graduate school admissions. But it's always difficult to tackle this vast quantity of material, let alone repertoires outside the conventional canon, without merely skimming the surface. The survey also gives students a vital opportunity to reflect upon music's significance in their lives and in our culture, questioning accepted truisms at every turn. But the more we develop critical thinking skills, the less time we have to explore the diverse regions of the musical universe.
How can we resolve this tension between breadth of knowledge and depth of thought without shortchanging our students? In my presentation, I'd like to share my own experience with this issue and offer some suggestions on how to overcome it. Given my own background and interests, I generally restrict my survey to the traditional canon. But by regularly challenging students to make creative connections between past and present, I let them bring non-traditional repertoires into the classroom, drawing upon their own expertise and allowing them to build a critical apparatus they can apply to whatever music they encounter in the future.
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Keynote Lecture and Demonstration:
Wiki, Clickie, Nice and Schticky:
(re)Writing Music History in the Survey for Majors
Andrew Dell’Antonio, with Domenica Bongiovanni and Joshua Ogden-Davis, The University of Texas at Austin
As we prepare to follow a university mandate in converting our music history sequence for majors (with a relatively large annual enrollment of ca. 100 students) to a writing-intensive course, we are exploring a variety of short-writing assignments to enliven students' understanding of historical methodology (drawing analogies between past practices and current musicians' concerns). We are also implementing a variety of online writing tools and projects (utliizing blogs and other online journals, and a course "wiki") in order to combine electronic literacy with historical learning. Finally, we will be making use of a classroom-response-system (“clickers”) as one resource to engage the large group and discourage mere “passive reception” during lecture-oriented sessions.
We would be delighted to present our approach as a "work-in-progress" through a demonstration and discussion of our tools and experiences. We would envision a joint presentation by a supervising professor and two graduate teaching assistants. The presentation could include both a "show-and-tell" and a hands-on demonstration of some classroom interaction approaches, depending on time and interest by conference attendees.
3:15 – 5:15 p.m. Workshop Sessions
The Lessons of Applied Ethnomusicology Pedagogy for Teaching Music History
Eric Hung, Westminster College of the Arts
Music history teachers have long emphasized the importance of understanding the social contexts behind music compositions, performance practices, and listening habits. We have students think about the political situation that led to the dissemination of Gregorian Chant, the development of a middle class and its musical consequences, the effects of recording technology on composers and listeners, and so on. Curiously, and this is true even of courses on contemporary music, very few of our syllabi include major assignments that ask our students to examine the present-day musical culture of the region—or even the country—in which they live. To me, this is a glaring problem because most of our students will soon perform for and teach people that share a community with them. The students therefore needs to learn (or at least know how to learn) about their audience.
In this paper, I will first examine how the field of applied ethnomusicology pedagogy has attempted to bridge the gap between the musical cultures of the academy and the surrounding communities. I will analyze projects assigned at various institutions around the United States, and focus on several short films made by students of Dr. Carol Muller and Dr. Tim Rommen at the University of Pennsylvania.
Afterwards, I will discuss how teachers of more “traditional” music history courses might draw upon the lessons of applied ethnomusicology pedagogy, and conclude by examining the process of setting up a “Community Music Project” for my “Music Since 1900” course at my institution.
Active Learning in the Music History Classroom
Molly Cryderman-Weber, Lansing Community College
“Active Learning” has been a significant catchphrase in pedagogical circles for the past two decades. The term refers to teaching styles that encourage student ownership of the learning experience through participation in activities that stimulate exploration and discovery. Proponents of active learning methodologies cite increased student engagement, improved retention, and the ability to address multiple learning styles as motivations for adopting an active-learner-centered approach.
In the music history classroom, active learning can also be used to expand the scope of the course to include popular musics and current events and to tailor the objects of study to the interests of the students involved. Many active learning exercises may also function as in-class assessments, allowing the instructor to gauge student performance against the learning outcomes of a particular course. In this presentation, I would like to share some of the active learning exercises I use in my World Music History classes, discuss the benefits and pitfalls I have encountered when implementing active learning exercises in class, and suggest methods for evaluating student performance in an outcomes-based curriculum.
Writer’s Workshop with Music Appreciation Learners
Carolyn Ponce, Adjunct Music Faculty, Arkansas State University
“Writing” is still seen as a daunting assignment for a grade rather than an invitation to express understanding. Today’s learners have more opportunities for writing and publishing than ever before. Yet, they do not consider themselves writers. In a classroom where learners are encouraged as writers, the content of the course and their assignments become relevant and meaningful. Including the Writer’s Workshop in a Music Appreciation course invites learners to express their understanding of course material in writing projects while setting them on a path of self-exploration, developing a truer appreciation for what they are learning. In the Workshop environment there are more opportunities for learner-to-learner and learner-to-instructor interaction. The conference presentation will show that by combining the writing process experience with music mini-lessons learners will gain a deeper understanding of the development of music. Conference participants will be introduced to the Writer’s Workshop, given tips on how to adapt it to a Music Appreciation course, and how learners can publish their work using Web 2.0. If time permits, the conference participants will be invited to join in a mini-lesson where they will brainstorm and use prewriting activities to complete an outline for a short story based on a symphonic poem.
Hearing ‘the Classical’ in the ‘Popular:’ Film Music and the Classical Tradition
Brian Mann, Vassar College
Undergraduate non-majors regularly enroll in music courses that focus primarily on materials outside the canon of Western music. This is inevitable, particularly in institutions that have no core curriculum or breadth requirements. When students see the words “jazz, “rock,” or “film music” in a course title, they are more likely to take such a course than one that focuses—either exclusively or primarily—on topics in “classical” music. The result is that more students than ever are leaving college without any encounter with Western art music—even when they have taken one or more courses in some kind of music history or appreciation.
Since many of us teach across the curriculum, our approach to, say, jazz or film music is bound to be informed by our knowledge of the Western tradition. Given that knowledge, one way to enrich our students’ encounter with these repertoires is to focus on the interactions between “high” art and popular culture. Taking a non-major course in film music as its primary focus, this paper considers the music of Bernard Herrmann (and particularly his score for Vertigo), with a view to showing how students can be taught to appreciate the ways in which Herrmann’s gestures evoke the music of Wagner (Das Rheingold, Tristan und Isolde) Tchaikovsky (Romeo and Juliet) Stravinsky (Petrushka) Holst (The Planets), and other late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures. Such excursions beyond the course’s ostensible topic introduce students—admittedly by stealth—to a kind of music they are now much less likely to encounter.
