This semester has been a fascinating yet challenging blend of musical time periods. Here, I have been introduced to music and composers and ideas which are new for me and sometimes challenge my ears. This does not mean in any way that I do not "like" what is new and different -- it is simply that: new and different. It has been a joy to get to know some in the class much better this semester and to have them share music with me. I am thankful for the proximity of the horn studio to the percussion studio, because I have had some great conversations with Kyle, Ben, and Brad -- they are so much more connected than I to music being composed right now.
My assigned topic for Horn Literature has been music for the horn during the Baroque era. Hmmm.... Often, the sounds in my car will switch from Quantz, Heinichen, Zelenka, or Neruda -- to Lou Harrison or Martin Bresnick [Thanks, Kyle!!]. Then I listen to Rosetti/Rosler, Charles Lefebvre, and Jean Francaix who gave me the music I will play for my full faculty hearing in May.
Woven in with all of these sounds has been the music assigned to the MUS 203 Scholars. Anonymous, Hildegard, Beatriz, Leonin & Perotin, more Anonymous, Dunstable, DuFay, Josquin and others. This music is just as "foreign" to many of the 203 Scholars as Partch, Nancarrow, and La Monte Young has been for some of us.
Last evening, following a study session both exciting in the obvious connections between sound and concept being made by a few students and heartbreaking in the obvious frustration seen in the faces and voices in a few as they struggle to make any connections to music and vocabulary which is still beyond foreign-sounding to them, I pondered all of these things in my heart. [I have a passion for undergraduate students and their stage in life which only those who know my story appreciate fully.] So many of these young students feel no apparent connection in the earliest music we explore to their chosen source of musical sound-making [percussionists and low brass players especially]. And I wondered this....
Why do we start at the beginning when teaching music history? The beginning may indeed be a very fine place to start when learning many concepts, but is it the only place to start when trying to ignite a passion for learning in all undergraduate students? What would a musicology class be like if we started with right now? If we began with the music being composed right now -- and worked back to discover connections and influences? What if, instead of transporting students to what seems to them a musical "galaxy far, far away," we begin by listening and discussing what they sing and play right now, by living composers?
Some Humanities texts do just this. They begin with what is being created by our current society to represent where we are as individuals and people groups. Only then do they begin to look back to explore what past peoples felt compelled to create in sound, in visual image, in drama, in the written word, in dance -- to leave for us clues to their narrative.
So I wonder, "What would happen if we reversed the order of the music history sequence?"
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Cheryl, this is a very creative and innovative suggestion: "Here we are now. So, How did we get here?!?"
ReplyDeleteIn 1983 I taught in the first Governor's Scholars Program in Kentucky. There seemed to be an unending supply of money to bring in anyone we wanted for lectures and presentations. One of those speakers was William Lipscomb, who was Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, then teaching at Harvard. He was originally from Lexington, so he had a Kentucky connection.
In addition to being a world famous chemist, he was a fine clarinetist (How's your chemistry, Chris, Claire, Dennis, and Mike?!?). I invited him to give a talk in my Fine Arts class and he suggested it would be interesting to teach history backwards. So you are in good company, Cheryl.
He also told the class that he didn't feel he really knew a piece of music until he performed it publicly. But what do these Nobel Prize winners know, anyway?
It is an interesting journey to go back and look for roots, connections, commonalities, innovation, tradition, and probably a better way to capture the fleeting minds of the sophomores who are trying to come to terms with music history, beginning at the outer reaches...
Thanks, Cheryl, for a kind and creative suggestion.
It is interesting that in most music theory curriculums, we start freshman not at the beginning, nor at the end, but squarely in the middle of music history. We teach them the ins and outs of Common Practice Era music first (id est, J. S. Bach). Then we plow closer and closer to the 21st century. Regrettably, very little direction works backward to examine how the Common Practice came to be, unless some sort of 16th century counterpoint class is offered.
ReplyDeleteAre you crazy? Do you want to change something we have being doing for eras? No Way hahah, just kidding!!! I like the idea, but I have to admit it would be a challenge!! You know, the ideal voice instructor is supposed to take the student from where he is (technically) and bring him to where he is supposed to be. We are not even encouraged to introduce any technical term or conception for beginners, all we should do is to observe and take what the student already does "naturally" good and encourage that. Corrections and new concepts should come slowly as the lesson go by. I think I like this model!!!!!! Building from the known and familiar!!!!!
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