In
my last post, I brought up the issue of coverage – how much? How little? – and
mentioned an interesting article by Shelley Reid from writing pedagogy studies
(“Uncoverage in Composition
Pedagogy,” Composition Studies 32/1 (2004):15-34).
Reid uses the term “problem-based uncoverage” and this concept overlaps
significantly with Melanie Lowe’s arguments in her Journal of Music History Pedagogy article, "Teaching Music History
Today".
Lowe says, “Coming to terms with my inability to survey Western
music history and literature was the most liberating experience of my teaching
career. To be sure, I still teach the usual assortment of music major survey
courses, and I still use A History of Western Music and the Norton
Anthology as my required textbooks. But when facing the task of taking my
students on a mythical journey from Euripides to Bright Sheng, I have thrown up
my hands and surrendered. I have given up.” (46) Instead, Lowe has made the
decision to jettison supporting composers and condense the coverage of certain
topics in order to gain space in her syllabus for projects that unfold over
several class meetings and which focus on a particular problem or issue that
will allow students to experience group and/or writing-based assignments that
will allow for moments of reflection and experimentation.
The
rationale for this leads directly into the second of Lowe’s challenges: that of
presenting music history in a way that allows for the subjectivities of our
students to engage with the material in meaningful and enriching ways. “The
real challenge for teachers of music history is to put this history in direct
dialogue with our contemporary, everyday lives—to make music history not just
musically relevant, but intellectually relevant, politically relevant, sexually
relevant, spiritually relevant, psychologically relevant, even ecologically
relevant not just in the ‘there and then’ of history but in the ‘here and now’
of today”.(46) These projects take the form of using small writing assignments,
group and full class discussion, and peer review to allow students to
investigate how their own current ideas of music’s function and meaning in
society are determined by the music of the past and yet also differ
significantly, highlighting the historical divide between “us” and “them.”
For Lowe, the sacrifice of coverage and teaching of
detail is well worth it. Students may not study a Haydn piano sonata, but they
can, “articulate how and why such issues, concepts, and ideas as those
encountered in the history of Western European music have value in their
everyday lives today—as musicians, students, responsible citizens, and thinking
and sensitive human beings. Is this not more valuable than mastering a plethora
of musical-historical facts? The question, of course, is one of quantity: how
much information—how many facts per se—do our undergraduate students need to
have at their fingertips to be able to think intelligently, meaningfully, and
humanely about music? Perhaps far fewer than we may think.”(55)
To elucidate her ideas, Lowe describes three
assignments that she uses during her unit on the Enlightenment and the First
Viennese School that unfold over several class meetings. For example, the first
of these assignments asks students to reflect in depth on what it means for a
piece to be considered “high art” and whether light, entertaining music can fit
into this category. Students write a short answer by answering several questions
around this issue. Lowe then uses
students’ writing to fuel a class discussion, which she then steers into
channels that allow students, through debate and disagreement, to become aware
of their own “musical-historical prejudices and to think about how such
prejudices inform their broader aesthetic worldviews. Only by becoming aware of
these kinds of biases can they avoid anachronistic thinking in the music
history classroom or elsewhere,” a necessary attitude for the music history
student that Lowe argues cannot be easily taught through lecture.(48) This assignment
opens students to a greater understanding of Haydn as both an important, canonic
composer, and yet one who also realized the opportunities inherent in the
composition and publication of accessibly, easy music designed for new kinds of
late 18th century audiences to both hear and play.
Of course, the “how much” is an extremely debatable
variable in these discussions, and I’m hoping many of my readers voice their
opinions in the comment section. Another blog post is in order, absolutely –
what is essential material in the teaching of music history? How much can we
jettison in order to make room for deeper encounters? What needs to stay, at
all costs? This will be a question at the forefront of my mind as I sit down to
tackle the semester’s course schedules. Will you be thinking about the same?
No comments:
Post a Comment