Enhancing Music Appreciation with Scholarship
Published online: 1 October 1970
- PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40376010
The present article arose, in part, as a personal response to the Society
Enhancing Music Appreciation with Scholarship
Published online: 1 October 1970
- PDF: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40376010
The present article arose, in part, as a personal response to the Society's recent focus upon teaching music to the general student at the undergraduate level. The viewpoints expressed on "Music Appreciation" in Volume VIII of SYMPOSIUM, as well as at the session devoted to the subject at the Twelfth Annual Meeting in Berea, disclosed a variety of opinions and raised numerous points for discussion. The stimulating floor response during the regrettably brief question-and-answer period at the meeting attests to the topic's continuing "relevance" for many Society members.
My own experience, based upon teaching "Music Appreciation" at three distinctly different institutions (Stanford University, Humboldt State College in California, and Hamline University) tends to reinforce a common approach which sets two main goals for the course: (1) the familiarization of the student with the elements of music (e.g., basic theory) and (2) the utilization of these, at first, "abstract" criteria in comparing and contrasting works drawn from each of the recognized historical periods of music (e.g., history and stylistic analysis). Nevertheless, an optimal achievement of such objectives in colleges today seems, to me, to necessitate extending course content and methodology beyond the bounds of a mere "listening course" whenever possible; only when an individual teacher's energy and imagination transports student interest and comprehension past the printed word and the recorded sound is the instructor's inherent responsibility to present music as a vital, pervasive, truly "liberal" art satisfactorily discharged.
As a respectful addition to the many articulate and well-considered opinions already expressed by Society members, I herewith offer two further criteria which, I feel, deserve primary consideration when structuring and implementing a "Music Appreciation" course:
1. Can the course effectively utilize a variety of approaches, techniques, and procedures to show the student as realistically as possible the world of the professional musician, be he composer, performer, or scholar?
2. Does the course fully exploit the particular personal and material attributes of a department, institution, and area, thereby constituting a "unique" study, tailor-made to the school's strengths?
In illustration of the first consideration, I submit the following as examples of approaches other than listening and reading which have, at one time or another in my experience, provided a student with valuable insights into the field of music:
1a. When art and literature provide parallels or analogies to musical concepts, these relationships should be immediately and clearly expressed. When studying musical Impressionism and Expressionism, for instance, slides of paintings and readings of poems provide vivid parallels. Even when discussing eras of less obvious interdisciplinary influence, certain relationships may still be suggested; studying such items as photographs of Gothic cathedrals, their floor plans, even the layout of a Medieval garden (!) will help articulate certain fundamental artistic and philosophic principles evidenced in the music of the time. Of particular interest to an introductory music class is the analogy of a musical structure (movement, section, period, phrase, motive, chord, note) to that of the written word (chapter, paragraph, sentence, clause, phrase, word, letter). When a direct relationship to such a familiar area as language is recognized, the student's acceptance of music's role as a proper expresser of ideas is facilitated.
1b. When a composition is studied in which music's role is not an exclusive one, the teacher must attempt to acquaint the students with the pertinent "non-musical" aspects of the work. In Lieder or choral music, one should consider the text, its translation, and, if necessary, its analysis; in opera, a synopsis of the plot may suffice. Any work written for the stage (e.g., ballet and opera) poses an additional visual problem; in such a case, slides of a reputable production replete with costumed performers provide important images in consideration of which the musical element will assume realistic proportions. A discussion of selected nontraditional stagings (e.g., those of Wieland Wagner) may even produce a new and, perhaps, more meaningful evaluation of the work itself.
1c. Since professional musicians conventionally communicate through musical notation, students should, at some time in the course, work with a score. The lack of previous musical training common to many introductory students, of course, warrants against studying anything more complicated than a piano score (original or orchestral reduction) or a slow-moving four-part vocal score. Although many students initially panic at the prospects of reading what, to them, seems a new "foreign language," most, with proper encouragement and carefully directed score-marking, find themselves following the metrical regularity and the melodic contours of the, by now, "surprisingly" logical graphism with comparative ease. By having students familiar with musical notation disperse themselves among the class and follow the score with a pencil, almost all students will "make it 