Music Theory Commons^™

The Universal Language, Amelia Richards

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Promoting Metacognitive Reflection In Music Theory Instruction, Anna Ferenc

Music Faculty Publications

Since 1976 when John Flavell coined the term metacognition, a significant body of literature has emerged in psychology and education research documenting the importance of it to the process of learning and advocating its development through reflection to promote deeper, more thoughtful, and self-regulated learning. In the domain of music, discussions of reflection and/or metacognition appear particularly in literature on teacher training, music teaching at primary and secondary levels, and performance, but these topics are hardly addressed in research on music theory pedagogy. This article begins to redress this situation. It presents a theoretical overview of metacognition and reflection, describes …

Bass Line Movable Do Modulation Paradigms, Jay Smith

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Bass-Line Movable Do Modulation Paradigms are designed to help aural skills students internalize common modulation patterns. The worksheet uses movable-do modulation, meaning students change “do” to reflect the solfège of the new key at an appropriate pivot point. Students should sing the top line in the original key, repeat the pitch on the solfège syllable of the new key where it aligns with the lower line (the pivot point), and continue in the new key to the end. The instructor may wish to accompany students with an appropriate chord progression, providing musical context to the bass lines. The worksheet also …

The Chromatic Singalong Project: Pop/Rock As A Framework For Sight-Singing Fluency, Jena Root

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Successful sight-singing results from the ear, voice, and mind working in synchrony, and at its best translates to real-time musical understanding and facility on the student's primary instrument. Finding a pedagogical model for this level of musical fluency can be elusive: while the metronome is a time-honored practice tool, its relentless click lacks an external musical context that can lead students into a perpetual trap: Start, stumble, count off, start again, etc.

The Chromatic Singalong is a transcription/composition/sight-singing project designed to help students build fluency in singing and understanding music in real time. It is a capstone to the third …

Henry Worrall (1825–1902): Anglo-American Guitarist, Robert Ferguson

Soundboard Scholar

Anglo-American guitarist Henry Worrall appeared on the American scene just as the guitar reached a plateau of popularity. As vital as the guitar itself, the prevailing social, philosophical, and aesthetic tenets of Worrall's era also wove a unifying thread through his life, career, and oeuvre. His immersion in both the graphic and musical arts; his straddling of vernacular and high culture; his connection to nature and especially agriculture; his nationalist and regionalist sympathies; and his fondness for folk, popular, and heroic musical themes all drew from and evinced a Romantic worldview. Here, Ferguson discusses Worrall's professional life.

Return With Us Now... Featured Facsimile: Henry Worrall’S Spanish Retreat, Robert Ferguson

Soundboard Scholar

Ferguson examines Henry Worrall's Spanish Retreat. Its origins go back to London, specifically to two guitar prints published there in the mid-1820s. Though the earliest of these (c.1826) states that the piece was "arranged for guitar" by Alexander Sosson, this does not necessarily indicate that it was originally written for a different instrument, such as piano. "Arranged" could mean the piece was already in circulation among guitarists, or another guitarist created or popularized it, and Sosson merely reworked it (and wrote it down). Moreover, imitating other instruments, at which the guitar proved particularly adroit, constituted the essence and charm of …

The Life And Times Of Josef Kaspar Mertz: New Biographical Insights, Andreas Stevens

Soundboard Scholar

Stevens examines the biographical information about the German Romantic-era guitarist Josef Kaspar Mertz.The first one, authored in Russian by Nicolai Makaroff, became the best known because it has been available in English. By today's standards, Makaroff's recollections of the guitar's situation in the middle of the nineteenth century seem deeply subjective. Ever on the lookout for active exponents of the art of guitar playing, he met Mertz twice in Vienna and witnessed several private performances by Mertz. For better or for worse, his less-than-enthusiastic assessment of Mertz's playing has been taken at face value for perhaps too long, especially since …

Giuliani’S Naples: A Walking Tour, Nicoletta Confalone, Grégory Leclair

Soundboard Scholar

With 430,000 inhabitants in 1800, Naples had become the third most populous European city after London and Paris. The excavation of the site of Pompeii in the eighteenth century gave a special prestige to the city. Its newly unearthed antiquities and frescoes led to a vogue of neoclassicism across the arts. Images of ancient Greek and Roman lyres inspired the creation of the lyre-guitar, an instrument on which Mauro Giuliani performed on various occasions in Naples--probably more for its visual effect than for audibility's sake.

The Guitar In Tudor England: A Social And Musical History, By Christopher Page, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Long reviews The Guitar in Tudor England: A Social and Musical History by Christopher Page.

German Romantic Guitar Duets (Schneiderman, Yamaya), Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Long reviews Darr's German Romantic Guitar Duets by John Schneiderman and Hideki Yamaya.

Silence For Orchestra: Incorporating Silence In Musical Language Through Theories Of Expectation, Kari Darby

Masters Theses

The purpose of Silence: for Orchestra is to incorporate silence as a captivating source of musical language. Silence's goal is to encourage the audience to appreciate silence as musch as music. David Huron's research in musical expectations served as a guide to create a piece that develops, contradicts, and conforms to a listener's expectations. Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis's work describes five functions of silence found in music. These functions can be applied to the silences used in my piece in order to further conform to the listener's expectations.

Meter, Phrase, And Form In The Compositions Of Maria Schneider, Benjamin M. Geyer

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The central claims of this study are that Maria Schneider relies on normative rhythmic structures from the jazz tradition, and that her expressive deviations from those norms are comprehensible to experienced listeners in real time. The study proposes a non-recursive model of hypermeter wherein the measure is formed through entrainment, the four-bar sub-unit is formed through recognizable qualia at the measure level, and the eight-bar level is formed through the expectation for sub-units to group into pairs. I introduce the “structural phrase” as a unit that, while normatively hypermetrical, is distinct from the issue of hypermeter in its formal aspects …

The Do/Ti Handouts, Daniel B. Stevens

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

"The Do/Ti Test handouts were developed to enable students to identify harmonic function quickly and accurately. These handouts equip students with a visual representation of a powerful, time-tested strategy for harmonic dictation: the guide-tone method, first described by Rahn and McKay in 1988. Building on and extending the guide-tone method, the Do/Ti Test can be applied to diatonic harmonies, applied chords, chromatic predominants, sequences, and modulation.

This accompanying document contains the following:

The Do/Ti Test Handouts: An Introduction

Explanations for each handout.

Handout 1: The Do/Ti Test: Major-mode Version

Handout 2: The Do/Ti/Te Test: Minor-mode Version

Handout 3: Extending the …

Volume 30, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Simple And Compound Time Signatures Re-Examined, Paula Telesco

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

This handout was created for music minors and non-music majors, most of whom enter my class with some music background. They typically have some understanding of simple meters like 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4. Compound Time is typically a difficult concept to teach, so this handout treats compound meter a bit more in-depth than some textbooks. This handout would be appropriate for not only music minors and non-music majors, but also remedial music theory classes for music majors or even Music Theory 1 classes. I believe it could also be used in high school AP classes. There are three worksheets that …

Understanding Dotted And Undotted Notes, Paula Telesco

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

College and high school music students (whether majors or non-majors) likely know something already about note and rest values, what note gets the beat in some particular meter, and differences between undotted and dotted notes, but they often still have difficulty understanding them, dotted notes in particular. This handout will review this material and introduce an additional way to think about note values, setting the stage for additional approaches to meter, as rhythm and meter can often be difficult concepts to master.

Beyond “Three Blind Mice”: An Exemplar For “Day 1” Of Schenkerian Analysis, Andrew Aziz

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

This document provides a lesson plan and examples for Day 1 of a Schenkerian analysis course. Beginning with tonic prolongation paradigms that provide the structure of a hypothetical soprano-bass framework, the lesson unlocks a hidden Beethoven masterpiece lurking within the counterpoint. The plan also highlights how many melodic notes are "higher" than the soprano as well as how the theory incorporates the notion of tonal hierarchy.

Twenty Questions: An Introduction To Counterpoint, Linear Analysis, And Dissonance Treatment, Daniel B. Stevens

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

"Twenty Questions" is a pedagogical resource focused on linear and dissonance-treatment analysis in common-practice music of the 18th and 19th centuries. This resource is designed to be utilized at the advanced high school and collegiate levels. It includes an explanation of contrapuntal analysis in a user-friendly Q&A format, a one-page summary sheet, four sample analyses with commentary, and four assignments with answer keys and extensive commentary for instructors. "Twenty Questions" was first developed as an explanatory guide for analyzing and interpreting Bach's Prelude in C major (WTC, book I). This piece, and the commentary that accompanies it, serves as a …

Schenkerian Analysis For The Beginner, Benjamin K. Wadsworth

Faculty Articles

In the classroom, the teacher of Schenkerian analysis faces the challenge of reconciling the holistic evaluation of works with the sequential presentation of content from simple to complex. Drawing from previous learning taxonomies (Bloom 1956, Anderson and Krathwohl 2001, and Rifkin and Stoecker 2011), I propose an adapted one for Schenkerian analysis. I note differences between this taxonomy and analytical procedures shown in current Schenkerian textbooks (Cadwallader and Gagné 2011, Pankhurst 2008), pursue implications of the new learning taxonomy, and suggest a wide range of classroom activities that have proven effective in my own introductory course. Goals of the new …

Symphony For Wind Orchestra By Luis Serrano Alarcón: Background, Analysis, And Conductor’S Guide, Donald F. Goodwin

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Born in 1972, Luis Serrano Alarcón has in a very short period of time, established himself as one of Spain’s most prominent composers. His works are constantly being performed, not only in his home country, but throughout the world. While some of his compositions tend to retain the rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic style typical to Spanish music, many of the works sound as if they were borne more from the Viennese symphonic tradition, both during the time of Haydn and Beethoven, but also during the time of Arnold Schoenberg.

As a young boy Alarcón took up piano lessons with a …