Music Pedagogy Commons^™

Applications Of Information Literacy To Teaching Independent Music Analysis, Katrina Roush

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Undergraduate and graduate music students learn many tools beneficial for music analysis, and they practice applying these tools to music in their music theory classes. However, they often struggle to perform useful analysis on their own without the guidance of an instructor. They can have trouble understanding that analysis should communicate their personal interpretation of a work, and they may not realize that independent analysis usually requires some preparatory work (analytical research),such as discovering if others have analyzed the work and learning new analytical methods. This article shows that there is a strong connection between various steps in the music-analytical …

Report On The 2023 Workshops In Music Theory Pedagogy At The University Of British Columbia, Jason Yin Hei Lee, Kaylee Therieau

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Reviews Of A New Approach To Sight Singing, 7th Edition By Sol Berkowitz; Gabriel Fontrier; Leo Kraft; Perry Goldstein; And Edward Smaldone And Progressive Sight Singing, 4th Edition By Carol Krueger, Karin Buer

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Review Of Improvising Fugue: A Method For Keyboard Artists By John J. Mortensen, Bryan Espinosa

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Volume 38, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

“Duet Me”: Music Theory Pedagogy In The Age Of Social Media, Alyssa Barna

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

In this article, I outline a possible use of social media platforms in the music theory and ear-training classroom using a model assignment on (but not exclusive to) TikTok. I show how students can work collaboratively and musically in a platform they may use in everyday life to promote collaboration and engagement with musics and people outside the walls of the university. From this study, I extrapolate themes that illustrate both the benefits and pitfalls of social media use (pedagogically and otherwise). The first section situates social media platforms among the variety of technologies used in theory classrooms in the …

Ungrading In The Music Theory Classroom: A One-Year Case Study, David E. Orvek

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

In this paper, I present a summary of and critical reflection upon an alternative assessment practice known as “ungrading” that I used during the 2023–24 academic year. My version of the practice involved providing students with feedback without grades and letting students determine their own final grades through a process of guided self-assessment. Many students’ reactions to ungrading were positive. Some reported being able to focus on learning rather than grades, and even skeptical students admitted some benefits. Ungrading benefited me in various ways as a teacher, but there were challenges as well. Some students struggled with the lack of …

Engaging Aural Skills Students With Model-Eliciting Activities, Aaron Galliher

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

This mixed-methods study explores how using Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs) in an aural skills classroom can promote student motivation and engagement. MEAs require students to create models to solve progressively complex problems. As students develop and refine their models, they engage in a testing and iteration process that prioritizes learning over final outcomes, which fosters student empowerment. The specific MEA implemented was focused on music transcription skills and used the MUSIC Inventory of Motivation survey to assess student motivation and engagement, complemented by follow-up interviews that explain the results of the survey. Many students scored high on this survey and expressed …

Conference Review: Society For Music Theory Annual Meeting, Jacksonville, Florida, November 7–10, 2024, William Marvin, Jeremy Orosz

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Harmony, Texture, And Timbre In Popular Culture: Undergraduate Edition, Alexa Valles, Sophie Andersen, Aidan Ramos, Leonardo Huerta-Lina

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to compare the way students describe their favorite music with observable musical parameters such as harmony, texture, and timbre, and 2) to develop a database of current music that can be used in the theory classroom to study harmony, timbre, and texture. We seek to contribute to a growing body of work that debunks stereotypes such as popular music is too simple and therefore not productive to study within the music theory curriculum. However, we believe that musical fluency is strengthened when students study a variety of music styles. Our study identifies …

The Heyman Project: A Multimedia Anthology For The Undergraduate Classroom, Anna Stephan-Robinson

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

The Heyman Project is a multimedia anthology designed for flexible use throughout the undergraduate core music theory curriculum. It is also appropriate for use in high school music theory classes. Featuring music by American composer Katherine Ruth Heyman (1872-1944), the resource consists of four pdf documents: a student packet and a sample worksheet/lesson, along with instructor’s editions of the same documents. The student packet contains sheet music for 13 songs, each preceded by a brief note giving historical and/or theoretical background. The worksheet, designed for a first-year theory class, features the song “Elysion,” and focuses on diatonic modes, melodic construction, …

Fundamentals, Function, And Form: Student Workbook, Ivette Herryman Rodríguez, Andre Mount, Jerod Sommerfeldt

Milne Open Textbooks

Students of tonal Western art music will find in this workbook a full set of exercises and activities to deepen and reinforce their understanding of music theory and analysis. The book begins with such rudimentary topics as rhythm, meter, and pitch and progresses through polyphony, chromatic harmony, and musical form. In addition to exercises tailored to each topic, the book features recurrent activities focused on four-voice part-writing (figured-bass/Roman numeral realization and melody harmonization) as well as score analysis, which become progressively more advanced as new concepts and skills are covered.

Included for analysis are over 500 excerpts drawn from the …

Conference Report: Reassessing Haydn’S Sacred Music, 12–14 June 2023, Eisenstadt, Austria, Robert B. Wrigley

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

A conference entitled "Reassessing Haydn's Sacred Music" took place in Eisenstadt 12-14 June, 2023. Historical, political, and religious contexts, reception, compositional and religous influences upon Haydn, and stylistic characteristics of specific works were all discussed.

Tracking The Harmonium From Christian Missionary Hymns To Sikh Kirtan, Gurminder Kaur Bhogal

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The harmonium is prominent in Sikh practices of devotional music known as kirtan and yet its significance has barely been addressed in Euro-American scholarship. Following on the heels of a recent ban against using the instrument at the holiest temple of the Sikhs, Harmandir Sahib (popularly known as the Golden Temple), this article explores how the ban seeks to discard this colonial instrument and return to playing traditional string instruments (tanti saz) associated with the courts (darbar) of the Sikh Gurus. This study is the first to examine primary missionary sources from the nineteenth and early …

Play Makes Perfect: An Exploration Of Game And Play Elements In Composition And Performance, Gabrielle Chou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore the intersection of play and games in Western classical music and define a new category of pieces, “ludic pieces,” which contain play structures and game mechanics within their composition. Starting with surveying perspectives in ludology and ludomusicology, including those by Roger Caillois, Johan Huizinga, Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman, I will examine various definitions of a “game” and what its qualifying aspects are. I will then turn to music and consider pieces that interact with play and games without containing game structures, including examples of musical humor and pieces which evoke the imagery …

Proceedings Of The 21st Century Guitar Conference 2019 & 2021

The 21st Century Guitar

This volumeʼs contributions grew from 20 of the 94 scheduled keynotes, lectures and lecture-recitals of the first and second editions of The 21st Guitar Conference. Five items stem from the inaugural edition (2019, 44 contributions) and 15 from the second edition (2021, 50 contributions).1 This conference is unique in that it is centered on contemporary guitar research, performance and pedagogy.2 Previously, guitar research had gained increased visibility thanks to the International Guitar Research Centre, launched in 2014 (Stephen Goss, President), which regularly (co-)organizes conferences on guitar research; and Soundboard Scholar, launched in 2015 (Jonathan Leathwood, Editor) ‒ currently the only …

One Bite At A Time: Writing In The Theory Classroom, Jennifer Shafer England

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Prose writing in the music theory classroom is often a daunting task for both instructors and students. For instructors, the very thought of the heavy grading load associated with writing assignments combined with the difficulty that we know students encounter when writing about music (especially if students’ general written communication skills are still developing) can be overwhelming, even if we personally believe that our students would benefit from engaging in written communication about music. For many students, communication in written form is a skill that they are still developing, and writing about music only adds an additional challenge—especially when they …

Thirty Years On: Reflections On Haydn’S “Farewell” Symphony By James Webster, L. Poundie Burstein, Elaine Sisman, W. Dean Sutcliffe, James Webster

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

It has been just over thirty years since James Webster published his influential monograph Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in His Instrumental Music (Cambridge University Press, 1991). To honor the anniversary of Webster’s groundbreaking book, the Encounters with Eighteenth-Century Music: A Virtual Forum steering committee asked L. Poundie Burstein, Elaine Sisman, and W. Dean Sutcliffe to offer perspectives on the book, and James Webster to respond to their perspectives. The interesting online session occurred on Tuesday, October 18, 2022, and included a lively open discussion following the presentations and Webster’s response. The …

Rhythmic Theory Pedagogy, Ways Of Knowing, And Experiential Learning, Ben Duinker

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

This article proposes an approach to rhythmic theory pedagogy that foregrounds the intersection of performance, creation, and analysis. Daphne Leong’s recent work on this intersection uses the German verbs wissen (knowing that), können (knowing how), and kennen (knowing of) to describe the different kinds of knowledge generated and utilized by theorists and performers. I use Leong’s theory to identify a mismatch, or gap, between what undergraduate students learn about rhythm in the theory classroom and what their practical needs are as music majors—a plurality of whom specialize in performance. As a means of remedying this mismatch, I use David Kolb’s …

Volume 37, Various Authors

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Volume 37 of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy.

Reining In Pitch And Pitch-Class Motives: Rules For Improving Analytic Outcomes In The Tonal Theory Classroom, Brent Auerbach

Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy

Pitch-based motives proliferate in many styles of music and are routinely covered in undergraduate instruction. The treatment motives receive, however, is usually cursory. Tonal theory instructors have many reasons for skimming the motivic analysis unit, among them time pressures, underestimating the topic’s complexity, and the influence of textbook design. This standard rushed approach yields poor outcomes in which students are unable to reliably identify recurrences of a small set of motives over any musical span. They are as likely to apply brackets and labels indiscriminately to too many (trivial) events as they are to under-analyze large stretches of motivically-significant events. …

Gesture And The Auditory Impact On The Perception Of Sound: A Performance Guide For Understanding Gestural Function On Percussion Pedagogy And Performance, Emily Lane Durocher

Theses and Dissertations--Music

I will address the concept of physical gestures and discuss how they are applicable to the way percussionists visually and audibly perceive music. Through my research, I will focus on performance and pedagogy, seeking new possibilities for introducing percussionists at all ability levels to different articulations. Percussionists have traditionally been led to believe that they do not have the versatility over the initial musical attack and sustain that wind and string players do. This document has been developed to provide a more in-depth approach to how physical and musical gestures can function to create a more versatile and musical percussionist. …

The Percussionist's Guide To Music Theory Fundamentals, Mckenna M. Lee

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The research priorities that I have established as a theorist, percussionist, and an instructor of both, have led me to a master's thesis project combining music theory practices within the study and performance of percussion repertoire. As the graduate assistant of the percussion department at West Virginia University, I have been teaching applied orchestral percussion lessons and leading percussion ensembles. In my experience, a number of first-year percussionists in the studio at WVU have had a limited background with reading definite pitches on the staff, and struggle with sight-reading and pitch identification, therefore making their Written I and Aural I …

An Analysis Of Allan Holdsworth’S Techniques And Their Application To Fundamental Melodic Devices, James Dasilva

Recital Papers

This thesis analyzes Allan Holdsworth's improvisational style for the purpose of applying his techniques, such as string skipping and omnidirectional fretboard movement, beyond the jazz-rock idiom and expanding the melodic potential of the guitar.

A Theoretical And Performer’S Analysis Of Todd Goodman’S Tuba Concerto And Extended Program Notes Of Recital Pieces, Johnathan De Soto Jr.

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This document analyzes American composer Todd Goodman's 2012 work for solo tuba titled Tuba Concerto. It contains 10 chapters, including one for each of the three movements of the work: an introduction providing biographical information on the composer and context for the work within the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century; a performer’s analysis on the solo tuba part; and the biographical and performance information of composers also performed on the accompanying recital. Each of the four chapters includes theoretical analyses regarding each of Goodman's movements and practical considerations for performers of the work to observe. The thesis also …

Haydn’S Schemata And Hexachords: Two Analytical Case Studies, Gilad Rabinovitch

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

Two analytical case studies, from Haydn’s minuet al roverso (from the Symphony Hob. I: 47) and the opening movement of the String Quartet Op. 50, no. 6, show the interaction of galant schemata (Gjerdingen 2007) and the hexachordal solmization of the solfeggio tradition (Baragwanath 2020). Haydn plays upon conventional galant schemata—presumably elements of style shared by listeners who are closely familiar with the idiom (even if they do not have explicit schema labels); he also plays upon a more esoteric element of his own training and that of many other musicians in the period: hexachordal solmization. By considering both schemata …

The Significance Of Sonic Branding To Strategically Stimulate Consumer Behavior: Content Analysis Of Four Interviews From Jeanna Isham’S “Sound In Marketing” Podcast, Ina Beilina

Student Theses and Dissertations

Purpose:
Sonic branding is not just about composing jingles like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” Sonic branding is an industry that strategically designs a cohesive auditory component of a brand’s corporate identity. This paper examines the psychological impact of music and sound on consumer behavior reviewing studies from the past 40 years and investigates the significance of stimulating auditory perception by infusing sound in consumer experience in the modern 2020s.

Design/methodology/approach:
Qualitative content analysis of audio media was used to test two hypotheses. Four archival oral interview recordings from Jeanna Isham’s podcast “Sound in Marketing” featuring the sonic branding experts …

An Annotated Bibliography Of String Method Books And Theory Books For Pre-College String Students, With A Focus On Music Theory Concepts And Sequence Analysis, Rebecca Zou Hale

Master's Theses

The Hattiesburg Public School District (HPSD) Strings program, one of the largest public school string programs in the state of Mississippi, has been utilizing a method book series titled Essential Elements for Strings (EES) in their curriculum since the early 2000s. After almost two decades of use, the HPSD Strings staff has noticed that a majority of intermediate and advanced strings students struggle with fundamental music theory concepts. The current music theory deficiencies necessitate an improvement in the HPSD Strings curriculum's choice of instructional materials.

Referencing established music curricula and music theory textbooks, the instruction of fundamental music theory concepts …

A Poet's Voice: Music In Service To Poetry: Elements Of Text Painting In Juliana Hall's Song Cycle "How Do I Love Thee?", Hayley Z. Coughin

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composer Juliana Hall has established a reputation as one of the leading composers of contemporary American art songs, having composed over 60 song cycles, totaling over 300 works for the voice. Hall’s song cycle How Do I Love Thee? expresses a narrative arc told through five selections from Victorian-era poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems selected include Sonnet 3: “Unlike,” Sonnet 43: “How Do I Love Thee?,” Sonnet 37: “Pardon,” Sonnet 21: “Say Over,” and Sonnet 41: “Thank You.” Hall’s cycle describes the relationship between the lover and the object of their love, including …

Ysaye Sonata No.4 - A Sonata Of Past And Future, Naiyin Hou

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A golden age of violin playing arose during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Different violin schools were established, with their own beliefs concerning technique and interpretation. Some violinists displayed high virtuosity in their playing; whereas, others pursued establishing a noble and simple interpretation following the composer’s musical instruction. Different playing styles were developing, and people had their own preference on one or another. Eugène Ysaÿe was able to present qualities from different schools altogether in his playing, and developed a style of playing that was admired by the later generation. Many violinists in the late 19th century were …