Teaching Music History

Description: Unlike their colleagues in music theory and music education, teachers of music history have tended not to commit their pedagogical ideas to print. This collection of essays seeks to help redress the balance, providing advice and guidance to those who teach a college-level music history or music appreciation course, be they a graduate student setting out on their teaching career, or a seasoned professor having to teach outside his or her speciality. Divided into four sections, the book covers the basic music history survey usually taken by music majors; music appreciation and introductory courses aimed at non-majors; special topic courses such as women and music, music for film and American music; and more general issues such as writing, using anthologies, and approaches to teaching in various situations. In addition to these specific areas, broader themes emerge across the essays. These include how to integrate social history and cultural context into music history teaching; the shift away from the 'classical canon'; and how to organize a course taking into consideration time constraints and the need to appeal to students from a diverse range of backgrounds. With contributions from both teachers approaching retirement and those at the start of their careers, this volume provides a spectrum of experience which will prove valuable to all teachers of music history.

Review: 'The great value of Mary Natvig's anthology Teaching Music History is that it forces those in the discipline to re-examine our own teaching practices. Chapters are devoted to music appreciation, the music history sequence for majors, specialty courses such as American Music and Film music, and issues such as writing about music and teaching in liberal arts colleges. These approaches -- many of them truly refreshing and provocative -- will have the potential to invigorate and transform tired syllabi and presentations. Natvig's book should be required reading for all who teach this subject on the post-secondary level, from first-year teaching assistants in Music Appreciation to senior professors in view of retirement.' Jonathan Bellman, Chair, Department of Music History and Literature, University of Northern Colorado, USA. 'We music history teachers, who are musicians and scholars by training but pedagogues by profession, are perpetually confronted with the gap between experiencing music and talking or writing about it. Teaching Music History, which never loses sight of the students we strive to teach, should help us narrow that gap.' Richard Crawford, Hans T. David Distinguished University Professor of Musicology, University of Michigan, USA. '... this anthology brings together a kind of 'collective wisdom' and a fount of experience that should prove an essential resource for college-level faculty. I hope it will quickly find its way into syllabi of those graduate musicology programs that value the teaching of instructional methods and onto the bookshelves of veteran teachers as well.' Notes ' I found it most fascinating for the new ideas and the new strategies that it has suggested. I can only imagine that other teachers will be similarly intrigued and inspired.' Sophie Fuller, University of Reading in British Journal of Music Eduction 'Kudos to Mary Natvig and her contributors for finally breaking their pedagogical vows of silence.' Music Education Research 'If we consider the collection itself as an historical document, then we can appreciate its role as an important record of fin-de-siecle attitudes to teaching, to students, to ourselves as teachers and to the nature of what we attempt to teach.' Context 'Between the pedagogical philosophies, stories and local settings, and explications of teaching techniques, readers can sometimes glimpse the magic that can happen in the classroom in the hands of a skilled pedagogue... In Teaching Music History, we are privileged to be experiencing these acts of committed teaching and to be witnessing the spirit that animates them. Mary Natvig is to be commended for gathering these teachers together to sing.' Journal of Musicological Research

Contents: Contents: Introduction; Approaches to the Music History Survey: Providing context: teaching medieval and Renaissance music, Patrick Macey; Teaching baroque music to the bright and interested and ignorant, Kenneth Nott; What Chopin (and Mozart, and others) heard: Folk, popular, "functional" and non-western music in the Classic/Romantic survey course, Ralph P. Locke; Teaching music history (after the end of history): "History games" for the 20th-Century survey, Robert Fink; Teaching Non-Majors: the Introductory Course: Interdisciplinary approaches to the introduction to music course, Maria Archetto; The "why" of music: variations on a cosmic theme, Majorie Roth; First nights: awakening students' critical skills in a large lecture course, NoA"l Bisson; Topics Courses: Teaching "women in music", Mary Natvig; Teaching film music in the Liberal Arts curriculum, Michael Pisani; Don't fence me in: the pleasures of teaching American music, Susan C. Cook; General Issues: Teaching at a Liberal Arts college, Mary Hunter; Teaching in the centrifugal classroom, Pamela Starr; The myths of music history, Vincent Corrigan; Score and word: writing about music, Carol A. Hess; Peer learning in music history courses, J. Peter Burkholder; Creating anthologies for the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Russell E. Murray, Jr.; Bibliography; Index.



Author Biography: Mary Natvig, Bowling Green State University, USA Patrick Macey, Kenneth Nott, Ralph P. Locke, Robert Fink, Maria Archetto, Majorie Roth, Noel Bisson, Mary Natvig, Michael Pisani, Susan C. Cook, Mary Hunter, Pamela Starr, Vincent Corrigan, Carol A. Hess, J. Peter Burkholder, Russell E. Murray, Jr.