Agendas when teaching Music History/Appreciation

I have always been amazed by the agendas that some faculty run while teaching a course. As you grow older you realize that your teachers were not perfect, and that some allowed their likes and dislikes, as well as their strengths in certain areas to decide the materials for their courses. One of the many differences between a good and poor teacher, to me, is how much effort they put into subduing their own tastes and opinions so that they may present a well balanced and well educated course. There are a great amount of other aspects that control whether a teacher is simply good or great, but that is not the concern of this post.

In music the greatest spectrum of agendas can be seen in the teaching of history, whether it is in a degree fulfilling history course or a humanities fulfilling appreciation course. There is such a wide range of what is taught that it is actually, at times, a little frightening. There is so much that has occurred in the span of both Western Art music and Jazz music that sometimes you have to pick and choose what it is that you focus on.

Some schools take care of the matter for you. Comparing the two schools that I attended, one school spread music history courses over one academic year. The other school spread it over two academic years. As you can guess, the latter gave the students a more in-depth analysis on the history of Western Art music. It gave an opportunity for the faculty to educate on every important name and movement, as well as provide much more insight on specifics. It also gave an opportunity for the students to become familiar with many more pieces of music, allowing them to more knowledgeable of the music they would someday perform.

If a teacher is expected to introduce the entire course of music history in one academic year, some sacrifices may occur. Maybe a teacher will be forced to introduce fewer topics in lecture, but provide the students with resources in the library to be able to fill in the holes. The danger occurs when a teacher simply focuses on their strengths, and passes over the rest.

I often compare this with my education of American history growing up. Any time that American history got brought up in Elementary School and Middles School, the same thing happened. This unfortunate occurrence happened in my required American history course in High School as well. What happened was the teacher focused so much time and energy on the Revolutionary, Civil, and World wars that I never learned about America post-World War II. It is a depressing and unacceptable notion the a young person growing up in the late twentieth century would be so uneducated on the Civil Rights movement, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Cold War, etc. This was so disappointing to me that when time came to choose a history course to fulfill my GECR requirement in college I chose modern history. In the course we began with the ancient Greeks. As you can imagine, we didn’t make it past the Second World War.

A similar thing seems to happen in music history. It seems that many of my past teachers, and many of my colleagues, have focused on music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In a music major history course it is absolutely essential that the students learn about these periods. However, I have been made aware of horror stories where at teacher spent so much time on early music, that the students were never introduced to movements of music after the Second Viennese School (in one case, a class was so behind the teacher had to choose between lecturing on either Stravinsky or Schoenberg). As a teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to account for what is to come later in the course. If the class falls behind, then it is my responsibility to get us back up to speed. There is absolutely no excuse to skip one of the most important movements of our current musical landscape because a teacher couldn’t stop raving about Hildegard von Bingen.

The musical eras can be quite misleading. The Middle Ages and Renaissance cover such a vast amount of time that it appears that they deserve as much classroom attention as what comes later. I have oftentimes felt that one of the major points of history for music majors is to prepare them for what they will be expected to know, and what they will be expected to be familiar with in performance. Since the bulk of music performed now was written after the end of the Renaissance, it seems perfectly logical that lectures would put more of a stress on the Baroque moving forward. However, this was not the case with my history course as an undergrad. Because my school was on a quarter system, our instructor split the course in three parts:
Fall Quarter: Middle Ages and Renaissance
Winter Quarter: Baroque and Classical
Spring Quarter: Romantic and 20th Century

This, in my humble opinion, was completely inappropriate. This system of course management effectible set up our entire grade up for failure. We were forced to breeze through movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and even simply missed important composers after 1945. Because of this, we were uneducated in our ensembles, and when attempting to audition for Graduate programs.

If I have one agenda in my music appreciation course it is that I want my students to be familiar with what they will be hearing live. Most Music Appreciation curriculums include some form of concert report, and mine is no different. When my students, many of whom have had no previous contact with Western Art music, listen to their first concert, I want them to be knowledgeable of what they’re hearing. What they are introduced to at live events is almost always music written since the end of the Renaissance.

Another problematic agenda as mentioned above is not only a focus on one section of history, whether innocent or not, but also the teacher allowing their personal tastes to dictate their curriculum and lectures. The beautiful thing about students is that many of them are blank slates. We as teachers have the opportunity to introduce music to young students. The last thing a teacher should want to do is place their personal opinions and baggage on a student, skewering their perspective.

As pointed out above, a teacher focusing too heavily on a particular subject simply because it is their favorite can disrupt the curriculum. However, it is also a possibility that a teacher’s specialty or loves may be in a relatively less significant area. Focusing too much in this area may be changing the students’ perspective on the hierarchy of what is important historically.

Even more dangerous, though, is blowing over a subject that is unsatisfactory to a teacher. There can be problems with music teachers ignoring either early music or modern music, because it is something that they do not personally enjoy. This is a massive detriment to the students because it is keeping them from having a well-balanced education. It is not our duties as teachers to make their minds up for them. Teachers should simply present the facts and allow their students to decide for themselves what they enjoy. Even if a student is planning on being some form of a specialist, it is important for them to understand the entire spectrum of music history.

Music Appreciation is a completely different beast when it comes to curriculum, and it is where there is the largest amount of diversity from teacher to teacher. The difficulties of teaching a Music Appreciation course are that it is only one semester long, is aimed at non-music majors, and encompasses more genres of music. Because the course is aimed at those who are not music majors, a teacher cannot possibly go into the details that are essential in Music History. Further complicating the course is that the historical aspect does not only cover Western Art music, but also Jazz, and sometimes indigenous music. Added onto that, the course often begins with basics on music fundamentals.

Therefore, it is extremely tempting for a teacher to simply focus on the music that they enjoy, and not present a broader spectrum. However, that is not the point of the course. The art of teaching people to appreciate music has to include many styles and genres, so that the students can find something that they enjoy, and learn to talk about it in an educated manor. A teacher must remember that the students have different tastes and life experiences, and therefore will probably find different styles of music satisfying.

And since we as teachers cannot possibly fit every single thing into a one semester lecture on music, we have to ask ourselves what is the true purpose of music appreciation for non-music majors? Besides learning to appreciate music, the curriculum usually dictates that we teach them how to analyze and discuss music. For them to obtain the ability to do this, it is beneficial to introduce as many styles as possibility, but introduce the movements that contain the most salient aspects possible. From the perspective of the college or university they don’t care if a student passes the class loving Mozart. The purpose of their humanities credit is to learn how to think analytically. That is the main purpose, and the best way to introduce those skills is to find music that interests them so that they can listen and learn with open ears.