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« Reply #15 on: 12:40:12, 11-08-2008 » |
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I agree with you that since Western notation was developed to deal with a specific musical tradition some sensitivity is required in adapting it to other traditions so that the assumption isn't made that their music is defective in some way, but surely it's a similar issue to studying foreign-language literature: it's useful for an English speaker to have some idea of how the Japanese language works in order to appreciate its poetry, but it's more realistic to study it in translation than to demand that it be read in the original or not at all. Fine, but - having thought about my earlier message a bit more - I actually don't see why it should be difficult to tell GCSE students that they need to learn notation, but that they also need to be aware that some (indeed possibly most, depending on the range of the curriculum) of the music that's being presented to them in that notation was originally either notated differently or not at all. Indeed, exam questions could be framed in such a way that some of the marks are gained for 'demonstrating such an awareness' (to adopt National Curriculum-type phrasing). I wasn't taught anything about musical traditions from other parts of the world (except Bartok and Kodaly's folksong-collecting expeditions) until I left school and went to university, but I did as a teenager read and play a lot of pop/rock music notated as melody plus very-approximate-two-hands-piano-rendering of the guitar and bass parts - sometimes with tablature symbols above the stave too, which I largely ignored because I thought about everything very pianistically at that age. I think it would have been beneficial if someone had set me off thinking critically about how what I was seeing actually related to 'the real music'. I did in the end begin to work this out for myself, but without wishing to sound immodest I doubt that every child my age would have done so without some prompting by a teacher.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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richard barrett
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« Reply #16 on: 13:02:04, 11-08-2008 » |
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I actually don't see why it should be difficult to tell GCSE students that they need to learn notation, but that they also need to be aware that some (indeed possibly most, depending on the range of the curriculum) of the music that's being presented to them in that notation was originally either notated differently or not at all.
Indeed. And again, this applies to the "classical" tradition too. Rendering mediaeval polyphony in "modern" notation also simplifies it metrically and makes it look "odd" relative to later music. I didn't have any music lessons after my first year at secondary school and taught myself to read music (and play the guitar), so it could be said that in discussing school music curricula (and by no means only these of course) I don't really know what I'm talking about, except that I feel it was an advantage not to have anyone telling me what was supposed to be "good" or "bad" or "central" or "peripheral" etc., and I think it would be best for education as a whole, in every subject and at every level, to encourage creative and original (but informed) thinking, by any means necessary. But, as PW has said, this is not what the education system is there for.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #17 on: 13:07:08, 11-08-2008 » |
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Maybe the answer is to follow the example set in the sphere of "classical" languages? There are exams specifically titled "Latin" and "Classical Greek" for those able and keen to get to grips with them... and another one called "Classical Literature in Translation" for those interested in the culture of ancient civilisations and the ideas behind that culture... not necessarily requiring an ability to read the literature in the original. Obviously the exact titles of exams are slightly "loaded" vocabulary... but you could have "Music" (ie includes notating it), and "Music Appreciation" (no knowledge of notation needed). This would, in any case, reflect the forked road currently lying ahead of those keen to go to tertiary level. Quite a few of my classmates on a Univ BMus course - whilst they could produce fine essays about Adorno, Burney, or Nietzsche - had the greatest difficulty harmonising a German chorale melody, and taking down a piece of 4-part harmony in dictation sent them into tailspin. However, they got through the obligatory "Practical Music" module on the performance of something or other for which they'd practiced assiduously. (Helping-out with Harmony homework was "a very good way to meet girls", and even the most dedicated proponents of Boulez suddenly found an aptitude for Riemenschneider with this ulterior motive in mind). However, I was quite the opposite... although "Complete This Opening Of A Scarlatti Sonata in 32 bars..." gave me no problems at all, no amount of practicing would ever see me acceptably through a Beethoven Sonata. I looked up at the double-bar line during the exam to see Erik Levi banging his head on the desk "If we give you a pass, will you agree not to play the rest of it?" It's a rather moot point whether an ability with notation should get you a GCSE in Music if you can't actually make any music yourself? The crumhorn may be all very well, but no-one ever asks you to bring it to parties.
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« Last Edit: 13:08:50, 11-08-2008 by Reiner Torheit »
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House" - Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Martin
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« Reply #18 on: 13:15:31, 11-08-2008 » |
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I looked up at the double-bar line during the exam to see Erik Levi banging his head on the desk "If we give you a pass, will you agree not to play the rest of it?" Much LOL, RT
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time_is_now
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« Reply #19 on: 13:19:06, 11-08-2008 » |
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Actually, Reiner, I've suddenly remembered that when I started secondary school the AHRB examining board did indeed have two different GCSEs almost exactly as you describe: Music (which included performance, aural tests, score study etc. etc.) and History & Appreciation of Music (for which I actually don't think you had to be able to read music, although this hadn't really occurred to me at the time since I already could read music by then).
I don't know whether some schools did the 'H&A' qualification instead of the 'Music' one; my own school offered History & Appreciation as an optional extra before starting on the GCSE courses, so that I in fact took the History & Appreciation GCSE at the end of my third year, aged 14, and then started the two-year teaching course which led to my main Music GCSE.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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owain
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« Reply #20 on: 13:24:34, 11-08-2008 » |
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Owain, what's ICT? Information and Communication Technology. Use of computers (and an understanding of when they are and are not appropriate tools), in this context neither restricted to nor necessarily involving notation software, use of the internet (with most useful resources for music blocked on school networks ), and also of other audio hardware through recording etc.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #21 on: 13:29:58, 11-08-2008 » |
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Owain, what's ICT? Information and Communication Technology. Use of computers (and an understanding of when they are and are not appropriate tools), in this context neither restricted to nor necessarily involving notation software, use of the internet (with most useful resources for music blocked on school networks ), and also of other audio hardware through recording etc. Thanks, I should have known that I dare say. This brings up another question: if notation is going to be taught in schools, should this (where feasible) be principally through the medium of notation software (and its convenient ability to play back the music thus notated) or not?
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owain
Posts: 52
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« Reply #22 on: 13:39:54, 11-08-2008 » |
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Owain, what's ICT? Information and Communication Technology. Use of computers (and an understanding of when they are and are not appropriate tools), in this context neither restricted to nor necessarily involving notation software, use of the internet (with most useful resources for music blocked on school networks ), and also of other audio hardware through recording etc. Thanks, I should have known that I dare say. This brings up another question: if notation is going to be taught in schools, should this (where feasible) be principally through the medium of notation software (and its convenient ability to play back the music thus notated) or not? Possibly. My hesitancy is because I see a danger with making it 'principally' this way, with non-specialist teachers in particular, in that it becomes a way to bypass a real understanding of the principles of notation, if children don't really engage with the software in a truly interactive way. The most basic elements, such as the line-space-line-space alternation, can prove sticking-points for a variety of reasons. Without actually having to create the noteheads themselves, they can give the appearance of understanding the notation without really being able to read or reproduce it themselves. Just one example of a point which can give them no end of trouble: when is a note 'on' a line? The solution is to draw five lines across a sheet of paper, with inch-wide spaces, and have them move a 2p coin up and down this giant staff while singing the different notes. I haven't come across a way this could be done more effectively with a computer
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richard barrett
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« Reply #23 on: 13:56:29, 11-08-2008 » |
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it becomes a way to bypass a real understanding of the principles of notation That is what I would intuitively have thought, although for me it's hard to decide, given that we're probably in transition between a culture which locates "principles" in the kind of way you demonstrate with the 2p coin and one where the computer is more "basic" than a pencil and paper, a "post-literate" kind of culture or whatever one wants to call it. But we're always in transition between one kind of culture and another (or between one kind and many kinds), and the principles of education are thus almost by definition going to be one step behind, are going in other words to be "conservative" in the sense of promulgating the previous generation's values. er, I'm not sure where I'm going with this thought so I'll leave it at that for now.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #24 on: 14:05:27, 11-08-2008 » |
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and have them move a 2p coin up and down this giant staff while singing the different notes. I haven't come across a way this could be done more effectively with a computer Unless you specifically turn it off, FINALE sounds the pitch of the notehead when you enter it... and if you move it up or down with the mouse, will sound whichever new locations it's been put at. You can blow up the screen resolution to 400% to make it more visible too - although it isn't quite as accessibly-priced as your 2p methodology I like the idea that your students have to hear the note "for themselves" and sing it back, rather than have a computer do it for them, however. So many centuries, and yet still so close to the Guidonian hand, eh?
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« Last Edit: 14:07:50, 11-08-2008 by Reiner Torheit »
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House" - Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #25 on: 14:19:28, 11-08-2008 » |
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Unless you specifically turn it off, FINALE sounds the pitch of the notehead when you enter it... and if you move it up or down with the mouse, will sound whichever new locations it's been put at. You can blow up the screen resolution to 400% to make it more visible too - although it isn't quite as accessibly-priced as your 2p methodology I like the idea that your students have to hear the note "for themselves" and sing it back, rather than have a computer do it for them, however. Sibelius performs the same feat as Finale, and to return for a moment to my own difficulties with reading notation, it has certainly come on leaps and bounds since I've been using the programme - it's probably worth mentioning that I what brain I possess was never particularly well-wired for mathematics, either.
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owain
Posts: 52
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« Reply #26 on: 14:29:51, 11-08-2008 » |
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and have them move a 2p coin up and down this giant staff while singing the different notes. I haven't come across a way this could be done more effectively with a computer Unless you specifically turn it off, FINALE sounds the pitch of the notehead when you enter it... and if you move it up or down with the mouse, will sound whichever new locations it's been put at. You can blow up the screen resolution to 400% to make it more visible too - although it isn't quite as accessibly-priced as your 2p methodology Finale's also a bit function-heavy for 7-year-olds One other common source of confusion which is dealt with by the 2p method is distinguishing the position of the note head from the different function of the stem. This can help avoid confusion later on for the eagle-eyed ones who spot that the crotchet showing C on a treble clef is, actually, positioned lower than the one showing A. many centuries, and yet still so close to the Guidonian hand, eh?
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time_is_now
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« Reply #27 on: 22:36:11, 11-08-2008 » |
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we're always in transition between one kind of culture and another (or between one kind and many kinds), and the principles of education are thus almost by definition going to be one step behind, are going in other words to be "conservative" in the sense of promulgating the previous generation's values.
er, I'm not sure where I'm going with this thought so I'll leave it at that for now.
I'm not sure where you're going with that thought either (I admit I've had a similar thought several times myself - and indeed have been doing since I first read any Hegel at the age of 17 - but I'm somehow surprised to hear it coming from you). You did say something along similar lines earlier in the thread, which also made me raise my eyebrows without entirely disagreeing: I think it would be best for education as a whole, in every subject and at every level, to encourage creative and original (but informed) thinking, by any means necessary. But, as PW has said, this is not what the education system is there for.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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richard barrett
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« Reply #28 on: 22:42:28, 11-08-2008 » |
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(I admit I've had a similar thought several times myself - and indeed have been doing since I first read any Hegel at the age of 17 - but I'm somehow surprised to hear it coming from you). Why is that? I think it would be best for education as a whole, in every subject and at every level, to encourage creative and original (but informed) thinking, by any means necessary. But, as PW has said, this is not what the education system is there for.
And how do you interpret this as "being along similar lines"? Either I've been unclear or you've got the wrong end of the stick somewhere I think.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #29 on: 22:47:21, 11-08-2008 » |
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how do you interpret this as "being along similar lines"? Both thoughts seem to be suggesting that there is some sort of ideal of a creative present unbeholden to the established canons of earlier generations, but that it's in the nature of education to take one back to the latter. I'm surprised to hear [this] coming from you Why is that? Because you're normally more of an idealist than that?
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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