Transforming Musical Objects

I want to see how documentation can affect me as artist (by carefully examining my practice and my lessons for French horn), a teacher (through examination of my work at Josiah Quincy Upper School), and as a scholar (through documentation of the Teaching Seminar and Warren Sender’s Improvisation in Music Education) as I build my portfolio.

The Music-in-Education Teaching Seminar at NEC, taught by Dr. Larry Scripp, met for the first time last Tuesday. The class is a little smaller this year than the first time I took the class in the spring of 09. Last year, the class seemed like a continuation of Intro to Music-in-Education, a class offered in the Fall by Professor Scripp. This time around, however, only two of the members of the Teaching Seminar – myself included – were members of the Intro class. Therefore, I feel like I saw the differences in the curriculum more clearly right from the start.

We spent most of the class talking, in one way or another, about ourselves as artists. Larry posed this simple question to all of us: “What is your persona as an artist?” Responses were surprisingly varied, ranging from being a vessel for a composer or character in performance to breaking down barriers in various cultural settings. One student found that his role as an artist changes from performing to composing to teaching. Later, a student that assists Professor Scripp in teaching his graduate solfége class explained his role and the responsibilities that come with that role as a teaching assistant. The following video presents parts of these discussions.

Exploring Persona

I predict that we’ll be diving into the artist-teacher-scholar framework very soon in this class, discussing our readings, teaching, and plans for teaching. This class brought up some interesting ideas for me. As a documentation specialist, I try to keep a very analytical eye toward what’s going on. As a horn player, I look for simplicity. As an artist, I try to constantly expand my horizons. As a teacher, I look to help others expand their horizons or develop their own personas. I wonder how valuable it is to be able to separate and put together one’s own roles in life. This is a topic I look forward to exploring as the semester continues.

Hello, CMIE NewsBlog readers! This semester I am taking Anne Hallmark’s “Teaching Music History course” and will be acting as one of its Documentation Specialists—that is, posting my class experiences to the CMIE NewsBlog so that others in the MIE community can get a bird’s eye view of the course, and articulating my work in a public forum with the hope of receiving constructive feedback, etc. Expect to read some more blog posts from me over this semester. I will also make a MIE portfolio for the course as an example of what a MIE portfolio would look like for a cross-listed course. I look forward to your comments and feedback!

The Assignment

In our first class, Dr. Hallmark announced that we’d each have to give a short lecture on the piece of our choice. I think she made this assignment as a ‘diagnostic’, of sorts, so that we could each figure out what we already bring to the table and set some goals for the semester. Our assignment had three parts, and this post is a partial extrapolation of the second part. (I wrote a more fleshed-out analysis that you can download here). Here’s the assignment:

1. Give a short lecture to the class on a topic/piece of choice (and videotape that lecture). 
2. Watch the videotape and write a reflection/analysis paper based on your reactions to the video. 
3. Meet with the instructor for further discussion of your reactions and to set goals for the semester.

The presentation requirements, as I understood them, were open-ended: Choose a piece to introduce to your classmates. Use a ‘straight lecture’ format. Use of Powerpoint presentations, hand-outs, audio or video recordings, etc. would be allowed; the only real requirement would be that each presentation must fall strictly within ten minutes. Following each presentation, the floor would be opened for questions or comments from the audience (our classmates). Comments from the audience could pertain either to the lecture style and presentation attributes, or to the content itself.

Pre-Viewing Reflection on Lecture Success

As it is for many, pre-presentation anxiety is one of my faults. I think my biggest worry is getting up to present and either forgetting what I want to say, or trying to say it but not being articulate enough and thus getting a lot of blank stares. Ancillary worries are: rambling (in which main points and others get tangled, and so the audience doesn’t know what the presentation’s ‘take-aways’ are) and running out of time and having to leave off main or important points. Thus, I scripted my lecture… but at the risk of reading my presentation instead of actually presenting it. I know the audience caught on to this pretty quickly, but I might not know until viewing the tape what reactions they each made, and how that affected the overall quality of my presentation.

The Video of My Lecture

Post-Viewing: Analysis of Videotape & Goals for the Semester

The same thoughts I had post-presentation (pre-viewing) applied when I watched the tape. Although the tape does not show the audience while I was presenting, my guess is that if it did, there would be body language from the audience that shows them being ‘turned off’ by my reading from the script vs. me presenting in an organic way.

The videotape also reveals how my body language plays into the way I suspect my audience interprets the tone and formality of my lecture. For much of the video, I am leaning on my hands, slanted diagonally towards the lectern/computer, and the eye contact I make is in short spurts—not for long periods, neither with audience members nor with the projected slides. This coupled with my script reading was surely a turn-off and disengaged my audience.

My main goal for this semester is to feel comfortable giving lectures, short and long, without the crutch of a script or extensive notes. I have long felt comfortable internalizing subject matter and leading discussions on it and buttressing these conversations with audio-visual material. But giving straight lectures is a different animal, and it’s a skill I must master if I continue public speaking in any context.

James Wilkinson, author of the “Varieties of Teaching” essay in The Art and Craft of Teaching (Margaret Gullette, Editor), refers to the varying skills a successful teacher needs:

A good lecturer may experience problems leading a successful discussion; the discussion leader skilled in asking questions may feel ill at ease when conducting a monologue from the lecture podium. But it should be a teacher’s goal to master the full scale of teaching styles, and to know the strengths and drawbacks of each (Gullette, 1984).

This straight-lecture format was definitely good practice for me, because as much as the topic and content is put front and center, so are my methods of organizing and presenting that material. I suppose another crutch I have is to put the student at the center of the conversation; after all, there is a huge push for education these days to be learner-centric rather than topic-centric, and my own philosophy and background in education is from that standpoint (learner-centric) as well. So, this was all a good exercise.

Further Thoughts

As an aside, I think that this course (like other education-focused courses at New England Conservatory) is an important parallel to the school’s performance-based curriculum; particularly because it encourages budding teachers to freely and openly explore and develop each’s own personal teaching style. So often teachers-to-be (also known as pre-professional teachers) are thrown into classrooms with little preparation or minimal chance to practice teaching.

While at NEC, I spent many hours practicing pieces in small motifs, and then slowly linking those motifs together to create longer phrases. Those phrases then had to be linked to each other, and so any transition that occurred between phrases would have to be carefully planned and executed, in accordance with accompanying parts, harmonic structure, rhythm, and form. In other words, it would all have to make sense. I have since come to understand the art of presenting and teaching to be no different. As is stated by Wilkinson, part of the trickiness of lecturing is in the way that one must analyze the subject matter and present it in a logical, flowing, way:

How to argue a point and not simply present data; how to link arguments in a logical chain; how to sum up with a sure sense of what is essential and what is merely extrinsic to your case are skills that require coaching and practice. Students need to be helped to present their ideas with grace and to strive for the control, confidence, and economy of means that help make what Alfred North Whitehead once termed a “sense of style.” (Ibid.)

I have already spent many nights working on this from the standpoint of the written word, and have slowly begun spinning this experience out, into other forms of teaching that I am comfortable with: double bass & music reading lessons; ensemble coaching; and informal lecturing on Exotica music and the Hawaiian culture. However, what I need more practice with is working in more formal venues, with a larger and/or mixed audience, and in extended time periods. Thus, I am excited to conduct the 50-minute classes that are part of the assignments for this course, and hope to further develop the “sense of style” that Wilkinson, Whitehead, and others often refer to as being a crucial characteristic of effective teaching (Ibid).

Read my Reflection & Analysis Paper (PDF)

Work Cited

Wilkinson, J. (1984). Varieties of Teaching. In M. Gullette (Ed.), The Art and Craft of Teaching (p. 4). Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

Powerpoint Slides (click to enlarge)

This is just a quick note to welcome you to our new year, and to thank you for your continued readership of the CMIE NewsBlog. A number of projects, like the NEC Focus School project at The Atrium School (Watertown, MA), are continuing this year, and by reading this NewsBlog, you will learn of their endeavors, successes, and triumphs. Michael Glicksman, who just graduated from NEC in the Spring is now heading up the Atrium School’s music program as its Music Director. Michael is taking the reins of the Atrium project from Jessica Reed, a MIE Concentration alum whom will be moving back to California late this Summer. 

You will also be hearing more from our MIE Documentation Specialists, who will be giving us a bird’s eye view of the discussions and work surrounding Concentration courses and students’ Guided Internships. Though posting to the NewsBlog was a recommended part of the Documentation Specialist internship in the past, it is now a required component. 

We will be enhancing the Digital Portfolio section of our website and also be adding the capability for readers to view Powerpoint slides without having to launch the application. This should save some time and hassle for those who are unable to visit class, yet want to see presentations made by their teachers and peers. 

Finally, this will be the first semester that readers will gain insight into Anne Hallmark’s Teaching Music History class—a MIE cross-listed course. Both myself (Randy Wong, CMIE Program Coordinator) and Charles Morgan (CMIE Documentation Specialist and 2007-’08 MIE Guided Intern Fellowship Recipient) are taking the class; we’re eager to post our experiences and share documentation from the course with you. 

Hope everyone has a great year and be sure to continue reading the CMIE NewsBlog!

-Randy Wong

CMIE Program Coordinator & Research Associate

Director, Guided Internship Programs

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today we have gathered to celebrate the end of our educational experience at New England Conservatory, and to mark at the same time the beginning of a new phase of our lives as community and global citizens.  As students here, we have already achieved a high level of skill in playing or composing music.  However, I feel that as musicians we have to transfer this depth of understanding to all aspects of life.  The role of today’s musician goes far beyond that of just playing an instrument well.  Loving music well means loving people and life, as well as respecting diversity and understanding our differences.  Musicians can and must empower people in a positive way to know themselves better and to become eager to participate in making a better society.
 

I believe that as a consequence of the diverse experiences that we have had here, we are prepared to assume our role as cultural entrepreneurs.  That is, we are ready not only to write and perform music for audiences all over the world, but through the unique power of music, to play an important part in creating a better world for all of us to live in.  We should not take this role lightly, nor think of it as mere rhetoric.  Martin Luther King, who I consider a pre-eminent social entrepreneur, and whose wife graduated for NEC, said “Almost always, the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better.”  I truly believe that we as teaching-artists have the responsibility of being the link not only between music and audiences, but between music and justice and the mutual respect that are essential in creating a peaceful society.
 

Several years ago, the United Nations established the Millennium Goals, an agenda for achieving worldwide social transformation during the 21st century.  I feel that at least two of these goals relate directly to our own mission as cultural entrepreneurs.
 

The first is to achieve universal primary education.  As John F. Kennedy said, “Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into the benefit for everyone.”  We know that music is a basic educational tool for humans from early childhood to adulthood.  At the New England Conservatory, I have had the wonderful opportunity to complete a concentration in Music-in-Education, and during my first internship I worked on a research project that involved observations and surveys of children, teachers, and parents from two schools in Venezuela that place music at the core of their curriculum.  The results were amazing; the participants reported overwhelmingly that the focused study of music had greatly improved the children’s concentration, their logic and problem-solving skills, their reading, language and math skills, their emotional intelligence and cultural understanding, and their interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities.  Equally satisfying were the reports of how placing music at the center of the school culture enhanced the social life of the entire community.

The second UN Millennium goal relevant to the study of music—and in my opinion directly related to the first—is to develop a global partnership for development.   On our planet today it is more and more vital that we establish a culture of cooperation that fosters partnerships for mutual benefit and development.  This past year we saw a marvelous example of this kind of global partnership when NEC not only invited the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra to play for and with the NEC community, but also held a Seminar and Symposium about “El Sistema,” the astonishing Venezuelan music education program created by Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu which has had an enormous impact in helping impoverished children and youth achieve a better life through the practice of the music. 

It was for me a particularly proud moment, as some fifty music educators and cultural leaders from all over the United States, as well as Dr. Abreu himself, convened here to discuss what has made this program so successful for both individuals and communities, and how this phenomenon could possibly be adapted in the far more affluent culture of the United States.
 

What the Seminar and Symposium participants noticed was that first and foremost, El Sistema features high-quality music instruction.  Indeed, as Abreu suggests, “when music is no longer separated from daily life, but is in fact nourished by and nourishes all aspects of daily life, then personal and social transformation become possible”.  El Sistema shows how the emotionally and intellectually positive environment of the orchestra system can help children apply the values that will make them complete human beings who can grow and progress as persons of high human and professional value, and who can thus take on significant roles in their communities and their country.  The children and youth are taught that through music they can cultivate social learning, respect, love, and patience, values which are modeled daily by their teachers.  As Dr. Abreu puts it, “Participating in the orchestral movement helps the individual to grow within a healthy group, gaining invaluable intellectual, social and emotional experiences and learning the values of patience, discipline, endurance, the ability to compromise, and the value of one’s personal contribution in order to fulfill a collective end.”

The orchestra system is a clear demonstration that human beings are the main resource of every nation, its true wealth that can promote an ever-developing culture. Education is the best and most essential investment that each country and community can make, promoting values such as social and individual responsibility, respect, solidarity, work, creativity, and above all, love of life itself.  In my opinion, that is the central idea of the Venezuelan children and youth orchestra system; it is a social project that through music seeks to solve the spiritual and material poverty of our world.

And I believe that this ideal value of education is what the Seminar participants found most applicable to American culture.  Today’s Commencement speaker, Stephanie Perrin, who was one of the cultural leaders participating in the El Sistema Seminar, has been a lifelong advocate of the importance of arts education to the future of our global society.  As she has pointed out, “In American schools for the last century, we have been concerned with training; that is, turning out young people who will predictably perform certain tasks and share the same specific knowledge, she goes on to say, nowadays we should seek to educate, to produce young people who ask questions and who can continue to learn throughout life.  This distinction between training and education is analogous to the one between the technically competent musician and the true artist, able to use technique to express her own vision.  We need artists in all areas and walks of life, and “artists” are people who share these qualities no matter what their occupation.”

I agree with this point of view wholeheartedly, as, I feel, do most of us gathered here today.  In thinking about what I wanted to express to you today, I asked several NEC teachers to comment on what they would like us to take with us as we assume our various roles as cultural entrepreneurs.  I was greatly impressed with the depth of feeling with which all of these mentors expressed their wishes for us.  But I would like to conclude today with some comments made by the NEC professor Lyle Davidson, which I feel are particularly inspiring. 
 

“We, as musicians, should be active in town squares,” he said, “in businesses, shopping centers, schools, churches, government buildings, retirement communities, hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters, clubs, and town halls—wherever people gather, wherever we find persons whose souls seek the sustenance that only music can provide.  We should support music-making in every possible way.  Music is not something to be understood, something to be studied.  Music is an activity.  Music is something to be done.  Music is not a noun; music is a verb.”
 

So let us all go make music—and in so doing, re-make society.  Thank you all very much.

Hermann Hudde

NEC is constantly blessed to have such people of note come visit our school as Renée Fleming, Fred Firth, and Steve Reich. Recently, Gustavo Dudamel was one of the esteemed guest, and he presented information about El Sistema, the youth orchestra in Venezuela that has been changing lives and gaining worldwide recognition. The presentation was so highly regarded by Professor Scripp that he cancelled class in order to allow his students to attend the seminars and the performances. More teachers at NEC should adopt such a caring attitude towards their students when such guests arrive. 

In a class prior to his arrival, Professor Scripp presented an anecdote to the class about when he and one of his former students met Gustavo Dudamel. According to the professor, his student was so enthusiastic about solfege that he still remembered (and this is the key word to this whole anecdote) some of the exercises that he worked on with Scripp. I do not remember if Scripp also solfeged for Dudamel, but the highlight of the anecdote is when Dudamel himself waxes poetically about solfege and orally presents his own results of diligent study to his adoring fans: he starts to solfege a fast movement from a Tchaikovsky symphony (I believe it is number 4, the scherzo movement). Amazingly, his syllables were perfect, his pitch was also to be admired – it was obvious that he was a successful student of solfege, and that this technique has shaped his development as a musician.

Gustavo Dudamel story – audio

But something about this charming monologue left a sour taste in my mouth. I had never thought about the real difference between sight-singing and solfege until now. In my undergrad at Boston University, I learned solfege in a “stight-singing” course. We were expected, more or less, to sight-sing. With this in mind, it was strange that Professor Scripp’s former student had learned some of these exercises so well that he remembered them after being away from them for quite a while. I felt the same about Dudamel’s breathtaking impromptu performance. Obviously, these pieces were not sight-read. They were memorized.

It brings up two very important questions pertinent to this course:

Before delving into these issues more, in that very same class, the students were going over an exercise that contained a quick passage: mi! mi-re-do-si-la-do-si-la-mi! re! do-mi-do-la-mi – - mi – - la! By the end of the class, I heard the melody so much that I could sing it without ever having seen the notated music. I cannot even mention where the exercise is from and who composed it! This experience is akin to listening to a snippet of a pop-song on someone else’s iPod, and remembering it because the snippet contained one motive repeated many times. I raised the issue in class; if I remembered this and executed the exercise as well as the students in class, yet I did not see the music at all, then what method of teaching is more important? Furthermore, if the only goal desired in the end is to be able to execute the exercise, then what should stop a student from simply applying pure memorization to the exercises, thus inhibiting sight-singing ability?

Additionally, other comments were made about velocity. One of the students expressed concerns about not being able to solfege a certain group of syllables fast enough. Professor Scripp then proceeded to teach the students how to practice learning how to increase solfege velocity. His method, which is based on grouping and specific syllable emphasis, is a method of practice that corroborates directly with the process of memorization. While the technique is successful, the process of how to instantly recognize groups while sight-singing was never once even mentioned, yet alone taught.

When I brought up such concerns, Scripp gave me an answer quickly: this is a way of involving the students in the language of solfege.

Such an answer is great. I strongly feel that learning solfege is similar to learning a new language. The difference between learning a new language and learning solfege, however, is that no one asks you to read in your new language as fast as you can (although, such exercises should be done, as it would greatly improve conversation skills). Furthermore, it is rare to be asked to communicate in solfege, although Professor Scripp did make the students improvise musical questions and answers in solfege. More of these exercises could have been mandatory, however the fault of these exercises lies within the ability (or lack thereof) of the student to improvise a melody.

Other ways of exposing solfege as a language to students is to force the students to sing scales and arpeggios in solfege at the beginning of each class. Such a traditionally boring approach was hinted at, and I am sure that Scripp strongly advocated such exercises to be done daily by the students on their own. Additionally, the students were advised to create “themes” in each key (see the November 20^th blog “Near-perfect pitch” for details). Another process may be to sing a snippet of one’s favorite pop-song and transpose it to each key, and in the opposite mode (major goes to minor, and vice versa). Modal shifts were rare in this class (but they were done!).

So, what role does sight-singing play in this class? A LARGE ONE! Many classes throughout the semester were sight-singing classes. The students were asked to bring in works and “teach” them to the class using solfege. Often, Professor Scripp would hold classes of reading Bach Chorales, Palestrina, Victoria, and more. The students were exposed greatly to sight-singing. Not officially having to take the final examination or to put together a portfolio, I do wonder what the faculty expects from the students in this class outside of what was made clear.