NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the fifth of a series written by CMIE Guided Intern Hermann Hudde, as part of the documentation for Hudde’s CMIE Guided Internship. See other posts in this series here.

Project STEP was created in 1982 in answer to the need for including minorities or other cultural communities that do not have access to the classical music world. According to its home page history, ” Project STEP (String Training and Educational Program) identifies musically talented Black and Latino students and provides them with a comprehensive music training program, the primary goal of which is to prepare them to compete and succeed in the challenging, rewarding world of classical music. The program was spearheaded 25 years ago by the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a means of addressing the under-representation of Blacks and Latinos in orchestras. The founders’ idea was to identify and train minority students who did not have ready access to the best available training. Today the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New England Conservatory, and the Boston University School of Music support Project STEP with cash contributions and in-kind donations of space and services, and as advisors on our Board of Directors.”

The program provides music instructions by very talented teachers to African-American and Latin-American children and youth in order to generate diversity among the orchestra’s members. The program has several different levels:

• Focus: This beginning level is divided into Sections I and II. During the first section children start having recorder lessons and receive instructions in the fundamental’s of music. During Section II, the children begins learning violin, viola, cello and bass.
• Pre-Training Division: In this level the children continue receiving instrumental lessons, but at the same time instruction in chamber music and orchestra is added. At the same time they are required to participate in community concerts, attend concerts, write reports, and take part in clinics and master classes. Academic excellence at school is also required.
• Training Division: Continuation of the former division.
• Pre-College Division: At this final level, the students are required to play exams to finish the program.

According to the information on the PS homepage, the students participate in the following suggested music education program:

• Weekly private lessons
• Weekly class instruction in music theory and solfege
• For advanced students, piano lessons may substitute for theory classes
• Two master classes each season taught by established artists
• Chamber music coaching
• Student recitals
• Orchestral music coaching
• Opportunity to attend numerous performances each year by established artists and ensembles
• Summer music study
• Parent Council with monthly meetings
• Continuing guidance into the conservatory / university level and beyond
• Low-interest loans available for the purchase of musical instruments after graduation.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the fourth of a series written by CMIE Guided Intern Hermann Hudde, as part of the documentation for Hudde’s CMIE Guided Internship. See other posts in this series here.

The duo played two educational recitals. The first performance was played for children who are not involved in the music programs. They were very curious about what a musician’s life like, asking questions such as: Do you have parents who are musicians? When did you start playing your instrument? What influenced you to play music?. Ficsor and Finehouse performed a serenade by William Bolcom about a not very handsome man who loved a woman and was trying to make her to fall in love with him. Before they played, Ficsor & Finehouse  explained that the composer often uses stories as inspiration for musical works.

The second performance used the same music, but the second group of children were all involved in the string program so their questions were more focused on violin playing. The musicians used the opportunity to ask the children questions such as: Do you know what a cadenza is? What does a Serenade mean to you? Do you know where the Ponticello is? The children were engaged by these questions about their instruments and replied as well with questions such as: How do you play harmonics on the violin? How do you learn a new piece of music? Do you compose music too? Additionally, the children were curious to know how the players meet and rehearse since they live in Boston and Santa Barbara.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the third of a series written by CMIE Guided Intern Hermann Hudde, as part of the documentation for Hudde’s CMIE Guided Internship. See other posts in this series here.

As a part of my guided internship, the BSO education office organized a meeting between BPS children and the composer William Bolcom, whose opus Eighth Symphony for Chorus and Orchestra was premiered by the BSO on Tuesday, February 28. The composer was accompanied by the violinist Philip Ficsor and the pianist Constantine Finehouse who are on tour promoting their CD American Double which features Bolcom’s duos for violin and piano. Ficsor and Finehouse started a conversation with the children and the composer with the intention of engaging the children, making them curious about what a composer is and what he does. They asked the composer how his life in music was began and the composer used this opportunity to talk about his childhood and his life. Then the musicians asked the young audience what they felt when they listened to a modern piece of music in comparison to a classical period opus. When some said they found it “ugly” or “strange”, Philip used the opportunity to talk about the power of the modern music to express all kinds of emotions. Then the composer was asked about his composition process, and he explained that he tended to be inspired first by images from nature or poetry.. The duo then told the audience that they would start playing a Bolcom’s Serenade for violin and piano which is based on the story of an ugly man who felt in love with a princess and was trying everything to win her love. They played across the different sections of the piece and invited the children to identify the emotions being expressed, and then the duo concluded, playing the whole opus.

When they ended their performance, the BSO came to the stage and played the dress rehearsal from Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony for Chorus and Orchestra. In my opinion, positive this kind of encounter is a positive experience, because is difficult for non-musicians to meet composers and know more about their lives and works. The event also gave the opportunity the children to listen to an orchestra playing in a symphony hall and to observe the work that goes on between a composer and the musicians. All in all, it was a great way to make the whole concept of composing and performing seem more “real” and “normal” to the children.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note:This post is the second of a series written by CMIE Guided Intern Hermann Hudde, as part of the documentation for Hudde’s CMIE Guided Internship. See other posts in this series here.

As a part of my internship at the Boston Symphony, I participated in their Youth Concert Series. Since 1888 the BSO has offered the community this kind of program, but Harry Ellis Dickson revitalized this educational activity according to the BSO Website the porpoise of the Youth Concert Series is as follow: “Each Youth and Family concert includes music chosen for young audiences. Captivating and compelling, these interactive concerts are led by renowned conductors and introduce the wide spectrum of classical music to young people and families. The musical performance, often accompanied by theatrical and visual elements, creates an exciting experience and encourages interaction between the conductor and audience members.” The website also gives specific information about the concert series itself. As a part of their education program, the BSO was played concerts for Boston Publics Schools. The BSO also offered at the same time pre and post-concerts activities for the children including instrumental demonstrations and conversations with the musicians.

For the particular concert I participated in, the BSO chose the title “What do you hear?”. The program began with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, 1st movement. Once the orchestra concluded its interpretation, the conductor Mr. Federico Cortese greeted the children and told them to listen very carefully to the next piece because it was written by a man who represented the values of liberty and freedom. Mr. Cortese also used this opportunity to talk about the French Revolution and its importance for humanity. Furthermore, Mr. Cortese explained what an Overture is with it functions. Then the BSO played Fidelio’s Overture by L.V. Beethoven.

After this children were introduced to two different stories about a young man and a young woman whose parents e not approved. The orchestra played excerpts from each work, after which the children were invited to express their opinions. In order to stimulate their creativity and curiosity. After this question and answer period, the conductor told the young audience to listen carefully to both opuses as they played them. When finished, the children were invited to respond using a microphone. After this session the orchestra played Berlioz’s “Romeo alone and Feast the Capulets” from Romeo and Juliet and Verdi’s Prelude to La Traviata.

To conclude the performance, the BSO used a video screen on which was projected an old movie scene about a man and a woman who were arguing with each other. The conductor announced to the children that they were going to play a piece that had a lot of questions and answers as in the old movie then began playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, in synchrony with the film. The children seemed to enjoy this a great deal and amused.

The Children receives a general exposure to the experience of listening to an orchestra in Symphony Hall. This seems an important first step for them to realize that they belong there too.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the first of a series written by CMIE Guided Intern Hermann Hudde, as part of the documentation for Hudde’s CMIE Guided Internship. See other posts in this series here.

On January 29 I participated in a performance outreach educational concert as a part of my internship in music in education at the BSO Music Education Office, and the Youth Concert Series for Public Schools in Boston that the BSO organizes every year. This was for me was a very pleasant opportunity and experience because it allowed me to share music with a young audience as well as to introduce them to the guitar, which is not an instrument that belongs to the traditional orchestra. In order to better engage the children age 7 – 10, I asked the BSO M. Ed. office to post a world map, because my idea was to make with the children a world trip from Latin America to Europe using the guitar and its music as a link. Exposing the children to two kinds of music that are not commonly heard in Symphony Hall, in allows them to appreciate in diverse cultures, and to enhance their perspectives about music and styles.

I began the morning session by telling the children that I was very happy performing for them and that I knew that they had a lot of questions and curiosity about the guitar and the music. I started by playing the first movement of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, Sonata Romantica’s which is a piece of music in Romantic style. As I finished this performance, I opened the dialogue with them and they asked all sort of questions that lead into an interesting discussion about the different types of guitars and styles; for example: Why do you use the fingers and not a pick? , Where is your amplifier? Are there differences between your guitar and the electric guitar?. I continued my performance with a piece by the Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios Mangore.

In order to introduce the first Spanish piece by Manuel de Falla “Le Tombeau”, I told the children that this opus was written and dedicated to a friend of his, whose name was Claude Debussy, and that this work was very mysterious. The Tombeau is an impressionists’ style opus that employs a lot of effects that express a special color in the music as well as being visually very exciting for the audience. I told them that for me it was like a ghost’s piece of music, and then introduced them to the melody which has a very shadowy feeling. Children as well the teachers enjoyed this piece very much because I used these images in my opening presentation and invited the audience to use their creativity.

To conclude the outreach performance, I played the first movement Joaquin Rodrigo’s Sonata Giocosa. However I began the music I answered some of their questions and about the use of folklore and dance elements in music in general and in this composition especially. The children were very curious about everything and by the end of the outreach performance they were ready to go Symphony Hall to hear the orchestra playing the program “What do you hear?.”

For the second session the group was bigger than the first one, and I followed the same program, but left more time to have more interaction with the children. This group’s questions were more about the composers, the instrument and me as a musician; for example: It is difficult to play guitar?, Do you like Beethoven?, Which piece of music did you play at first?. To documentate the outreach event the BSO staff took pictures of each session.

It was a great experience for me that remind me of the feeling I had for music when I was that age - the sense of discovering a new world.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the seventh of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.  

Throughout this process of observing the Solfege for Singers class at New England Conservatory, it has become clear that solfege is simply not just a way for people to sight-sing melodies without words. Solfege transcends many musical processes in that it can be applied to other musical and non-musical aspects of one’s life. Musically, it can be used to solidify pitch relationships, develop a sense of perfect pitch, analyze music in a deep, clear fashion, sharpen intonation either in the voice or on instruments where applicable, fortify one’s music theory skills, provide a foundation in score reading, and much more that I am probably forgetting or have mentioned in previous blogs. Outside of music, it can enhance one’s articulation and pronunciation, enhance one’s development of pattern recognition, quicken translation processes if applicable, sharpen internalization skills, and much more that I am most likely forgetting or have mentioned in previous blogs.

Another non-musical element of solfege that perhaps is overlooked by most students is how solfege can be used to build one’s musical confidence, which will ultimately result in the confidence building of other elements in one’s life. Musical confidence is definitely necessary in every aspect of a musician’s life. When performing, if not confident above everything else, then uncertainty will lead to mistakes. As a composer, if one is not confident about the composed material, then that discomfort will show in the design of the piece, and will most likely result in a poor design and a minimal expression of what the composer originally intended. Lack of confidence as a conductor can ruin the sense of ensemble amongst a group, and create a sense of anxiety that will ultimately lead to a poor performance. In essence, confidence is a crucial element to being a musician.

With solfege, if studied enough, a student gains a sense of pitch confidence. When sight-singing with a group of people – perhaps a motet or a Bach chorale – the sense of pitch confidence leads to a sense of being a crucial, important element of a larger community. This feeling of being needed can easily translate into a desire to be confident in other aspects of life. But it also allows the singer to listen to others, discover relationships within the piece being sight-read, tune to other pitches, work together as a group, and listen to the music as MUSIC! With this idea in mind, extreme concentration while sight-singing in fact is a sign of pitch unconfidence. Extreme concentration leads to a singer not listening to anyone else but him or herself, not tuning to others, and only hearing one part of the music. Yes, concentration is a good thing, but the confidence must be had initially in order for the correct kind of concentration to be had.

The confidence gained from solfege also translates into the confidence needed as a teacher. In the final projects of the class, the students had to choose works from their repertoire or other sources to teach to the class. In doing so, the student had to seriously think about how to teach the musical material to the class using solfege. What methods should be used? What should be worked on first? How does one know when to put the whole piece together? What is the analysis of the piece, and how can that be communicated to the students? Where can contextual conducting be applied in the music? These and more questions should have been examined by the students before presenting their final projects.

While most of these questions transcend the basic idea of solfege, the underlying reason for these questions comes from solfege. If adequately thought out, answering these questions builds an extreme amount of confidence, enough to stand up in front of your classmates and teach them what you have discovered. These projects are directly congruent to matters of confidence in performance, composing, and definitely conducting, and ultimately in job interviews, public speaking, and teaching. Out of this list, one element is bound to relate to one’s own personal goals. But one must ask the question for him or herself: how can I use solfege to gain confidence? In answering the question, one must study solfege in the way that Scripp suggests, and perhaps even develop methods of teaching for oneself based on personal knowledge of what works and what does not.

Professor Scripp has briefly gone over this use of solfege with his students, and articulated it to me in an interview. Throughout the semester, there were students who did have a drastic increase of confidence in solfege ability, and it was pleasant to observe life changing for the better in this fashion.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the sixth of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.  

It is always exciting to observe or be pleasantly surprised by behaviors and phenomena that are unexpected in research projects. With that, it would never have occurred to me before commencing this project to examine the relationship between language, culture, and solfege. This relationship, which made itself pleasantly obvious throughout the semester, is something which, in my opinion, should be explored in a second installation of this guided internship. For now, I can only recall the nucleic observations which will hopefully spawn a larger organism in the future. 

It is a well-known fact that learning a language is best done at a young age, when the mind unconsciously soaks in information without formally “studying” it. The mind is simply immersed in a new, unfamiliar environment, and is forced to adapt to its surroundings for survival. In this case, when you are young, and you are hungry, and you are in an English and French speaking household, you know that you can say, “I’m hungry” or “J’ai faim”, and something will come of it. The best part about learning a language through immersion at a young age is that you do not “study” the grammar, the article agreement (if any), the tenses, the cases, the vocabulary, the idioms, and the other idiosyncrasies of language. You just learn it. You speak it. People correct you, and you rarely make the mistake again. This is how fluency is gained. 

When studying a language for the first time as an older person, especially after the age of 12 or 13, it is harder to keep everything together. Learning a language then becomes more of a process of memory rather information-soaking and internalizing. When speaking, the learner more often then not thinks of what he or she wants to say first in English and then translates. The learner doesn’t simply know how to think in that language. When learning a language at the university level (at least this has been my experience), immersion is attempted by having language classes three times per week. A language student should have as much exposure to the new language as possible to guarantee the highest amount of immersion necessary. 

One can easily start to find parallels from the above. At Boston University where I learned solfege (in a rather haphazard way because the “ear-training and sight-singing program at BU, which teaches “fixed do” solfege, is mostly ignored and taught by ill-trained graduate students), I did not even think to relate learning a language to solfege. But retrospectively, I can truly say that my lack of immersion in solfege before BU has definitely hindered my ability to truly internalize it as a fluid language. At BU, I used a process of translation to get through my exercises. This process may actually be beneficial, and it is popular: whenever I sang my melodies, I played the piece on the piano in my head while singing it, and figured out the solfege syllables in that manner. This is nothing new or unique. Students use this technique all the time, most of the time developing it on their own, such as myself, Eric Smith (a student at NEC) and many of my friends, and perhaps some of you readers. 

But is this a good thing or is it a process that truly blocks the internalization process? If personally this process is quick enough for a sight-singer to execute melodies at correct tempi, then this process should be utilized. In essence, this translation process is not, nor ever will be, the same as being able to look at a note on a staff (or ledger line) and say its correct syllable without visualizing an instrument, hands, tables, etc … The translation process becomes even more demanding when reading in different clefs. Not only is the language of solfege getting in the way, but the pattern-language of the clef is shifted. This can perhaps be related to reading books in written in different accents, like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Or better yet, being a native of Korea, learning English for the first time at the age of 15, and attempting to read The King James version of The Holy Bible. 

When a student is immersed in solfege, then the ability is completely, COMPLETELY different! There were students in the “Solfege for Singers” class who learned solfege at an early age. These students were not American. This is where the cultural element comes into play. In my student interviews, so far all of the Americans had little next to no exposure to “fixed do” before post-secondary instruction. Additionally, the little solfege exposure received was usually in passing, and of course in “moveable do”. Admittedly, my only exposure to solfege was singing that annoying popular song from The Sound of Music. Culturally, English is one of the only languages where the names of the notes are letters rather syllables. Other cultures, when it comes to solfege, do not separate between ‘a’ and ‘la’. In other languages, ‘a’ is just a letter and ‘la’ is the pitch. That’s that. 

In other words, other cultures internalize the syllables naturally. There is no process of translation occurring. Listening to the students in class who have internalized these syllables was a source of inspiration to other students, and me as well! It is always magical to see people solfeging at superhuman levels of speed. At the same time, observing these students really made it clear to me how much solfege is linked to language and culture. I have heard stories about the rigorous solfeging exercises at the Paris Conservatoire, and have thanked my lucky stars that I did not have to undergo such training. In the same breath, I wonder why America has not yet picked up on this solfeging tradition. I wonder what type of musician I would be if I was as good at solfege as the students who have internalized the syllables. But I must say, I am not questioning my musicianship, just my solfeging abilities.

One final thought: the Solfege for Singers class at New England Conservatory is held three times a week.