Transcript Music and Education

Music and Education
A study of the importance of music in
formal school settings today.
By Jonathan Angress
Early Forms of Music Notation
Medieval Notation
•
•
•
•
According to most musicologists,
music in a formal setting began with
the advent of Gregorian Chant in the
churches of Europe during the
Medieval period.
Notation back then included trope
symbols and square-shaped note
heads with a four line staff instead of
the modern five line staff and round
note heads used today.
The little telephone shaped character
is what determines the key signature
of the piece.
This is important in understanding the
role of music in education. The more a
person understands the fundamentals
of music, the more he will understand
the role it plays in a child’s life.
Renaissance Notation
•
•
•
Stemming from the notation of the
Medieval time period, Renaissance
style notation is similar in the regards
that it maintains the same integrity
and authenticity as Medieval notation.
In this example, you can still see the
use of single note heads to portray
half notes (2 beats) or whole notes (4
beats). However, a new style of
transcription is introduced, the note
stem. This is functional in representing
a quicker note. So wherever there are
stems, those notes are played faster
than the other notes.
This style looks more closely like
modern notation as we know it today.
Baroque Transcriptions
•
•
Obviously during the Medieval,
Renaissance, and Baroque periods,
music was not officially printed since
the printing press did not yet exist. If a
composer needed individual parts of
his music for every instrument in the
orchestra or every singer in the choir,
the composer would hire a scribe to
transcribe everything over and over or
the composer would do it himself.
This is an example of a transcription
from the “King of Baroque” Johann
Sebastian Bach. As you can see, there
are now five lines to the staff and the
notation is practically identical to
modern music today. The only
difference is that the part is hand
written and therefore harder to read
or preserve it’s accuracy.
The Importance of
Learning Music in Schools
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756-1791
• Whether you are learning
about different bands,
learning to play the violin,
or analyzing Beethoven’s
9th Symphony, science has
proven that children who
grow up on speaking terms
with music or a musical
instrument generally
perform better in their
other classes and activities
(except perhaps, sports).
This is known as the Mozart
Effect.
The Mozart Effect
•
•
As most if not all psychological experiments
are preliminarily done on rats, the Mozart
Effect is not an exception. The University of
Wisconsin Department of Psychology
conducted an experiment where the classical
music was played to a group of rats in the
womb and shortly after birth. Minimalist
music was played to a second group. And the
third group had no music. The rats were then
compared while attempting to finish a maze.
The rats who listened to classical music
completed the maze more quickly than the
other rats.
Similar studies have been done with children
where three different groups were set the
same task while listening to three different
types of music (or silence). The result was the
group who listened to classical music achieved
the highest result.
School Music Programs
• Music programs in schools vary
by size, age group, location,
and concentration. Generally
speaking, most primary school
music programs involve one or
two music teachers that teach
general “music” to grades K –
6. This includes learning songs,
rhythm, recorder, and perhaps
fundamental music reading
skills. Usually, a music teacher
will elect to have a unison or
two part choir consisting of
students from the upper grade
levels (4th, 5th, and 6th grades).
Junior High School
•
•
In middle schools, students graduate
to playing standard musical
instruments in bands and orchestras
as well as singing in three part or four
part choirs. Students also begin to
study their instrument or voice
privately with an instructor.
Middle school choirs are always apt to
change their song repertoire as well as
their voicing since boys of this age
tend to go through puberty and thus
their voice changes. Most choirs of
this age group are made up mostly of
girls and the few boys in these groups
sing in the tenor range or in the
soprano/alto range.
High School
•
•
•
Among high school music programs, there are different
flavors. The most common is the type found in public
schools. Generally, public school programs will have a
band, orchestra, and choir. They will usually tend to play
regular repertoire (nothing rearranged for easier playing)
and have all instruments and voices. Programs of these
kinds tend to be fairly large.
Music programs in private schools can range from being
the same size as a public school program or could be very
small. Since private schools do not receive the same type
of funding from the government, financial support for
extra-curricular activities is a little bit harder to come by.
Musical ensembles tend to be smaller in private schools
and song repertoire tends to be significantly diminished.
Magnet schools come in both the public and private
varieties. These schools specifically concentrate on music,
art, and sports. Therefore, the programs here are
significantly more elaborate than that of a public school.
There could be several different orchestras, bands, and
choirs to choose from.
Theatre
•
Many classical musicians, music
theorists, and musicologists view the
genre of Musical Theatre music to not
be a legitimate form of music and as
“icing” on the over-fluffed cake which
is theatre. Within this genre, many
other genres of music are replicated
inaccurately and often parodied as
well. The style of playing and singing is
very forced and the goal is not to
produce a beautiful sound but just to
make sure the sound is there.
Regardless, many theatre programs in
schools are synonymous with the
adjoined music program. If you go to
any given high school, you will find at
least half of the choir are also in the
theatre as well.
Program Cutting
•
All across the country, music programs are being cut in schools because of lack of
funding and lack of interest in the proper education of children. Earlier this fall, the
U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave a conference call
emphasizing the importance of music and art in education:
Material Pertaining to
Cutting Music Programs
This is the statistics of a narrowing curriculum put out by the Center on
Education Policy:
http://www.cep-dc.org/press/Curriculum%20Release%20Final.pdf
Read the letter from U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
http://www.supportmusic.com/Arts_Education_Letter.pdf
Response in Hollywood
Below is a clip from the 1999 film Music of the Heart
starring Meryl Streep and Gloria Estefan about the
East Harlem Violin Program and its trouble staying
alive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruw-pwkCrJU
Response in Hollywood con’t
And here is a clip from the 1995 film Mr. Holland’s Opus
starring Richard Dryfuss who plays a music teacher
having his program cut as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng3l4vEN3Dk