Music Pedagogies
Learning Jazz: An Enactive Account of Musical Ear Training
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mattias Solli
Few things are more prone to a consensus within contemporary jazz discourse than saying that ear training is crucial for aspiring jazz musicians. (Sidran, 1974; Berliner, 1994; Prouty, 2006; Wilf 2014). Left unexplored, however, is this question: What does it imply – from the systematic perspective of a phenomenal body – to develop one's aural capacities for spontaneous, musical interactions with others? Launching an enactive account of ear training, this paper analyzes the well-known method of imitating soloes (Monson, 1996) as a way of acting out actual and potential musical forms. I will claim that learning a "jazz language" by ear (ibid.) is to expand the possible behavior of sonorous intentionality. In this view, the structure implicitly emerging in the jazz discourse is a unique, musical modification of what Merleau-Ponty (1963), Deacon (1997) and Tomasello (2003) call symbol behavior and joint attention. Potentially trained in the imitation process is an ear for other ways of hearing. The point of learning soloes is not 1:1 imitation by itself, as Wilf seems to suggest, but by the gradual embodied integration of abundant, sonorous forms that have emerged in musical collectives. The paper also will criticize mechanist tendencies in contemporary theories on improvisation (Pressing, 1998; Johnson-Laird, 2002; Berkowitz, 2010). These theories inaptly describe the learning of jazz improvisation as a form of a rule-governed combination of musical atoms. By contrast, the enactive account of jazz hearing conceives of musical forms as wholes ultimately organized not by rules but by embodied life in general.
Improvisation versus "Cultural Authenticity" in Music Pedagogy: An Ethnomusicological Re-view
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ted Solis
As ethnomusicologists and music educators, where do our allegiances lie in teaching venerable traditions fraught with ritual, iconic, and performance conventions? Should our allegiance be to the tradition, and does that tradition delineate our pedagogical goals? Many ethnomusicologists try to compensate, or overcompensate, for the perceived artificiality of the university environment by "hyperfaithfully" reproducing world music traditions. We represent these traditions to our students, obliterating the performance and teaching hierarchies inherent in traditional learning. Since we must thus do it all (create the context, teach all the instruments, singing, dancing) we have to compromise.
Teach Students Critical Writing Skills through Musical Form
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jane Fiske
An important part of critical thinking, is critical writing. Critical writing literacy may be taught through arts education. This paper will explore how to teach critical writing skills by studying musical form; particularly, sonata-allegro form. Sonata-allegro form, or first movement form, is a large-scale musical structure developed during the Classical Period by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and continues to be used by some composers today. It is a structure that reflects the principles of the Enlightenment Period or the Age of Reason; logic, order, and reason. Sonata-allegro form mirrors the principles of good thesis writing (statement, body, and conclusion) in a musical structure (exposition, development, and recapitulation). Understanding the parts of sonata-allegro form expands student perception and cognition of good thesis writing. It provides students with another way of learning about the structure and form of a research paper or an academic essay. Sonata-allegro form may be learned through performance studies, art history, and or creative arts strategies.
