Teaching Music Appreciation
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and... UNIVERSITYBULLETINOF ILLINOIS Vol. XXXVII April 30, 1940 No. 36 COLLEGE OF EDUCATION PUBLICATIONS UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SERIES No. 1 Teaching Music Appreciation Use of the Radio and Movies By Velma Irene Kitchell PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA ! 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It is true that programs and plans suited to any one school situation cannot function in their en- tirety in all situations ; however, if such programs and plans are the result of study and experimentation, they should suggest new possibilities. The purpose of this series of bulletins is to describe modifications of ordinary school practice. In each instance they have been tried out and adopted in the University High School, the laboratory school of the College of Education, University of Illinois, and seem worthy of trial in the public schools. Thomas Eliot Benner, Dean College of Education University of Illinois CONTENTS A New Approach ro Music Apprei iation 5 Procedures of the Ni:\\ Approach 7 Weekly Schedule of Radio Programs 7 Beginning the Year's Work 10 Preparing for Two Representative Broadcasts 13 Classwork Following the Broadcasts 14 Utilization of the Movies 15 Review and Organization of the Work 16 Materials of the Approach 21 Radio Programs and Movies 21 Recordings of Compositions 21 Reference Books 22 Evaluating Music Appreciation 23 Bibliography of Books on Composers, Artists, Instru- ments, Operas, and Compositions 25 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgment for criticisms, suggestions, and corrections to the follow- ing members of the faculty of the University of Illinois: Professor Liesette J. McHarry, Head of the Department of English, University High School ; Professor C. W. Sanford, Principal of the University High School ; Pro- fessor B. O. Smith, College of Education; Professor F. B. Stiven, Director of the School of Music. A New Approach to Music Appreciation IHi' conventional approach to the teaching of music appreciation has been, in most cases, a presentation of carefully organized units of subject matter. Some of these units have been: folk music; develop- ment of opera and oratorio; musical forms such as rondo, march. fugue, and sonata: instruments; composers- beginning with Bach and Handel, proceeding chronologically with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn. Schumann. Chopin, Liszt. Wagner, and Brahms, and finally ending with the modern composers. The modern composers have further been organized according to nationalities: — Stravinsky, Russian -Ippolitow-Ivanow, ( rlazounow, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Szostakovicz ; French— Dukas, Ibert, Honegger, Saint-Saens, Debussy; Scandinavian— Sibelius, Palmgren, Jarnefelt, Halvorsen, Sinding. The conventional organization, with its emphasis upon order, sequence, and ground-to-be-covered, did not readily permit the use of the everyday musical experiences of students. If any correlation occurred between the music which the students studied in class and that which they heard on radio programs or at the movies, it was inci- dental. For the most part, experiences in the classroom were distinct and apart from anything which the students experienced outside the classroom. There is now an ever-increasing number of excellent musical radio programs and musical movies. Music which used to be inaccessible to most boys and girls, save through recordings, is now coming directly to homes and communities from the great artists of the day. There is, therefore, no need for a continuation of the traditional way of organizing and of conducting courses in music appreciation. The study of music can easily become a very vital, meaningful, and enjoy- able experience to students, if the teacher recognizes and utilizes the experiences in music now made possible by the radio and the screen. Activities in the classroom will not be isolated from life. Classroom work will not be abstract, unreal, and theoretical. Instead, it will take on the aspect of living, real, everyday experiences. It is the purpose of this bulletin to set forth an organization of subject matter and a method of procedure more adequate than the conventional approach and to explain how this new method has been put into practice in actual classroom situations. The approach described herein rests upon the conviction that in- struction in music appreciation should be based, in part, upon the out-of-school experiences of students. This conviction is in keeping Teaching Music Appreciation with the implications of educational psychology and of philosophy as held by Dewey, who, in one of his earlier books, says: "From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself ; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school. That is the isolation of the school—its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests, and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. So the school, being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work, on another task, and by a variety of means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies." 1 The question is: How can music appreciation be taught so as to make the most of the experiences available to children in their every- day life? A large majority of students have access to radios and listen to various radio programs outside the school each day, and it is quite evident that high school students attend the movies rather consistently. These facts support the belief that students are, as a rule, interested in radio programs and in the movies. The teacher of music apprecia- tion should utilize these expressed interests by basing a part of the work in appreciation on these everyday experiences.