Awakening the Undergraduate Mind in Romantic Survey Courses
In music survey classes, time is short and the breadth of material is immense. Undergraduate students are often asked within the whirlwind to find relevant topics for a substantive paper. Teaching students to articulate quality information about a Romantic style, genre or piece of music in a clear, precise manner has the goal of enriching students’ understanding and give them a model for further study. Given guidance and latitude, students can reach deeply into an understanding beyond the notes on the page.
Students often meet the assignment of an 8-12 page paper with fear, resistance, and anxiety. This presentation will discuss how, in a traditional, canonic, 19th-century music class, taught in the confines of the ten-week quarter system, students are exposed to a variety of scholarly materials and begin to make cultural and aesthetic connections (both within the nineteenth century and today). By quarter end students create a project called “In the Composer’s Studio” (initially inspired by the talk-show In the Actor’s Studio). Students are asked to study and place a work (not found in the course repertoire) into the context of the composer’s life and times: a virtual reality tour of a composition. What did the space look like where the piece was composed? What was the composer’s routine? What was the impetus for the composition of the piece? Output from this assignment has included: mini-dramas, mini-graphic novels, computer presentations, traditional papers with photographs and documentary evidence, and even the occasional sculpture or visual artwork. The guidelines include some writing and analysis of the work. Students complete this project with a grasp of online and interdisciplinary research tools as well as a more developed sense of the cultural connectivity within each composition.
In music survey classes, time is short and the breadth of material is immense. Undergraduate students are often asked within the whirlwind to find relevant topics for a substantive paper. Teaching students to articulate quality information about a Romantic style, genre or piece of music in a clear, precise manner has the goal of enriching students’ understanding and give them a model for further study. Given guidance and latitude, students can reach deeply into an understanding beyond the notes on the page.
Students often meet the assignment of an 8-12 page paper with fear, resistance, and anxiety. This presentation will discuss how, in a traditional, canonic, 19th-century music class, taught in the confines of the ten-week quarter system, students are exposed to a variety of scholarly materials and begin to make cultural and aesthetic connections (both within the nineteenth century and today). By quarter end students create a project called “In the Composer’s Studio” (initially inspired by the talk-show In the Actor’s Studio). Students are asked to study and place a work (not found in the course repertoire) into the context of the composer’s life and times: a virtual reality tour of a composition. What did the space look like where the piece was composed? What was the composer’s routine? What was the impetus for the composition of the piece? Output from this assignment has included: mini-dramas, mini-graphic novels, computer presentations, traditional papers with photographs and documentary evidence, and even the occasional sculpture or visual artwork. The guidelines include some writing and analysis of the work. Students complete this project with a grasp of online and interdisciplinary research tools as well as a more developed sense of the cultural connectivity within each composition.