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Achieving Musical Success in the String Classroom describes the author’s pragmatic pedagogical approach toward developing complete musicianship in beginning through advanced-level string players by incorporating the ideas of Mimi Zweig, Paul Rolland, and Shinichi Suzuki. The author’s philosophical assumptions are explained in regard to the structure and purpose of string teaching contributing to a high level of musical artistry among students. Introductory through advanced string concepts relating to instrument setup, posture, left- and right-hand development, music theory, aural skills, assessment procedures, imagery in playing, the development of individual practice and ensemble skills, and effective rehearsal strategies are explained in a sequential approach that benefits the classroom teacher and student. In addition, several score examples, sample lesson plans, and grading rubrics, as well as videos of the author demonstrating his pedagogical ideas and techniques with musicians, are included.

Adaptive Strategies for Small-Handed Pianists brings together information from ergonomics, physics, biomechanics, anatomy, medicine, and piano pedagogy to focus on the subject of small-handedness. Chapter 1 presents an overview from historical, anatomical, and pedagogical perspectives and includes a discussion of small-handedness as a risk factor for piano-related injury. Chapter 2 establishes a basic understanding of work efficiency and the human anatomy, moves on to general observations about piano playing and the constraints of physics, and explains the principles of healthy movement at the piano. Chapter 3 is a focused analysis of piano technique as it relates to small-handedness. Chapters 4 to 7 deal with specific alternative approaches: redistribution, refingering, ways to maximize reach and power, and musical solutions for technical problems. Hundreds of examples taken from the standard intermediate and advanced piano literature show concrete applications of these strategies within appropriate musical contexts. Chapter 8 presents tables that pianists can use to diagnose and resolve commonly encountered problems and synthesizes the adaptive approaches outlined in the book. Reflective application points are provided as guides to further exploration. The book demonstrates that the specific physical and musical needs of the small-handed can be addressed in sensitive and appropriate ways and illuminates alternative paths to help pianists with small hands reach their musical goals.

In recent decades, cognitive neuroscience research has increased our understanding of how the brain learns, retains, and recalls information. At the same time, social psychology researchers have developed insights into group dynamics, exploring what motivates individuals in a group to give their full effort, or conversely, what might instead inspire them to become freeloaders. This book explores the idea that choral conductors who better understand how the brain learns, and how individuals within groups function, can lead more efficient, productive, and enjoyable rehearsals. Armed with this knowledge, conductors can create rehearsal techniques which take advantage of certain fundamental brain and social psychology principles. Through such approaches, singers will become increasingly engaged physically and mentally in the rehearsal process. This book draws from a range of scientific studies to suggest and encourage effective, evidence-based techniques, and can help serve to reset and inspire new approaches toward teaching. Each chapter outlines exercises and creative ideas for conductors and music teachers, including the importance of embedding problem solving into rehearsal, the use of multiple entry points for newly acquired information, techniques to encourage an emotional connection to the music, and ways to incorporate writing exercises into rehearsal. Additional topics include brain-compatible teaching strategies to complement thorough score study, the science behind motivation, the role imagination plays in teaching, the psychology of rehearsal, and conducting tips and advice. All of these brain-friendly strategies serve to encourage singers’ active participation in rehearsals, with the goal of motivating beautiful, inspired, and memorable performances.

With a focus on music, this book outlines what improvisation is and why it is an important creative and social activity. Drawing on the emerging psychological literature in this area, as well as evidence from authors’ research with musicians, this text outlines innovative ideas on what defines improvisation and the psychological, creative, and social processes involved. It explores the role of specialist skills, the importance of musical identities and the nature of understanding in improvised interaction and between improvisers. It discusses how we develop as improvisers and the role of improvisation within therapeutic applications of music. Each chapter proceeds from discussion of an illustrative instance of musical improvisation. Providing fresh and provocative insights for anyone interested in playing, studying, teaching, or listening to improvised music, the authors offer suggestions for approaching this practice in new ways at any level, and identify potential developments in cross-disciplinary improvising. Asserting that everyone can and should improvise, the book provides a resource for courses teaching improvisation in contemporary practice, and has strong relevance for those applying musical improvisation in community and therapeutic contexts. The book deals with such questions as: What constitutes improvisation? Do all forms of improvisation represent the same thing? Faced with myriad possibilities, how do improvisers decide what to play? How does an improviser in a group know what the others will do? How might improvisation influence our well-being? In response to such questions, a definition of improvisation based on its unique behavioural features is set out as an exciting context for psychological investigation.

This book tells the remarkable and inspiring story of the British early music movement (Early Music). Since the late-1960s this quietly influential cultural phenomenon has completely transformed the way in which we listen to ‘old’ music, revolutionizing the classical music profession in the process. Forty years on, the influence of historically informed performance (HIP) is everywhere to hear, in concert halls around the world, on radio and on disc. And yet the extraordinary rise of Early Music, founded on its apparently uncompromising agenda of ‘authenticity’, has been anything but uncontroversial. Early Music’s detractors have been quick to point out the many inconsistencies andin-authentic ‘modernist’ practices that underpin its success, highlighting its use of recordings, reliance on the market, and even its creativity (‘making it up’), as evidence ofits just notbeing what it said it was. The story of making Early Music work in the modern age(an age of disenchantment, division and split), is riven with conflict and contradiction; but it is also an altogether more upliftingnarrative about ‘re-enchanting art’, of living out the unfolding dialectic between old and new, head and heart, ‘text’ and ‘act’; and of over-coming separation, restoring the bonds betweenelements of life that we have otherwise become accustomed to holdingapart, such asour musicianship, scholarship, craftsmanship, and cultural entrepreneurship. Beyond itsfocus on the performance of classical music, therefore, this book offers the opening remarks ina much-neededconversation about the value of art and authenticityin our lives today.

Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis examines the many ways that artists (amateur and professional), community artist-facilitators, educators, and scholars in music, dance/movement, theater, visual arts, poetry/storytelling, and media and technology conceive and deploy their abilities to advance democratic citizenship and human flourishing in local, national, and international contexts. Among the questions this book addresses are the following: What is the nature and scope of artistic citizenship? How do artists and scholars in different domains conceive the aims, concepts, practical strategies, problems, and “spaces and places” of artistic citizenship? What are the most effective strategies that artists, teachers, and students use to address local, national, and world problems, including violence and international conflicts, poverty, disease, and gender and racial discrimination? What qualities and abilities do amateur and professional artists need to practice, develop, and expand artistic citizenship? What connections exist between ethical-artistic action and artistic citizenship? What is the history of conceptualizing the “why, what, how, who, where, and when” of artistic citizenship? Do particular artistic endeavors have distinctive potentials for nurturing artistic citizenship? If so, what might they be? How can artistic citizenship be pursued without compromising the natures and values of particular artistic practices? What can arts education programs do to motivate artists of all ages and abilities to better serve their communities? How might artistic endeavors informed by a pragmatic “ethic of care” contribute to positive societal change?

The second edition of The Baroque Clarinet (1992) is a history of the clarinet and chalumeau from antiquity to 1760 in six chapters: “Origins of the Chalumeau,” “Music for the Chalumeau,” “The Earliest Clarinets,” “Playing Techniques for the Baroque Clarinet,” “Music for the Baroque Clarinet,” and “Baroque Clarinet in Society.” There are five appendices: four checklists of extant chalumeaux, extant clarinets, chalumeau music and sources from 1694 to 1780, clarinet music and sources from about 1715 to 1760; and a fifth of chalumeau and clarinet concerts, rehearsals, and clarinets for purchase in newspaper advertisements from 1718 to 1760. The second edition has significant additions of makers, players, music, and iconography, that last in a chapter called “The Baroque Clarinet in Society.” Topics discussed include single-reed instruments in Egyptian antiquity and from the 10th through the 17th centuries; the mock trumpet; chalumeaux during the 17th and 18th centuries; Jacob Denner’s chalumeaux and clarinets; an organ pipe that sounds like a chalumeau; chalumeau players; chalumeau descriptions from the mid-18th century; later documented chalumeau makers; chalumeau reproductions; how and why Johann Christoph Denner improved the chalumeau and invented the clarinet, based on previous studies of mechanical inventions; chalumeau and clarinet music and composers; and the Baroque clarinet’s use by traveling musicians, in court and aristocratic music, church and civic music, and military music.

The Early Music revival has had far-reaching consequences on how music of the past is performed, both by specialists and non-specialists. This timely book is a practical step-by-step course of lessons for violinists and violists in both these categories, covering the interpretation, technique, culture, and historical background of the Baroque violin repertoire. Written by a violinist and teacher specializing in Baroque music over many years, it guides readers from the basics (how to hold the violin) to Bach, via music from a wide variety of styles. Avoiding obscure musicological jargon, it is eminently readable and accessible. Packed with information, detailed observations on the music under discussion, and relevant quotations from historical and contemporary sources, it covers everything the Baroque violin student should know and may be considered the equivalent of two to three years of individual lessons. The book contains over 100 exercises devised for and tested on students over the years. The author’s holistic approach is evident through the exercises aimed at bringing out the individual voice of each student, and his insistence that what happens within, the identification and manipulation of affects, is a vital part of successful performance. Imitating the voice, both spoken and sung, is a constant theme, beginning with the simple device of playing words. There are fifty lessons, including five Ornamentation Modules and ones on specific topics: temperament, rhetoric, the affects, and so on. All the music, transcribed for both violin and viola, is downloadable from the website, where there is also a series of videos.

All children must have an opportunity to share the joy of choral music participation—whether in school, church, or community choirs. What happens before the singing begins is critical to supporting, sustaining, and nurturing choirs to give every child the opportunity to experience the wonder of choral singing. Based on years of experience conducting and teaching, this book brings practical information about ways of organizing choirs. From classroom choirs, to mission statements, boards of directors, commissioning, auditioning, and repertoire, the book aims to inspire new ways of thinking about how choirs organize their daily tasks. The collaborative community that surrounds a choir includes conductors, music educators, church choir directors, board members, volunteers, staff, administrators, and university students in music education and nonprofit arts management degree programs.

It is as performance that music is loved, understood, and consumed, yet musicologists have traditionally treated it as a kind of text. They have seen meaning as written into the music, implying that performance merely reproduces what is already there: this paradigm of reproduction has prevented musicology from adequately engaging with performance. Beyond the Score is a thoroughgoing attempt to reconceive music as performance, in other words as a real-time practice that affords the production of meaning. That means rethinking familiar assumptions and developing new approaches. Focusing primarily but not exclusively on the Western “art” tradition, the book explores perspectives that range from close listening to computational analysis, from ethnography to the study of recordings, and from the social relations constructed through performance to the performing (and listening) body. It also has a strong historical emphasis, extending from the early days of recording to contemporary digital culture, and a number of themes weave through it. These include the relationship between the written and the oral in musical culture, and the need to move on from thinking based on the paradigm of reproduction to a semiotic approach grounded on the production of meaning. While the principal claim of the book is that thinking based on the idea of music as text has hampered the academic understanding of music, the book argues that it has also made the practices of performance less creative than they might be, and the book explores how we might escape from the textualist straitjacket.

Bob Fosse’s work continues to be the most recognizable of the great choreographers of Broadway’s post–World War II golden age. This book offers deep analysis of Fosse’s development as a choreographer, including the various dance influences he absorbed as a young performer. It examines key Fosse dances and contextualizes them across his career. It looks at how he influenced changes in the musical theater, particularly as a director, and how early mentors George Abbott and Jerome Robbins shaped his theatrical outlook. It compares his work to that of peers like Robbins, Gower Champion, Michael Bennett, and others. The book also examines his choreography for film and looks at how his film experiences influenced his stage work. It also considers the impact of his three marriages—all to dancers—on his career. Finally, the book investigates how Fosse’s evolution as both artist and individual mirrored the social and political climate of his era and allowed him to comfortably ride a wave of cultural changes.

Brahms’s Violin Sonatas: Style, Structure, and Performance is a companion volume to Joel Lester’s award-winning 1999 study Bach’s Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, and Performance. Using a minimum of technical language and with annotated musical examples illustrating almost every point, Brahms’s Violin Sonatas explores three masterpieces of the concert repertoire in a book designed for performers and music scholars alike. A major focus is how much can be learned by carefully reading Brahms’s artistically nuanced musical notation and by understanding Brahms’s style—especially his music’s deep connections to Classical-Era harmony, phrasing, and form while at the same time using late nineteenth-century harmonies, dissonances, and thematic evolutions, along with the contrapuntal textures that imbue all his works with a uniquely “Brahmsian” sound. The book also explores how these works relate to important events in Brahms’s life. Practical and concrete suggestions on performance arise from many of these discussions, calling performers’ and analysts’ attention to both technical and interpretive matters. The aim of the book is to inspire readers to explore their own individual approaches to Brahms’s music, balancing what they find in the music to how they balance today’s performance and interpretive styles with the ways that Brahms himself and his contemporaries might have played and experienced his creations.

The Classical Guitar Companion is an anthology of exercises, études, and pieces organized according to technique or musical texture. Students are encouraged to work in multiple chapters, simultaneously depending on advice from a teacher or their own assessment of what they need. The author’s dual perspective, as an active performing artist and as a teacher who has trained hundreds of guitarists, results in a combination of pedagogical thoroughness and artistic insight. The book opens with a large section devoted to establishing a thorough knowledge of the guitar fingerboard through a systematic and rigorous study of scales and fingerboard harmony, which will lead to ease and fluency in sight-reading and reduce the time needed to learn a repertoire piece. The chapters cover scales exercises and studies, repeated notes, slurs, harmony, arpeggios, melody with accompaniment, counterpoint, and florid/virtuoso studies. Each section contains text and examples that connect material to fingering practices of composers and practice strategies to open a path to interpretive freedom in performance. Exploring advice found in the standard pedagogical literature for guitar that effectively places constraints on a student’s long-term development, the book offers information designed to help students recognize and overcome these constraints. When the book presents the simple version of a technique, it does so through consideration of the technique’s advanced version. Many guitar composers are represented but there are also transcriptions of relevant lute music that expand the scope of the book. The book is designed to serve as a companion for years of guitar study.

This volume considers what a more inclusive, dynamic, and socially engaged curriculum of musical study might look like in universities. Its goal is to create dialogue among faculty, administrators, and students about what the future of college music instruction should be and how to transition to new paradigms. Critiques and calls for reform have existed for decades, but few publications have offered concrete suggestions as to how things might be done differently. This book suggests new concepts or guiding principles that might be used to reconceive applied music education at the university level and, based on existing experiments taking place nationally and internationally, how such principles might be implemented in practical terms. The book’s essays concentrate primarily on changes to performance degrees rather than other subdisciplines since the former constitute the center of activity in most institutions. Ethnomusicologists feature prominently among the contributors, but the volume also includes input from those with specialization in music education, theory/composition, professional performance, and administration.

This book addresses the needs of teacher-educators seeking to include composition pedagogy in music education curricula. Though several decades of scholarship have examined the processes and products of young composers and offered insight to their work, many teachers still report a significant degree of trepidation when asked to lead students in composition activities. This book provides guidance for developing pre-service and in-service teachers ability to confidently and effectively facilitate composition study in PreK-12 settings. Issues that frame the volume include why composition should be part of music education, and by extension, music teacher education; research bases in creativity and children's composition; and the changing nature of compositional practices in contemporary culture. Drawing on both research and practice, chapters provide models for leading composition study in elementary general music, choral and instrumental ensembles, and songwriting classes. Guidance is offered for those working with special needs populations and gifted-and-talented students, as well as those interested in expanding experiences beyond the classroom via technology. Moreover, specific programmatic approaches for addressing the professional development of pre-service and in-service teachers are offered in detail so that music teacher-educators may create environments where composition's potential to enliven and invigorate contemporary practices in music education can be fully embraced.

Designed for undergraduate and graduate music students, Composing with Constraints provides 100 self-contained exercises to help develop the craft of music composition through rigorous guidelines that help students develop their creativity. Structured in five chapters, the book offers an extended palette of compositional exercises in melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, and pre-compositional strategies. Exercises can be addressed in any order. With the help of the instructor, both graduate and undergraduate students can choose their own paths. An appendix includes a select list of possible solutions for the exercises and a suggested grading rubric is included for the instructor, based on consistent criteria that balance the strictness of the constraints with the incentive of the students’ imagination. All exercises embed simple orchestration problems and are illustrated with excerpts from the standard repertoire. Exercises that encourage the implementation of the computer as an aid to enhance the creative process are included.

Hundreds of volumes filled with hand-copied music sit in archives and libraries across the United States. Created by amateur musicians who came of age in the years following the American Revolution. These manuscript books reveal the existence of a musical culture that was deeply intertwined in people’s everyday lives and at the same time in powerful historical forces that were shaping the new nation. Cultivated by Hand is a social and material history of musical amateurism. It uncovers the influences that directed amateurs’ experiences, delves into how those influences manifested in individuals’ lives, and reveals the hitherto unknown importance of music book creation and collection in early American musical life. This book argues that amateur music-making played an important and heretofore unacknowledged role in the making of gender, class, race, and nation in the early American republic. Moreover, much of the repertoire collected by relatively elite, white amateurs was imported from Britain, undermining concurrent efforts to foster a national musical style. Cultivated by Hand situates the making of manuscript books in the contexts of technology, handcrafts, and sociaability, exploring manuscript’s relationship to print as well as changes in music consumerism in the late eighteenth century. Creating manuscripts required hours of work, yet the labor of amateur musicians, particularly women, was discursively and economically devalued. The gendered attacks obscured the importance of copying and performing music for the self-fashioning of the first generation of amateurs in the new nation, who used their efforts to cultivate gentility, piety, and erudition, as well as sensible connection to others.

This book is an introduction to quantitative research design and data analysis presented in the context of music education scholarship. The book aims for readers to come away with a familiarity of prototypical research design possibilities as well as a fundamental understanding of data analysis techniques necessary for carrying out scientific inquiry. The book includes examples that demonstrate how the methodological and statistical concepts presented throughout can be applied to pertinent issues in music education. For the majority of Part I, the strategy is to present traditional design categories side by side with explanations of general analytical approaches for dealing with data yielded from each respective design type. Part II consists of chapters devoted to methodological and analytical approaches that have become common in related fields (e.g., psychology, sociology, general education research, educational policy) but are as yet not frequently exploited by music education researchers. Ultimately, this work is motivated by a desire to help scholars acquire the means to actualize their research curiosities and to contribute to the advancement of rigor in music education research throughout the profession at large.

The strong desire for knowledge and musical honesty sends musicians to the fortepiano—looking back to impact how to move forward. This book uncovers and examines eighteenth-century philosophical beliefs and fundamental principles surrounding Classical Era performance practices, c. 1750–1800. Affekt and “good taste,” the foundation on which the style is based, set the tone throughout the book. The Viennese five-octave fortepiano is introduced and compared to the modern piano. Eighteenth-century music notational language is examined and explained, as well as compared and contrasted to modern understanding. Tools (rather than rules) are revealed to get at the heart of an eighteenth-century sound aesthetic. These relevant tools make comprehensible what may have been baffling: application to modern playing. This book provides synthesis of primary sources and scholarly interpretations of eighteenth-century performance practice; specific answers to performance questions regarding period influences on the modern piano, including technique, dynamics, articulation, rhythm, ornamentation, and pedaling; and sample model lessons to demonstrate application of the style on the modern piano. Over a hundred music examples are presented to illustrate concepts. Each music example has been recorded and is presented in three instructive versions: (a) an uninfluenced modern interpretation on a Steinway M piano, (b) an influenced rendition on a 1978 Belt-Walter fortepiano replica of a c. 1780s five-octave Anton Walter fortepiano, and (c) a reconciled version demonstrating how the book influences delivery on the modern piano. The goal is to afford modern performers the freedom to craft an authentic, personal, historically informed performance style.

Experience and meaning in music performance is a multi-authored work that both draws on and contributes to current debates in a wide range of disciplines, including ethnomusicology, musicology, psychology, cognitive science and several other fields The eight distinct contributions focus in different ways on its three main themes: Experience, Meaning and Performance. Performance defines the principal object of study as the moment of production—of sound or of meaning—rather than on music as model, ideal or product. Experience focuses attention away from the ideal and the ideological and towards the phenomenal: what people actually do, and what they feel, while engaging in music. Meaning, too, is understood in a broad sense. On one hand, authors examine actions that are musically successful and socially consequential, but whose initial ‘meaning’ owes little to linguistic mediation. On the other hand, the authors retain a place for how discourse shapes music: for what people try to put into a performance, and what they think they (and others) ought to get out of it. Other themes impart cut across those of the volume’s title. Three chapters examine gesture and nonverbal forms of communication, illustrating how experiences of listening, performing and musical collaboration are shaped by movement and gesture. Another trio of essays focuses on elements of temporal organisation in music, particularly pulse, rhythmic patterning, metre and groove. These chapters explore how musicians from different traditions entrain to regular patterns of pulsation in music.