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Music class follow-up
This is, in its way, a follow up to a couple posts from last week. Back on , I posted about the music class I teach, soliciting ideas for it. As I mentioned then, I've experimented with a number of ways of doing it, from teaching it as a traditional introductory music history class (and I've tried many different approaches to this approach), I've tried to make it a more performance-oriented course, essentially making them into a choir, on the theory that I personally came to love music because of performing it, so the same might apply to my students. It didn't work any which way, which maybe shouldn't have been a surprise, given the uneven mix of musical experience and talent, as well as the sometimes-staggeringly-small classes (4 is the smallest I've had, while 13 is the largest). I've tried to teach the class with more of an emphasis on music theory (how music is constructed), with the hope of getting students creating music, but couldn't get that to work.
Back around Thanksgiving or Christmas, I was reading a tiny little book called Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook. The level of it seemed to be a bit above most of my students (they're freshmen and sophomores and a number are non-native speakers), but still there were interesting examinations of the way that music fits into our culture, how it's used symbolically as well as how its producers are regarded (rock vs. pop, for instance, where one is considered authentic artistry and the other is seen as mindless crap, a state of affairs that can be traced back at least to the 19th century, where the composer began to be seen as better than a "mere" performer). This is just a sample of the issues raised, but it got me thinking about the different ways that music viewed and used in the modern world, the multiplicity of perspectives on this art form. So I've been toying around with the idea of trying to make students conscious of the various choices that people make regarding music: the choices that a composer has (what they write down and how they do so, vs. what is not written down), the choices that a performer has (all the stuff that isn't written down), even the choices that listeners have (do they listen to the words, the music, the beat? Is music something to be listened to seriously, is it background sound?). Also, the ways that music is used in films, or the various structures of concerts. How new technologies have changed music (recording comes most notably to mind, but that could be further broken down to recording technologies generally and then modern digital recording, and these from both the production and consumption side). Would these sorts of issues be more interesting and potentially more valuable than, say, learning the music and about the lives of a whole bunch of composers from past centuries? Not that these are wholly exclusive things, but given the time constraints perhaps they are in this case.
Anyway, while watching The Pianist, it seemed to me that this film might be an interesting way to get at several different issues about music. On the one hand, there could be an examination of his professional performance, first for the radio and then later for the cafe that caters to the wealthy Jews, and what his purpose and role is in each case--so, in part, what music means to the people who hear it, besides what it is to him. We see more about what music is to him after everything has been taken from him and the only thing remaining to him is his music, the way that he almost desperately imagines himself playing and the way that he plays for the German officer toward the end... clearly it seems to be a sustaining force in his life, something that's desperately important. For that matter, just the respect that being a musician gives him and why that is--he's saved from extermination because of it, we get the sense that it may have played a role with that German officer and, for that matter, it seems likely that it's been central to a number of the friendships that help him throughout the film. Why does music hold that sort of role in society--even or perhaps especially a society which is being ripped apart by war and genocide? For that matter, we can even use the film to examine the way that soundtracks are used in films.
I don't think I could teach an entire 11 week course just on this film, but certainly it could be used for a number of issues. If I can get all these ideas organized, maybe I can test them out starting in late March or early April. And if this has spurred any additional ideas or thoughts, please do share them with me.
Good day, all!