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Problem The "Music Appreciation" course is a standard at most post-secondary institutions yet it is difficult to find agreement among instructors about just what the nature of this course is. Since there is a wealth of musical material to explore in the world, it is a challenge to decide what music is taught and what gets left to the back pages of the textbook. Most textbooks cover the basics of Western music history, beginning with the Middle Ages and marching swiftly through time to cover a little of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schoenberg. With only thirteen weeks to cover a thousand years of artistic and creative history, it is no wonder that students tended to find the amount of material daunting. But more frustrating for the instructor, was finding that even after thirteen weeks, students had difficulty hearing the difference between a piece by Bach and something by Stravinsky. If one of the goals of a music appreciation course is to prepare students for concert hall experiences, for them to make informed choices and listen to concert music with an informed ear, then it seemed my courses had fallen short. How could students be invited into the world of art music, make sense of this mostly foreign art form, and develop the aural skills necessary to understand and speak meaningfully about their experiences?
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Using Writing to Focus the Ear: The Sound Journal In the Spring semester of 2007 I introduced students to the pioneering work of sound artist Pauline Oliveros who has coined the term "Deep Listening". Oliveros uses "Deep Listening" to help participants in her workshops to notice sounds and to develop a greater awareness for subtleties in the acoustic environment. I began the semester by asking students to take time to listen to their acoustic environment by assigning them John Cage's 4'33"--a piece in which no intentional musical sounds are made. They were asked to write about what they heard, paying attention to describe the sounds in as much detail as possible. I then assigned five further Journals in which they would record their responses to select pieces of music. The Journals were guided by questions designed to move their thinking from basic observations, though analysis, to a synthesis with their own experiences. The pieces were selected to reinforce the music studied in class, with one piece from each of the major periods in music history (Baroque, Classical, Romantic) and one free choice at the end of the semester.
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Results This writing assignment was designed to focus student listening and lead to greater attention to musical detail by turning the often passive act of listening into an active engagement with the music. Of course it is not possible to reach all of the students all of time, but there is evidence that this approach helped many students. The Final Exam in MSH 114 includes a section in which six short excerpts of music are played. Students are asked to identify the music, giving the title, composer, historical period and other key features about the music which we studied in class. Included are two "unknown" pieces which are similar to pieces studied in class (for example instead of "Lost Your Head Blues" by Bessie Smith, I might play another Bessie Smith tune, "St. Louis Blues", for example). In the past, performance on this part of the exam has been disappointing with students routinely misidentifying works and confusing pieces and composers. The scores for this section of the exam in 2005 and 2006 averaged 36%, 40.5%, and 48%--disappointing averages to be sure. Students in the Spring 2007 semester average 69% on this section of the exam, a significant improvement over past courses. In addition to improving student's ability to listen carefully and identify differences, writing about music often also helped develop student's vocabulary and with that vocabulary, greater attention to detail. In the samples below, the students moved from general awareness of the complexities of sound to greater nuance along with generally error-free writing.
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