In the first part of this sporadically updated series, I offered a very brief introduction to the intriguing music of Gustav Mahler. There were a couple of brief mentions of my favorite Mahler passages, and links to a few blog entries celebrating his 150th birthday. As a brass player, I can’t help but enjoy Mahler’s music. He loved highlighting the brass section, and did it as well as any composer in history.
For the second part of this series, I’d like to offer a few recordings that I feel best illustrate Mahler’s considerable talents.
Symphony #8, First Movement “Hymn: Veni, Creator Spiritus”
Symphony #5, First Movement “Trauermarsch”
Symphony #3, First Movement
Kindertotenlieder, as sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Tags: Gustav Mahler, Music
Thanks to a bevy of recent substitute jobs filled with planning periods, I was able to plow through Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia in about a week. I plan on doing a more in-depth review of the book in the near future, but there were a few ideas that sprang to mind from reading the book that wouldn’t really fit nicely into any review.
The whole premise of Musicophilia is an exploration of the various ways that music can affect the brain. We cover tone deafness, perfect pitch, musical hallucinations, innate musical talent…the whole spectrum. But the meat of the book discusses how music can positively impact those with special needs—Parkinson’s patients, low-functioning autistic people, Alzheimer’s patients, Tourrette’s sufferers, et al. A great deal of his research could be applied toward improving the education system in our country.
Sacks is probably most famous for his work with patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the 1960s. During this time, he worked with patients who had fallen victim to an outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s. These patients were virtually unable to respond to any outside stimulus on their own as the disease had robbed them of both motion and speech. Sacks found that he could ‘awaken’ these patients by administering doses of L-Dopa, a discovery chronicled in the film Awakenings.
Research on these patients also showed that music was a stimulus that would create a response. In patients exhibiting Parkinsonism, music could help patients regain fluid movement for a time. Agitated patients could be calmed by music, and frozen patients could respond to the stimulus in some manner. In short, Dr. Sacks’ research showed that music could enact not only superficial changes in a person, but neurological changes as well, however brief.
How does this apply to our education system? Look at special education classrooms. I’ve taught in a few special ed classrooms this past year, and I always bring something musical with me, be it my iPod or my trombone. In my limited observations, the music I’ve shared with these kids has had a positive effect in the classroom, and the research in Dr. Sacks’ book would no doubt back this up.
I distinctly remember a two-day assignment in an emotionally impaired (EI) classroom. After I introduced myself to the kids, I told them that I was a music teacher. One of the students lit up and ran over to one of the computers in the room and fired up GarageBand, eager to show me some of the music he had created. Music was something that helped him focus and improved his social interactions as well.
Over the course of the two days, I also learned that this young man was a talented percussionist. Whenever it looked like he was starting to get agitated, he asked if he could pull out his drum and play for a few minutes. Again, it definitely helped him with focus and social skills.
At the end of my assignment, this particular student had a rough day in one of his “regular” classes, and came back to the EI room in full meltdown mode. We gave him a fairly wide berth, but also decided to put on some music in the background to see if it would help calm things down. It did; not immediately, but quicker than normal according to the aides.
That little anecdote is just my roundabout way of suggesting a change in the structure of our special ed programs. Would it be that far-fetched to make music therapy a regular part of special ed classes? Think of the impact that one or two 30-minute sessions each week could have on special needs students at any given school. A district hiring a music therapist to rotate between a few buildings each week is not that radical of an idea, and if money is an issue, there would be grants available.
There’s plenty of research available that shows the positive effects that such a move could have on special needs students. Music has the power to calm, to focus and to stimulate. It can positively affect students in the same classroom, who have different needs, at the same time. Is there anything else in our teaching arsenal that can offer this without some serious differentiation? Just a thought, but this seems like it would be a very worthwhile experiment.
Tags: music education, Music therapy, philosophy, special education
After graduating from college in May of 2009, I expected to have many musical opportunities available to me. Teaching, performing and composing were all very attractive options, and I’ve been able to do each of those in at least some capacity in the past year or so. What I did not expect was the chance to perform under the baton of Maestro Leonard Slatkin earlier this month.
It was an unlikely opportunity for several reasons. First, Maestro Slatkin does not frequently work with bands. Also, I’m not anywhere near good enough on the trombone to perform in the Detroit Symphony. This collaboration came about thanks to the first ever Motor City Festival of Bands. Three adult community bands (including the West Michigan Concert Winds, of which I am a part) and two brass bands joined forces to put on a two-hour concert in Dearborn. The grand finale was a mass ensemble consisting of over 300 musicians, directed by Maestro Slatkin.
After 40 minutes or so of rehearsal, and a performance that was over all too quickly, I know that even the best musicians are always expanding their boundaries. The masters are still trying to learn new things about their craft. Maestro Slatkin might work with a band once every five or ten years, but he came into that rehearsal as well-prepared as somebody who teaches band music on a daily basis. That couldn’t have been easy to do for somebody who has been part of the orchestra world for well over 40 years.
I came away from the whole experience very impressed by how Maestro Slatkin handled himself. I was surprised that a big player on the orchestra scene would find time to step out of his comfort zone and work with over 300 musicians from community bands across Michigan. I was surprised at how well he adapted to an unfamiliar world. And last but certainly not least, I was surprised at the quality of the music we produced with strangers after less than an hour of rehearsal.
Tags: Music, music education, philosophy
…comes from the most unexpected sources.
Today was my first time ever attending the technology pre-conference at the Michigan Music Conference. Not coincidentally, today was also the most informative and enjoyable day I’ve had at the Conference in three years.
The first session of the day was the keynote address, presented by Dr. Jim Frankel. Dr. Frankel spoke about different ways to integrate technology into the music classroom, be it through blogging, GarageBand, or cloud computing. I’ll post the list of resources from this presentation at the end of the conference.
Dr. Frankel showed us several examples of how to use blogs and wikis within the music classroom. It seems like such a small thing, but Dr. Frankel shared anecdotal evidence supporting his ideas. Students want to create content in the same medium that they consume, and thus tend to respond more favorably to things like blogging, Twitter and wikis.
In my notes from the first session, I have written, “Tech can enhance the music program by reinforcing what you’re already doing, or expanding creative opportunities for students.” This is a fantastic way to segue into session number two, presented by Mr. Kevin Saunderson.
Mr. Saunderson is a huge figure in the world of music, yet he was not a traditional music student. In fact, Mr. Saunderson had no formal training in music at all. While some would consider this a serious limitation to somebody pursuing a music career, Mr. Saunderson considered it a gift to not be bound by the traditional rules when he was going through the creative process. With no formal music training, Mr. Saunderson was able to take the sounds and rhythms inside his head and become one of the Belleville Three, the pioneers of techno music.
It makes you wonder…how many Kevin Saundersons are walking through our hallways every day, ignored by the traditional music curriculum? Music wasn’t any less important to him than it is to you or I, he merely enjoyed expressing himself in a non-traditional musical manner. If we can make room for this in our programs, there’s no telling how many students we can reach, what deep wells of creativity we can tap into.
Mr. Saunderson’s session was a real inspiration, and should serve as a wake-up call to music educators everywhere. He accomplished great things musically because he merely had the freedom to experiment. No music teacher ever restricted his creativity, and as a result, his experimentation with melody, rhythm and technology have resulted in high numbers of album sales worldwide and a massive audience for his music.
More to come tomorrow, and a comprehensive list of resources will be posted at the end of the conference.
Tags: Music, music education, philosophy, technology
Imagine a Clockwork Orange-type education system, where students who step out of line are subjected not to detention, but to the music of Bach, Verdi and others on a constant loop. Rather than being taught to appreciate the great artists from our past, students are taught that classical music is a punishment rather than a pleasurable experience. What better way to make somebody hate something for life than to punish them with it as a youngster?
Such an environment exists today, unfortunately. A school in Derby is using the music of Bach and Verdi, and the poetry of William Blake, to punish unruly students. To their credit, they have seen results, but at what cost? Is this an example of just how little we value the creative aspects of our culture today? Rather than study these artists in a context that would help students derive some meaning from their accomplishments, these artists are relegated to being the stimulus in some Pavlovian punishment loop.
The arts are a lot like eating spinach—if you’re forced to do it as a child, you won’t enjoy it as an adult.
Tags: Music, music education, philosophy, Teaching
For musicians and music-lovers around the world, 2010 is a hugely important year. It’s the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s birth. The name Gustav Mahler is more than enough to get the blood flowing for many people, especially brass players like myself. Mahler was a brilliant composer, and certainly never shied away from featuring the brass in important passages, like the bombastic, intimidating trombone solo from his Third Symphony, the haunting call of the trumpet to begin his Fifth Symphony, or the rarely-used tenor horn that listeners are treated to during his Seventh Symphony.
Over the course of the year, I plan to make several posts celebrating different aspects of Mahler’s life, music and legacy. He’s my favorite composer, and over the years this interest has grown from mere curiosity to borderline obsession. As I’ve learned more about music and how it works, I’ve become more impressed and enamored with the works of Mahler.
I’m a full-blown Mahlerian.
To start, I’d like to share a few resources to help get others started on the 150th Birthday Celebrations.
Tom Service: The Best Mahler on YouTube
The Guardian: Modern Composers on Mahler
Tom Service: How I Discovered Mahler
Armando Iannucci: Why I Love Mahler
“A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
—Gustav Mahler
Tags: Gustav Mahler, Music
Disclaimer: I think it’s important to take Malcolm Gladwell’s writing with a grain of salt. At times, it seems like he uses small sample sizes or cherry-picks stories in order to support his thesis. It’s important to not take his writing as the absolute authority on his chosen subjects. That said, I like that his writing makes psychological/sociological ideas accessible and understandable.
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What the Dog Saw, is a collection of his pieces from The New Yorker. In this volume, he writes about everything from condiments, to Ron Popeil, to the Enron scandal. Tucked neatly in these pages, in an article about former Missouri quarterbacks Chase Daniel and Chase Patton, are some interesting ideas about teaching that Gladwell relates to the trials of transitioning from college to pro football.
Now, I’ve written about The Tipping Point in this space before and how a professor of mine used that to make some important points about music education. That was a case of Gladwell’s ideas being brilliant when given a new context. Unfortunately, when he is writing explicitly about education, his ideas become more puzzling and create more questions than they answer.
This article, entitled Most Likely to Succeed, is certainly a puzzler. In it, Gladwell proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that even good people can have bad ideas. This seems to be a major problem in the field of education—people with good intentions but no prior educational experience are put in a position to make decisions, and often make poor ones. No Child Left Behind is a shining example.
In this article, Gladwell attempts to make a connection between drafting an NFL quarterback and hiring a teacher. As an educator and a sports fan, I was quite interested to see what connections he would make. His main point is that football scouts can not effectively evaluate college quarterbacks until they’ve been given the chance to perform in a pro-style offense, because there is such a big difference between college and professional playbooks. Then, Gladwell claims that it is equally difficult to evaluate teachers until after they’ve had the chance to work in the field for a couple of years because there is such a difference between college and “the pros”.
The whole premise of his article is based on this analogy, and I find a great deal of fault with it.
First of all, comparing the NFL draft to attempts to improve our education system trivializes teaching as a profession. Luckily for Joey Harrington and Ryan Leaf, change in society has never hinged on the play of a quarterback. Educators, on the other hand, can facilitate sweeping changes (albeit very gradually) by virtue of being good at their job.
That might be nitpicking on my part, but the issues don’t end there. At one point, Gladwell states:
Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander’s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated.
I’m sure that Gladwell means well here. He would no doubt like to improve the US education system, but those few sentences show a lot of ignorance about the nuts and bolts of the profession. His plan to open up teaching to those without education degrees sounds eerily similar to John McCain’s “Troops to Teachers” plan.
For those of you unfamiliar with Troops to Teachers, here’s a brief summary taken from an LA Times transcript of a McCain speech:
MCCAIN: We need to encourage programs such as Teach for America and Troops to Teachers where people, after having served in the military, can go right to teaching and not have to take these examinations which — or have the certification that some are required in some states.
They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and McCain’s plan would have certainly sent the US education system to hell in a handbasket. The certification tests that he dismisses so easily are all about content mastery. I don’t care how inspirational or heroic a teacher is, we can’t have teachers in the classroom if they don’t have a good grasp on what it is they are supposed to be teaching.
McCain and Gladwell also seem to casually dismiss the importance of teacher training programs in college. While you can achieve content mastery outside of a traditional teacher certification program, you don’t get the valuable classroom practice or observations that you do in a traditional program.
During my time in the Music Education program at Michigan State, I spent time in at least five different classrooms—observing the teacher and teaching small lessons—before I even began student teaching. Those experiences plus student teaching is where teachers learn how to interact with their students and deliver content. Under the Gladwell/McCain plans, we’d lose that part of the training.
What makes this even more puzzling is that earlier in the article, Gladwell cites a calculation done by Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford. Hanushek says that by replacing the bottom six to ten percent of teachers in the US pool with merely average teachers, the US education system could close the gap with higher-performing countries like Belgium and Canada. Why, then, would we want to take the risk of adding more bad teachers to the pool?
The last issue I’ll bring up here is perhaps the one that bothers me the most. While it’s refreshing to see somebody thinking outside of the box in an effort to help the education system, it’s upsetting to see that they don’t understand how it works. Gladwell calls for a rigorous apprenticeship system, apparently ignorant of student teaching, the rigorous apprenticeship system we already have in place. There are already constant observations, lesson planning, classroom management, administrative tasks, etc. as part of the student teaching internship. Aspiring teachers must already prove themselves over the course of six months or a year before they can be accepted into the profession.
Tags: Malcolm Gladwell, philosophy, Teaching
Glenn Branca, I’m calling you out.
Sure, you’re writing for the New York Times, which is a loftier literary post than I’ll ever hold, but what good is your position with one of the world’s most prestigious papers if you’re going to use it to spread sheer lunacy?
I’m talking about ‘The End of Music‘, an opinion piece that appeared in the Times last Tuesday.
A friend of mine has already voiced her opinions on the matter, calling Branca’s piece “melodramatic”, “attention-grabbing”, “judgmental” and “snobby.” And I honestly can’t say I disagree with any of that. It seems like Branca is going out of his way to make inflammatory—and patently untrue—statements. Let’s take his article apart piece by piece.
We seem to be on the edge of a paradigm shift. Orchestras are struggling to stay alive, rock has been relegated to the underground, jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art, the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture and composers are at their wit’s end trying to find something that’s hip but still appeals to an audience mired in a 19th-century sensibility.
The second sentence of the article contains a rare truth—Orchestras are struggling to stay alive. A quick Google search of ‘orchestra budget deficit‘ shows that even the most prestigious, most historically successful orchestras have been operating at a loss recently. Branca’s reasoning is wrong, though. Orchestras aren’t struggling because audiences are mired in a 19th-century sensibility, they’re struggling because they haven’t adapted to the changing musical tastes of their audiences. But that’s a post for another day.
Immediately after his statement about orchestras, Branca loses the plot. He makes the outrageous claim that “…rock has been relegated to the underground, jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art…” This is ignorant at best, inflammatory at worst. To say that jazz has stopped evolving is to disrespect musicians like Josh Roseman, Dave Holland and the Marsalis family. To say that rock has gone underground is to ignore the fact that Metallica’s latest album opened atop the Billboard charts, or that a “niche” group like Dream Theater consistently finds their albums debuting high in the charts as well.
For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music. In this case the paradigm shift may not be a shift but a dead stop. Is it that people just don’t want to hear anything new? Or is it that composers and musicians have simply swallowed the pomo line that nothing else new can be done, which ironically is really just the “old, old story.”
This paragraph is nothing but sour grapes, rife with subjective opinion. Branca’s statement about the current quality of music seems to be rooted in personal taste and nothing more. Composers and musicians are doing new and exciting things; it’s not their fault that Branca has turned a blind eye to their accomplishments.
Look no further than the GVSU New Music Ensemble. They took “In C”, a well-known minimalist piece by composer Terry Riley and gave it a completely new and unique performance. Or, take The Streets’ 2004 release, A Grand Don’t Come For Free. Plenty of musicians have created a concept album, but this album takes it in an entirely different direction. I won’t spoil the surprise for you—you’ll have to listen on your own.
There’s a long list of composers doing new things with music as you read this blog. Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir project comes to mind, as does Jacob Ter Veldhuis’ Grab It! for saxophone and boombox. That’s just off the top of my head, but given five minutes or so, I could name a lengthy list of composers and musicians who are stretching boundaries and changing perceptions, just like Boulez, Varese and Stockhausen did so many years ago.
Certainly music itself is not dead. We’ll continue to hear something approximating it blaring in shopping malls, fast food stops, clothing stores and wherever else it will mesmerize the consumer into excitedly pulling out their credit card or debit card or whatever might be coming.
Branca seems to be confusing ‘music’ with ‘muzak’ here. Music is an organic thing, constantly evolving. It involves a relationship between composer and performer, and performer and audience. My interpretation of this paragraph is that Branca expects those relationships to come to an abrupt end, that somehow we’ll be able to turn a blind eye to the world of music despite the fact that it’s been a terribly important part of world culture throughout history.
Pardon me if I’m a bit skeptical about that one.
Even though musical tastes and the way we experience music have changed, there are still legions of people out there still actively listening to and involved in music. Orchestras are constantly searching for new ways in which to interact with their patrons, pop music artists are finding ways to build closer relationships with their fans through social media which in turn creates a more meaningful musical experience, and musicians have found new ways to collaborate through vehicles like the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.
If anything, the modern world has given us more ways to enhance our musical experience than ever before. It seems rather cynical on Branca’s part to paint this as a negative thing.
Tags: composing, jazz, Music, NY Times, philosophy
This past weekend, for the first time in about 11 months, I was part of a live performance.
Student teaching and graduation from college had conspired to keep me out of any musical ensembles for the past 11 months, and I was grateful for the opportunity provided by a small community jazz band just a half-hour’s drive from my house.
They aren’t the most talented musicians I’ve ever played with, and the literature isn’t particularly difficult, but that’s not what this is all about. It’s about getting to be a part of that special communal relationship that only a musical ensemble can offer. It’s about getting together for a couple of hours each week with a group of people who love making music as much as I do. Most importantly, it’s about reconnecting with a part of my life that had been missing for over a year.
It’s going to be a long, circuitous route, but I’ll link this back to teaching, I promise.
An old quote says, “Those who can’t do, teach.” Words to live by—if you’d like to be nothing more than a poor-to-mediocre teacher. A more accurate saying would be, “Those who teach must do, lest they forget how.” It’s important to remain involved in your field to keep your knowledge base updated and easily available for recall in the classroom.
Up until the recent musical opportunity presented itself, I hadn’t played my trombone—or any instrument, for that matter—regularly since May. I had made an effort to play every day while student teaching, especially as a model for my students, but as soon as I graduated, a lengthy lay-off had set in.
It’s amazing how much ‘rust’ I had to shake off after just a short time away from total immersion in music. I hadn’t forgotten how to play the trombone, not by a long shot, but I wasn’t as comfortable in an ensemble setting as I had been in college, nor did I have my full facility on the instrument.
Imagine how rough the transition back to functional musician would have been if I’d taken a year off, or two years instead of just six months. That’s an awful long time to be away from that aspect of my field. Even if I were currently working in the music ed field, I think that taking a huge break from performing/composing would hurt my teaching, as it would mean that I was not continuing to refine my understanding of those aspects of music.
Moral of the story—stay involved in your field, lest your teaching suffer.
Tags: jazz, Music, music education, philosophy, Teaching, trombone