University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory

CONS 491K/5591G: Pedagogy of Music Theory

Spring 2021
Pyero Talone

Class observation 1
Class: Musicianship II, March 5
Instructor: Dr. Beth Elswick

 The instructor began class very much on time, asking students to open their books on a

certain sight-singing exercise, which would work as a warm-up.

 For this warm-up exercise, the instructor played the first pitch on the piano and then

asked all students to sight-sing the melody without unmuting themselves. Although she

was not able to hear any of the students, she observed through her screen whether all the

students seemed to be singing.

 She asked all students to sing a second time, but this time also conducting. She reinforced

that students needed to frame themselves well in their cameras so that she could see their

faces and hands.

 For the third time, she asked all students to unmute themselves while singing and

conducting. I was able to hear only one or two students, because of how Zoom works, but

I am not sure if she had the same experience.

 After the group warmed up, the instructor invited two students to unmute themselves and

sing and conduct the same exercise by themselves. Both students who were chosen went

very well and were applauded by everyone else.

 The next activity seemed to be about an exercise assigned in the previous class. I was not

able to see it, but it seems that the melody, which was composed by Beethoven, was in
 6/8. The instructor called on various students and asked about the differences between 3/4

and 6/8 in the way of grouping and beaming the 8th notes. She asked why the melody

that they were analyzing was beamed in an "unconventional" way and a student rightly

pointed out that it was because of the words. She then talked about how in vocal music

notes are beamed in such a way to reflect the syllables.

 The instructor then proceeded to the next melody, which was composed by Schubert, and

was also in 6/8 meter. She asked a student to sing and conduct it. After she was done, the

instructor pointed out that it seemed as though she was conducting in 3/4. This mistake

led to a discussion on the differences between simple triple and compound duple and,

further on, on the differences between compound and duple. She pointed out that this

subject goes back to Chapter 2 and shows on the white board how notes are beamed

differently in each case.

 The instructor then asked another student to sing and conduct the same Schubert melody,

keeping in mind that it's a compound duple, and the student goes well.

 The following activity was a dictation. It involved the instructor playing 7 chords and

having the students write the soprano and bass lines. She provided the first note on each

voice and then played the sequence of chords, after asking students to make sure that they

"just listen the first time." After a few repetitions, she played the same melody three times

reinforcing the bass voice, followed by three more times bringing out the soprano. The

instructor goes to the white board and calls on specific students to help her complete both

the notes on each voice and the roman numerals below each chord. She observes that "if

you have the outer voices, listen for the qualities to be able to determine the roman

numerals." After the soprano and bass lines, as well as the roman numerals, are
 completed, the instructor asks about second level analysis: where the tonic, pre-dominant

and dominant areas are.

 For the next dictation exercise, before providing the first notes, she announced that it had

two flats and quickly played the new sequence of chords. She then asked whether that

excerpt was in Bb major or in G minor. After they figured out it was in G minor, the

activity followed as the previous dictation, with the same prompts and with no major

problems or interruptions.

 The instructor finally asks students to get their books and explains how their homework

for the next class was supposed to be done.

The class observed was, in my opinion, very well organized and prepared. The instructor

demonstrated great command not only on the content, but also on using technology to teach an

online class. The instructor had three different cameras, and she would switch them according to

what she needed to show: herself playing the piano, the white board, or just her face. By always

calling on students, she minimized the decrease in engagement that online classes usually have in

comparison with in person classes.

Today’s class was focused on aural skills. The class was evenly divided in sight-singing

and dictation exercises. The sight-singing exercise resonated with Peter Schubert’s maxim that

nothing other than real music should appear in class1, as she worked on examples composed by

Beethoven and Schubert. As the author points out, using real music makes students more

engaged and better equipped to develop musical intuitions2. I thought the discussion on how to

1
Peter Schubert., “Global Perspectives on Music Theory Pedagogy: Thinking in Music,” Journal
of Music Theory Pedagogy (2011): 225.
2
Schubert, “Global Perspectives,” 226.
perceive and beam the eighth notes in 3/4 and 6/8 meters—and how the beaming may vary for

vocal music— was very appropriate and demonstrated how music theory and aural skills should

always go together.

The dictation exercises were also very well executed. I appreciated how she urged

students to listen first, as recommended by Michael Rogers3, and provided a good amount of

repetitions. By having students listen for the bass and soprano lines, the instructor reinforced

what Roger’s calls horizontal approach. For the author, this approach de-emphasizes the limited

role that the root itself plays, reflects the way that listeners actually make sense of progressions,

and makes obvious the importance of scale-degree functions4. By also focusing on second-level

analysis, the instructor reinforces Roger’s idea that “understanding the inner fluctuation of

tension and stability is (…) the reason for converting the descriptive but inert symbols of Roman

numeral analysis into functional carriers of dynamic musical motion.” The discussion on where

to situate the tonic, predominant and dominant areas seemed very appropriate and students

demonstrated good command on determining harmonic function on the chord progressions they

analyzed5.

3
Rogers, 113
4
Rogers, 120
5
Rogers, 46
Class observation 2
Class: Musicianship IV, March 24
Instructor: Bonnie McLarty

 The class began with the instructor explaining how today’s class would go: students

would listen to their own composition projects and would have to post on the chat as

many theory terms or analysis information about each piece as possible. These

compositions were previously assigned and were all submitted to the instructor along

with a MIDI recording. She would play each piece without announcing who had

composed it so as to not single out any student.

 While students heard the first piece, they would post a few observations on the chat (e.g.

“pitch center of C”, “switch to major mode at the end”, “Phrygian mode”).

 After observing that not many terms were posted in the chat, the instructor opened a

document that contained a list of music theory terms/concepts (e.g. ostinato, polytonality,

synthetic scales). She then asked the students if they could relate any of the terms to the

listening. The instructor would also call on students and ask if they heard certain concepts

(e.g. “did you hear chordal extensions?”). The instructor played the last seconds of the

piece again and asks whether they heard a V-I cadence. Instructor and a few students

engage in a discussion on the cadence of the end of the listening..

 During the listening of the following recordings, students would post a few observations

on the chat. Generally, one student posted one comment for each piece, unless they were

asked to elaborate by the instructor. Some of the concepts students perceived were:

pentatonic scales; pitch center; tertial, quartal and quintal chords; whole-tone scales;

modal scales and ostinato. The instructor would engage students into further discussing
 the concepts that they came up with. She also commented on what she thought was

effective on students’ compositions.

 After they listened to and commented on all eight recordings, the instructor opened on

YouTube a recording of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Piano Study in Mixed Accents. She

explains the concept of dissonation and asked students to think about the following

questions while listening: “Does it sound organized to you?”, “Can you identify the pitch

centers?”, “Can you predict where the accents go?” After listening to the recording

students gave their opinions: as expected, they were generally not able to find identify

pitch centers or to predict where the accents would go. Two students found that the

contour of the melody seemed to form a palindrome.

I found today’s activity very enriching for music students. I felt that students were a little

too shy to participate. This could be either because they were reluctant to post a concept or term

that might have been “wrong”, or because they were hesitant to comment on their colleagues’

work. The instructor’s role in engaging students by calling on names and discussing students’

answers was essential for the activity to work.

While I was only able to witness a portion of this project, I appreciated how much the

class was invested in a composition activity. By listening to their compositions I was able to

understand that the guidelines probably involved composing a short piece with the techniques

they have been seeing in the semester. As Straus states, there is no better way to get students to

know theoretical concepts intimately, from the inside, than to get them to work with those
concepts creatively.6 With this type of activities, where students listen to each other’s

compositions and hear feedback on their compositions from their colleagues, students are

encouraged to “think in music”, or, as Schubert states, to engage actively with the ideas in music

and to look beneath its surface.7

Rogers observes that, in this type of activity, when specific questions are offered, the

students will be locked, more or less, into the teacher’s train of thought and that the long-range

goal is to create students who are independent of the teacher’s guidance.8 I believe the instructor

did well, in that sense, in asking students to produce any term or concept that came to their minds

while listening and explain their observations to the class. The only moments when she asked

specific questions was, from my viewpoint, when she felt that she needed to instigate the

discussion due to the apparent diffidence of some students. The instructor was always very clear

and knew how to engage even the most reluctant students.

6
Joseph N. Straus, "Ten Tips for Teaching Post-Tonal Theory" in Norton guide to teaching music theory,
edited by Lumsden, Rachel, and Jeffrey Swinkin (New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, 2018): 79-87,
83.
7
Schubert, “Global Perspectives,” 217.
8
Rogers, “Teaching Approaches,” 84.