Music

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End date: 2019Subject: search.filters.subject.Music education

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    MAKING IT THROUGH: PERSISTENCE AND ATTRITION ALONG MUSIC, EDUCATION, AND MUSIC EDUCATION PATHWAYS
    (2019) Grisé, Adam Twain; Elpus, Kenneth; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this secondary analysis of data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, I examine predictive factors related to uptake, persistence, and attrition on professional and educational pathways leading individuals to careers in music, education, and music education. I investigate seven years of longitudinal data comparing persistence and attrition factors between pathways, utilizing a multiple perspectives approach to conceptualize the equity of each point along the path. Using recently updated restricted use data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, an ongoing study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics drawing on a nationally representative sample of over 25,000 individuals, I isolated people who, during their high school or college years, indicated intentions to pursue either educational or professional pathways leading to a career in music education. Additionally, I identified individuals who either expressed intentions to pursue pathways toward teaching a non-music subject or toward becoming a professional musician. Tracking these individuals across four sampling points over a seven year period from the beginning of high school to the end of college illuminates the entry and exit points for aspirant music educators, non-music teachers, and professional musicians. I provide a tripartite conception of equity to evaluate the pathway outcomes associated with persistence and attrition along each of these respective paths by framing each outcome phase in terms of demographics, societal influences, and individual contributions. Comparing these populations horizontally to each other provides perspective on how the music education pathway relates to and differs from these parallel trajectories. Comparing persistent to attritive populations within each stream uncovers systematically predictive factors at key junctures. Findings show the significant influence environmental factors, demographic profile, and individual navigational contributions have on uptake into, persistence along, and attrition from the music, education, and music education pathways. Further, these results illustrate key similarities and differences between those who persist on each parallel path. By illuminating some of the systemic choke points along the progression from high school student to professionally-intent degree seeker, this study may have recruitment, matriculation, retention, and attrition implications for music teachers, music teacher educators, policy makers, gatekeepers, and advocates.
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    THE IMPACT OF GENRE FUSION AND IMPROVISATIONAL ELEMENTS IN 21ST-CENTURY OPERAS ON VOCAL PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICE
    (2019) DuBose, Sequina; Balthrop, Carmen; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the 21st century, opera composers are expanding beyond traditional boundaries by incorporating improvisatory elements and musical style elements from non-classical genres. The purpose of this study is to point to the impact these trends will have on vocal pedagogy and performance practice. The opening chapters of the dissertation provide historical context by examining the role of improvisation in the Baroque era and beyond, along with details concerning key shifts in audience culture, vocal aesthetic and performance practice throughout history. Chapter two also incorporates narratives from key industry practitioners, voice pedagogue Dr. Rachelle Fleming, and American Opera Projects Artistic Director, Mila Henry. Chapter three consists of a discussion of the research methodology and the key researchers and methodologists that influenced the study. This study is a narrative inquiry that employs an analysis of narrative approach and paradigmatic reasoning in its analysis, inducing themes and relationships between the concepts that reveal themselves in the data and literature. Chapter four includes narrative research and analysis based on interviews that have been conducted with composers and singers from four innovative operas: Charlie Parker’s Yardbird (Daniel Schynder), I Dream: A Rhythm and Blues Opera (Douglas Tappin), Blue Viola (Peter Hilliard), and The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock (David Lang; the composer intentionally uses lowercase script in the titles of his works). Each composer and singer offers a unique perspective regarding the interpretation of and preparation for contemporary operatic works and furthers the argument that academic voice programs will benefit from an expanded curriculum that prepares singers to meet the evolving demands of the opera industry. The final chapter provides personal testimony from the author and suggested vocal and dramatic exercises for incorporating improvisation in a manner that may be of use in university opera workshops, group voice classes, and voice studios. This body of research documents the stylistic and technical considerations that modern opera singers and teachers take into account in order to branch out and explore operatic works that have genre-bending and/or improvisative elements. Based on the findings from this study it is recommended that voice teachers cross-train by teaching classically trained singers to adapt their singing methods to various styles.
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    The Black Power Classroom: An Ethnomusicological Approach to Teaching African Heritage Awareness Through Music Education in Botswana and African America
    (2019) Cunningham, Maya; Witzleben, John L; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The Black Power Classroom uses ethnomusicology to understand how culturally responsive music education is used to teach African American and Botswanan children their African heritage. I first interrogate the coloniality of minstrelsy and the distortion of Black America’s African heritage that warrants the need for African heritage to be taught to Black American children. I then overview the historical/contemporary agendas for Black education, and how music education fits into these agendas, by comparing those of African Americans to those of the “The State,” which operates as a colonial actor. I then analyze the use of culturally responsive instruction in a music program for African American fourth graders in Washington DC, drawing from Gaunt’s theory of kinetic orality. Finally, an analysis of how traditional music is used to teach cultural identity in Botswana elucidates the key components of a culturally responsive music education model that could be effective for African American students.
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    Using Mindfulness to Reduce Occupational Stress and Burnout in Music Teachers: A Randomized Controlled Trial
    (2019) Varona, Dana Arbaugh; Hewitt, Michael P; Prichard, Stephanie; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) on K-12 music educators' self-reported responses to occupational stress and burnout. Secondary purposes were (a) to explore the experiences of K-12 music educators who underwent a four-week web-based MBI; and (b) to determine if there were any potential relations between participants' demographic and descriptive data and their pretest levels of self-reported responses to occupational stress and burnout. Two hundred fifty in-service music teachers were randomly assigned to either the treatment or waitlist-control group. Treatment group participants (n = 90) underwent a four-week online MBI known as the Mindfulness Training for Music Educators (MTME). Waitlist-control group participants (n = 160) were not provided with any mindfulness training but were given full access to the MTME following completion of the study. All participants completed assessments of self-reported responses to occupational stress and burnout at pretest, midpoint, and posttest. Following completion of the MTME, treatment group participants provided data regarding their experiences with the MTME and its feasibility. Results of mixed effects regression suggested that treatment group participants reported significantly steeper decreases in responses to occupational stress and burnout than waitlist-control group participants. Cross-sectional analyses at pretest indicated that age, female gender, salary dissatisfaction, perceived lack of administrative support, and perceived lack of parental support were significant predictors of increased responses to occupational stress, while teaching secondary school, salary dissatisfaction, perceived lack of administrative support, and perceived lack of parental support were significant predictors of increased responses to burnout. For each additional extracurricular hour worked beyond the school day, there was small but significant decrease in burnout. During the intervention period, the treatment group participants experienced a variety of occupational stressors including managing students, major events, interpersonal conflict, scheduling issues, and illness. Participants primarily responded to occupational stress with emotion-focused coping strategies such as breathing and meditation. Overall, treatment group participants found the MTME to be feasible for reducing stress and burnout while working as a music teacher and would recommend it to a fellow music educator.
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    DICTION PEDAGOGY: A SURVEY OF NEW ENGLAND HIGH SCHOOL CHORAL DIRECTORS
    (2019) Chris, Grace Elizabeth; Elpus, Kenneth; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Diction is unique to choral music due to the distinct attribute of combining text and music. Choral pedagogues, teacher preparation programs, resources, and professional development have historically offered a wide variety of advocations about what practices to employ when teaching diction, though many have gone untested. While choral education research is plentiful, none has been conducted about diction pedagogy practices. The purpose of this study was to describe the current practices New England high school choral teachers use when teaching diction, particularly what methods and materials are most commonly being used. After collecting survey data from directors (n = 121), results indicate a wide array of diction practices being utilized with rote teaching and vocal modeling being the most predominately reported method, and audio recordings being the most reported material. These findings may contribute to a clearer understanding of diction practices and may inspire future research to study most effective practices.
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    Showcase the Obscure: Forgotten Trombone Solos from the Paris Conservatory
    (2019) Wolfe, Joshua M; Gekker, Chris; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The trombone contest solos commissioned by the Paris Conservatory provide a vast repertoire from which trombonists can perform. Since 1897, more than fifty-one composers have been commissioned to write over fifty-eight solo pieces for trombone. Many trombone students and teachers, however, seem unaware of a majority of the high-quality repertoire available. Trombone recital programs frequently feature the same solo works by Castérède, Bozza, Defaye, Dutilleux, Gabaye, Gaubert, Guilmant, Martin, Milhaud, Ropartz, Saint-Saëns, and Tomasi. Even within this short list of select composers, typically only a single solo is known and performed regularly, but in many cases the composers above have written multiple trombone solo works. Additionally, this handful of composers represents less than one-third of the potential composers to choose from, many of whom also contributed multiple works to the trombone solo repertoire. This recital series highlights selected works commissioned by the Paris Conservatory that have become obscure. For all of the proposed repertoire, no recordings were found beyond a handful of amateur recordings online; most works had no recordings available at all. The selected solos range from the first piece commissioned in 1897, Solo de Concert by Paul Vidal, to Rhapsodie by Jeanine Rueff for the 1962 contest. Interaction with a more comprehensive and diverse solo repertoire provides students and teachers with direct exposure to the complex French cultural and political history inexorably linked with its art. This dissertation showcases this forgotten solo repertoire and advocates each composition’s significance through formal analysis, pedagogical relevance, and historical context.
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    The Effects of With-Text and Without-Text Song Presentation Styles on Preschoolers' Singing Voice Use and Pitch Accuracy
    (2018) Kendal, Jessica Leigh; Hewitt, Michael; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of with-text and without-text song presentation styles on the song-singing competencies of singing voice use and pitch accuracy in preschool children. A secondary purpose of the study was to discern if there were any relationships between preschoolers’ tonal developmental music aptitude, song presentation styles, singing voice use, and pitch accuracy. A total of twenty-nine 3.5- to 5-year-old preschoolers from a university children’s center in the Mid-Atlantic United States were randomly assigned within intact classes to either a text-only song presentation style or a syllable-text song presentation style when being taught two new, unfamiliar criterion songs within the context of weekly 30-minute music and movement lessons at the center. Participants in the text-only control condition (n =13) heard and sang the criterion songs with text for the entirety of the 11-week study; participants in the syllable-text intervention condition (n =16) heard and sang the criterion songs on a neutral syllable for the first six weeks of the study, then with the associated text for the remaining five weeks. All participants were pretested for developmental tonal music aptitude and were recorded singing a familiar song to determine baseline singing competencies before the start of the study; all participants were recorded singing the two criterion songs at the conclusion of the study for posttest measurement. Recordings were evaluated by three trained raters using Rutkowski’s (1998) SVDM and were evaluated by the researcher for pitch accuracy percentage scores. Results of descriptive statistical analyses showed no significant differences in median scores between the groups for singing voice use or pitch accuracy at posttest. Results of correlational analyses suggest that presenting new songs initially without text may support preschoolers’ use of singing voice, while presenting new songs with text may support preschoolers’ pitch accuracy. These analyses also showed minimal correlation between tonal developmental music aptitude and singing scores. Pitch accuracy was found to be highly correlated with singing voice use.
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    The Wind Band Works of the MENC Contemporary Music Project Library
    (2018) Coffill, Brian Albert; Votta, Michael; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been a continuous effort within the wind band profession to improve the quality of the available repertoire. From 1959 through 1973, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and the Ford Foundation contributed to this enterprise through the Contemporary Music Project (CMP), placing seventy-three promising young composers in-residence with public school systems across the United States of America. These composers were assigned to collaborate with school music programs to create a new body of literature suitable for performance by school bands, orchestras, and choirs. Hundreds of works were written, and, in the late years of the program, the participating composers were invited to submit representative compositions to the CMP Library, which was to become a publication house and resource for music educators. The works in this vast collected repository have since languished in obscurity; existing scholarship on the CMP Library is similarly meager, with little modern scholarship, none investigating the body of collected wind works. This dissertation reopens the investigation into the CMP from a modern perspective, shining a scholarly light onto this neglected portion of the wind repertoire. This study is in two parts: the first part defines the evolution of the modern wind band, framing the investigation into CMP repertoire in the context of present-day ensemble performance practice, then describes the Contemporary Music Project and the Contemporary Music Project Library in-context. The second examines the Contemporary Music Project Library works written specifically for wind bands, exploring each work with modern performance considerations in mind, and updating the 1969 MENC/CMP publication The CMP Library: Works for Band, Winds, and Percussion with new information on each composer and individual work, creating a set of resources for modern conductors and music educators to utilize for contemporary performances.
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    THE EFFECTS OF PRACTICE-BASED AND THEORETICAL-BASED PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES ON JAZZ IMPROVISATION AND PERFORMANCE ACHIEVEMENT BY HIGH SCHOOL MUSICIANS
    (2017) Brumbach, Glen A; Hewitt, Michael P; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The main purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of two methods of jazz instruction—theoretical-based and practice-based—on the improvisational development and performance of high school jazz musicians.  Secondary purposes were to investigate (a) what instructional activities students in a jazz ensemble setting find useful in developing their performance and creative jazz improvisation skills; (b) how instruction in a jazz ensemble setting affects students’ perceptions and attitudes towards cultural diversity in music; and (c) jazz band directors’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the two types of jazz instruction. The study sample consisted of 10 high school jazz bands from the southeastern region of a Mid-Atlantic state.  Participants were randomly assigned to either the theoretical-based control group or the practice-based experimental group.  Both groups were given the same jazz composition and were recorded when sight-reading the piece for the pretest. Individual student soloists in the control (n = 13) and experimental (n = 21) groups improvised over a 32-measure section of the piece.  After four weeks of instruction, both groups were again recorded for the posttest evaluation.  All ensemble participants (N = 191) completed a questionnaire pertaining to pedagogical and cultural perspectives and band directors in the experimental group were interviewed to address the secondary purposes of the study. Recordings were evaluated by three experienced adjudicators using measures developed for this study. Mean gain was computed by subtracting pretest mean scores from posttest means for both jazz ensemble performance and jazz improvisation. Scores were compared between the control and experimental groups using a between-subjects repeated measures ANOVA.  Responses to questionnaire items were examined using descriptive statistics.  The results showed that the practice-based group achieved significantly greater gains in improvisation than the theoretical-based group.  Participants indicated that listening activities were useful in helping them to improve their performance and improvisation skills. Practice-based participants indicated a stronger inclination to express themselves through improvisation and were more likely to listen to jazz outside school than were theoretical-based participants.
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    Choral Improvisation: Toward a Curriculum for University Choral Settings
    (2017) Seigart, Steven Ross; Maclary, Edward; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The regular practice of musical improvisation in an ensemble context has been shown to have many benefits, including the improvement of individual musical skills, ensemble cohesiveness, and the potential to help teach music theory and history. In addition, group improvisation has been proven to have positive non-musical effects, such as the reduction of social anxiety and stress, the improvement of communication and attention, and the acquisition of higher-order thinking skills. Many of these studies focus on these effects only among children, but the growing number of adult choral ensembles that regularly improvise suggests that these benefits may be gained in any level ensemble and in any age singer, including the university choral ensemble and the typical university student. Historically, improvisation and composition were considered as one creative process, with the latter often following the former. Even when the distinction between the two was acknowledged, the most prominent composers were also the finest improvisers. Toward the twentieth century and beyond, notation became gradually more specific, and the need for in-the-moment decision-making became obsolete. Modern classical ensembles largely do not improvise, precisely for this reason: the music they perform does not require it. Outside of classical music (with a few notable exceptions), improvisation is a part of almost every musical genre worldwide. In this document I have suggested a series of modules toward a improvisation-based curriculum, which can be freely combined and adapted to serve a number of functions and attempted in any order and in any sequence. These modules address fifteen compositional techniques, from simple canons to harmonic progressions, with more than fifty total distinct points of entry. The hope is that collegiate choral ensembles at every level will find these modules at once practical and accessible, so that students can begin reaping the benefits of regular improvisation practice.