Don Traut, "A Comparative Review of The Complete Musician by Steven G. Laitz, Harmony in Context by Miguel Roig-Francolí, and A Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis by Jane Piper Clendinning and Elizabeth West Marvin"
Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, vol 20 (2006). You can access the hard copy on reserve in the library, or find it online here. To access the article online, you will need to join JMTP if you haven't done so already. Student price is $10.
The books under review are also available on reserve for this course. It will be very helpful if you follow them while reading the review.
The suggested questions for this reading are pretty straightforward:
- Consider the range of topics addressed by the review, and the differences in pedagogy manifested by the different books. Is there anything that surprised you? For example, "I had no idea there were such different ways to approach [insert topic here] " Or, "I had never thought about approaching [topic] this way before."
- In reading the review AND looking at the textbooks that are on reserve, do you think that the review is fair, balanced, and accurate? Why or why not?
Due to my stupidity and it being one of "those" days, I did this post instead of 5. Please do not lambaste me fellow students!!!
ReplyDeleteI find it fascinating that Harmony in Context introduces everything based on the half-step so that students are fluid in all aspects of triadic harmony. This seems like a great whole-system minded approach rather than having students become really familiar with common intervals and less with the uncommon. With that being said, I’m a proponent of learning based on already learned context and the traditional way of introducing fundamentals in the other series seems more logical in terms of easing students into the qualities by using things that may already be in their ear that they just do not know how to describe yet.
I believe that it is also interesting that each author introduces species counterpoint early on in the curriculum. Counterpoint is something that took me personally a long time to truly understand and I believe that the earlier one is exposed to it, the better a chance there is for understanding.
“Simple processes underlie all tonal music, and are simply fleshed out in wondrously diverse contexts” I read this and immediately thought “rhythm blocks for harmony.” What a great idea! Analyze harmony in the simplest form possible and then memorize the patterns using diatonic “phrase models.” This I think, if used as the exclusive system during instruction, can help students see patterns and be able to analyze and then synthesize harmonic progressions efficiently and effectively. I also find it interesting that in Musician’s Guide, uses a lot of active and hands-on learning, which can lead to better long-term retention of material.
Once again, the Musician’s Guide is the most innovative when dealing with form in addition to harmony. The use of song and modern music is a little more familiar to students and things they may hear in their lives outside of music school. This could be useful in providing a framework based on when they have heard in their lifetime before studying music.
I can’t wait to check some of these textbooks in person and analyze them for our next project. The ones presented in the article seen interesting and I think use some unique approached to teaching music theory.
Good thoughts, Nick! And if anyone lambastes you, they will have to answer to me personally! :-) The "phrase model" of harmony has been a recent and very popular trend in theory textbooks--and it's a good one, I think. It allows you to layer all sorts of things over those chords, most notably--melody and counterpoint! ("Rhythm blocks for harmony --EXACTLY!) Perhaps in today's class, we can talk about some of the other methods for dealing with chords.
DeleteI wasn’t especially surprised by that much, but looking through and reading about the text we use here at YSU surprised me. I get frustrated with it a lot in the beginning stuff, and it makes me think maybe they should have focused more on the beginning content. Then again, maybe the YSU theory textbook should be reconsidered (hmmm…). From the other side, though, I think it’s great for a textbook to focus on more contemporary topics, but if the curriculum at the specific institution doesn’t match the text, it doesn’t work well.
ReplyDeleteI think the review is balanced. I didn’t find it to be terribly biased, but I did read it with some bias because I dislike the Clendenning/Marvin. I feel like they introduce each text well and highlight the features fairly, discussing each overall topic of the texts.
One interesting note about the review is being that it was written in 2006, it doesn’t much consider the possibility of online resources. I think matching books with online resources and score-recording utilities is a big part of textbooks that is on the rise. This review touched on that ever so slightly, but I think in the future, textbooks will come with a YouTube channel or website with games, tests, practice, and a score reporter that the students and teachers can see.
MA (re Clendinning/Marvin text): " I get frustrated with it a lot in the beginning stuff, and it makes me think maybe they should have focused more on the beginning content. "
DeleteJR: Well, they do have a complete, separate Fundamentals book out as well. So I think it's simply a matter of choosing/prioritizing WHICH fundamentals receive the most attention for review. Hey--this would be a good class discussion topic!
As far as the review is concerned, it was fairly accurate in its presentation of the materials present in each book. In regards to Meredith's comment, I have been reviewing the materials in the book we use at YSU, and it is my opinion that it has sufficient information regarding the beginning topics/fundamentals. While there are mistakes in some of the added resources (namely the workbook), I find the textbook to be a pretty good source of information.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the quality of the balance of the review is concerned, it was relatively unbiased. I however, am slightly biased as far as which books, based on the descriptions provided, that I would chose to utilize if I were to be instructing a class. For example, I find the idea of introducing a system of calculating intervals based on half steps before being sufficiently introduced to scales will lead to a lengthy and unnecessarily inefficient method to understanding beginning concepts.
LM: "For example, I find the idea of introducing a system of calculating intervals based on half steps before being sufficiently introduced to scales will lead to a lengthy and unnecessarily inefficient method to understanding beginning concepts."
DeleteJR: I agree, and I assume you're talking about the Roig-Francoli book. Keep in mind, however, that since these are "college-level" harmony books, the idea is that they don't really need to address fundamentals, except in the most cursory and review-oriented way. In other words, using this approach in this type of book has the potential to do less "damage" than if it were presented this way in a fundamentals book.
I find it fascinating that some theory textbooks are not standard in their practices of teaching certain aspects and fundamentals in theory. Even the sequence that the teachers take to present the material and be able to relate it back to previous lessons. In the text, The Complete Musician, Steven Laitz starts out with fundamentals like what is sound and also about the treble and bass clef. In the text, The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis, Clendinning and Marvin also talk about the C-clefs along with the treble and bass clefs. That minor difference in the beginning continues and grows as the texts continue. In the journal review of the textbooks, Don Traut states more of the differences in their teachings compared to their sequential setup. For example, Traut discusses the differences about species counterpoint. “Steven Laitz’s Complete Musician covers the first and second species…Roig-Francoli’s Harmony in Context adds the fourth species in two voices”. These two textbooks are stricter when it comes to their homage of to Fux with writing counterpoint. The Clendinning and Marvin book is less strict with their learning of counterpoint than the other two and has all four types of counterpoint. In my opinion, I never thought about approaching counterpoint like Laitz did in The Complete Musician. I never thought that it might be easier or be able to understand counterpoint completely with only looking at the first two species. It also surprises me when Traut said “their approach is less strict than that of Fux” when he was talking about Clendinning and Marvin about Species Counterpoint. How does the author know if they were less strict with their counterpoint teaching and if so, how much? And do the other two books, since they are stricter than Clendinning and Marvin, are more accurate and better received than other books. It really surprises me that Traut talks about how much Schenkerian principles are included in the studying of diatonic harmony. I never thought about that Schenkerian principles are involved in the study of harmony and how some textbooks use more Schenkerian than others. In the conclusion, Traut states that if he wanted to criticize any part of each text, it would be that they “sometimes attempt exhaustive presentation of specific realizations of these principles”. This statement shocked me because, yes, you can over-explain something and provide too much information at times, but in a text book, is it necessarily a bad thing? For students who have trouble understanding things, the extra explanations and reviews of materials that they may have stated before wouldn’t be a bad thing, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteOverall, it surprises me that so many different authors write and discuss different concepts and ways to learn them. However, one thing that I have been questioning since reading the article is, does any of these three textbooks, or any in general discuss different ways to learn theory concepts or do they just stick to the one way they write about strictly. So they make references to other texts or do they just teach it one way? Reading this article has brought a new interest for me to look through other textbooks and see how they react to different teaching methods and how can learning these different methods help the students, or could hurt the students more. This is something that I want to be able to do when I become a teacher, is to be able to provide different ways to learn materials and be able to do so equally without having a biased view on which teaching/learning process that I believe is better, but allow my students to explore them and find one that works for them.
SB: "It also surprises me when Traut said “their approach is less strict than that of Fux” when he was talking about Clendinning and Marvin about Species Counterpoint. How does the author know if they were less strict with their counterpoint teaching and if so, how much?"
DeleteJR: The author of the review (and the authors of the book) would know, because they would be familiar with Fux. (Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum, published in 1725, is the basis for virtually all modern counterpoint pedagogy. )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Joseph_Fux
SB: " It really surprises me that Traut talks about how much Schenkerian principles are included in the studying of diatonic harmony. I never thought about that Schenkerian principles are involved in the study of harmony and how some textbooks use more Schenkerian than others."
DeleteJR: Yes, absolutely! Schenkerian principles, in this case simply means treating counter point as equal to, or even more important than, harmonic structure. Almost all modern theroy textbooks (since 2000) do this, it's just a matter of to what degree they do it.
SB: "In the conclusion, Traut states that if he wanted to criticize any part of each text, it would be that they “sometimes attempt exhaustive presentation of specific realizations of these principles”. This statement shocked me because, yes, you can over-explain something and provide too much information at times, but in a text book, is it necessarily a bad thing? For students who have trouble understanding things, the extra explanations and reviews of materials that they may have stated before wouldn’t be a bad thing, in my opinion."
DeleteJR: This is really an interesting idea! I certainly understand why you, as a conscientious student, would want to see the material explained with as many examples as possible. For the publisher, it's a matter of adding pages (and weight, and price) to what is probably already an enormous textbook, and also the fear that students might "tune out" if too much time is spent on one topic.
Good points, Steph!
I wasn’t too surprised by any of the topics mentioned. I am however always fascinated by the different techniques used to arrive at the same goal. I pay particular attention to approaches so that I can find better ways to help myself with theory. For example, I thoroughly reviewed the topic of counterpoint. I was introduced to counterpoint relatively late in my undergraduate education, it even came after atonal theory, but I’m not sure if that is typical or not. All of the authors present species counterpoint early in the curriculum, to which I just have to say “WOO!” I feel like this would have been really helpful instead of waiting so long after the fundamentals had been introduced. This is not to say that doing so is a bad thing, but I think early integration of more complex theoretical techniques would be more beneficial, especially when tonal and modal relations are so important within contrapuntal writing.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the review was unbiased and balanced and gives a fair analysis to each of the books. Having looked through them, I’m interested to read what the other books will offer as far as their pedagogical approaches or if they will be similar to what has already been discussed.
Again, early counterpoint is a relatively recent trend. On the one hand, it preps students for part writing by having them work in two voices before they work in four. On the other, it's just one more darned thing that we have to cover in our classes....with diminishing resources and time. :-/
DeleteI’m going to disagree with Nick on his opinion of learning intervals by semi-tones: I strongly dislike this idea. To me, counting half-steps in an interval takes FAR too much time. I am a huge advocate of the way we learned intervals in musicianship I from Dr. Perkins. We memorized all the natural intervals (ie, those with no accidentals). From that memorized, instantly retrievable bank of information, we could adjust one of the two pitches to find other qualities of intervals. Example- C to E is a minor third, but if I lower the E to Eb it becomes major, E# is augmented, etc. I’ve mentioned this talking with Dr. Root as well as the online facebook theory page. I. hate. counting. half steps.
ReplyDeleteIn general actually, I didn’t like Harmony in Context by this review alone. The few excerpts we were given of it’s vernacular seems far too “stuffy” for my tastes. Yes, one wants their argument to seem intelligent.; however, the clarity in sentences shouldn’t be interrupted by the way that sentence is formatted. This book seems overly extravagant for undergraduate study. On the other hand, One of my favorite topics from AT with Dr Reale was Neo-Riemannian analysis. We spent years learning fundamentals and forms for tonal pieces, but those that didn’t follow a perfect Roman numeral format seemed bizarre. I didn’t look into the Clendinning and Marvin as much when we used it in Musicianship IV or AT to notice that lack of this information, which disappoints me as it’s both useful and easy to pick up once you understand the functions.
Another thing that surprised me about this review was the concept of analyzing form by types instead of the terms sectional, continuous, etc. To me, we as humans have the power and freedom to call whatever we want by any name; however, if no one understands what we’re saying, what’s the point? Traut mentions that the terminology used is traditional, and implies that it is widely accepted throughout the theory community. It seems odd to me to try and call these forms by another name if the most commons names are entirely different. This worries me to this day in regards to the Cadential 6/4 for example. Do I write V, or I6/4, or C6/4? What is the most common?! Standardization of scholarly topics is important.
Overall I think the review is slightly against The Roig-Francoli text, but for the most part is balanced. Positive and negative points are expressed throughout the article in a non-biased, straightforward manner with particular detail for those who would intend to use this book to teach others music theory.