Jesse Rathgeber
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Scholarship
- Manuscripts -

Listening Curriculum

7/25/2012

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This manuscript is a listening curriculum developed in a master's degree curriculum class:

Music is a listening-based artfom. It is through direct aural experiences with sound that humans interact with music at its most basic level. Listening to music is the most personal and focused level of engagement with music that most people have. It is an intimate interaction with sound in which, as Reimer (2003) states, “[l]isteners are called on to make sense of the music, to ‘put it together’ with mind, body, and feelings” (p. 117). Regarding listening’s creative core, Kerchner (1996) explains that listening is not merely a passive activity, but instead that “[l]isteners create and recreate their own musical experiences by perceiving certain musical elements” (p. 28). When listening, people take the sonic elements of a musical work and pair them with their own experiences and history to derive personal meaning. Also, music listening is an essential component to all other kinds of musical activity. Accordingly, listening must have a central place within any music curriculum. Yet, listening does not often receive such focused attention in music classrooms with regard to skill development and/or creative processing.

Music is pervasive in our society and students regularly hear music in stores, on television, and on their own music players. However, one may ask if they are listening. Mills (2009) notes that the persistent sonic environment may “reinforce the habit of not noticing sound” (p. 75) and, therefore, students may not be fully developing their active listening skills to their fullest potential on their own. This is not to say that children come to music class without any sense of critical, creative, or meaningful listening abilities. Indeed, the musical genres and styles they choose to engage with on their own and with their families shape their understanding of listening and develops a different set of skills. In music class, listening instruction should seek to build upon and supplement a student’s personal listening skills.

​The following listening curriculum is rooted upon the philosophical grounding of Reimer’s (2003) conception that listening is an act in which “[e]ach individual listener must bring to that task his of her technical capacities to hear the complexities of the music” (p.117) in order to draw meaning from musical works. However, in order for students to be creative listeners and meaning makers, the “technical capacities” require specific and guided instruction. This is the crux of my project; to plan a sequential, meaningful, and relevant curriculum for the development of music listening skills. Specifically, students should be able to differentiate and discuss the musical elements of pitch/melody, rhythm/meter, dynamics, tempo, articulation, and timbre as they relate to the expressive and structural components of a musical work with a firm understanding of how these elements interact to create a musical whole.
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Exploring Schubert's "Der Erlkönig:" History and Pedagogical Project

6/11/2011

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The following manuscript is a master's degree theory domain project:

Composer Franz Schubert made a long lasting impact upon western art music history with his memorable and emotional melodies, as well as his unique way of sonically telling a story. Though his ability to construct impressive orchestra works is well respected, it has been argued that it is in the area of lieder that Schubert’s supreme talent as a composer and storyteller exhibits itself (Osborne, 1977). Schubert could take a vibrant poem from a famous poet like J.W. Goethe and give the story and characters even greater depth, freeing the story from the constrains of the written word into a sonic life. Steen (2003) put it this way: “[i]t is almost as if the poem was a landscape, whereas the song was the landscape painting, the work of art” (pp. 211-212). Many contemporary composers, songwriters, musical artists, and music video directors go to great lengths to achieve the kind of storytelling efficiency that Schubert seemed to tackle effortlessly.

​To my students, the music that they take ownership of and revere can be easily lumped into one of two categories; dance tunes and story songs. During in-class discussions and one-onone conversations about musical preference, students often express how they choose music that can capture their imagination by giving them an understandable story, have catchy melodies or micro-melodies, and that affects them emotionally in some way. Some of their favorite artists like Taylor Swift, Adele, Green Day, and Eminem rely upon story-based songs. In an attempt to help my students understand one historic figure that may have had a major impact upon the music they enjoy and in hopes of expanding their musical appreciation, we explored a heavily story-based and emotional lieder of composers like Schubert. Of all of Schubert’s works, his
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    Manuscripts

    Here you will find downloadable unpublished manuscript, drafts of soon-to-be published works, and links to published scholarship created by Jesse Rathgeber.

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The sound in your mind  is the first sound that you could sing" - Jack Kerouac
  • Jesse Rathgeber
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