Teaching Music History in the Margins
10.6092/issn.2039-9715/10179
La storia della musica è spesso relegata ai margini del curricolo della scuola pubblica. Di fronte a tempi e risorse limitate, i docenti necessitano di strade efficaci e non tradizionali per reintegrare la storia nella performance e nelle altre arti liberali. Nel contempo, hanno bisogno di dimostrare, non solo descrivere, le molte strade attraverso le quali la musica si interseca con la storia e la cultura. 
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2039-9715
10179
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Henryk Lotyczewski
Musica Docta
Dire vs mostrare
Teaching Music History in the Margins
Text.Serial.Journal
https://musicadocta.unibo.it/
9
Articoli
2019-12-20
2019-12-16
2019-12-20
2020-02-19
47-56
MD
Henryk Lotyczewski
2019/12/20
10.6092/issn.2039-9715/10179
47
Sauquoit, New York
2039-9715
Dire vs mostrare
en
56
Teaching Music History in the Margins
https://musicadocta.unibo.it/article/download/10179/10022
9
            Musica Docta. Rivista digitale di Pedagogia e Didattica della musica, pp. 47-56




         JAMES A. DAVIS - JESSICA LOTYCZEWSKI - HENRYK LOTYCZEWSKI
                        Fredonia - Waterville - Sauquoit, New York

          TEACHING MUSIC HISTORY IN THE MARGINS

JAMES A. DAVIS - JESSICA LOTYCZEWSKI - HENRYK LOTYCZEWSKI – Introduction
     Music is often seen as incidental to the “core subjects” in public schools, and
the academic study of music is treated as secondary to performance. At the collegiate
level, music history and theory are kept on the perimeter of the music education
curriculum, while college history and theory teachers tend to ignore the role of music
history in teacher preparation and its potential within public school classrooms. This
marginalization of music history requires that public school and collegiate music
teachers look for creative ways to present musicology “in the margins” of their
current curricula. This article offers examples of how to bring music history into
non-traditional settings and how teachers can demonstrate, by their actions, that
music history is a pervasive and important part of musical performance and the
liberal arts in general.
     We were excited to receive an invitation to share our views on the interaction
between collegiate music history and the public school music curriculum.1 Much to
our surprise, our preliminary discussions proved to be both enlightening and
frustrating. We had what seemed a relatively obvious topic to examine – how we
use music history in our classrooms to build cultural connections, and how what
happens in the college classroom impacts what happens in the public school
classroom. But as we exchanged ideas, we found ourselves talking more about the
broad picture of music education and the realities of what we do every day as
teachers. As public school music teachers Jessica and Henryk are faced with limited
resources to teach a subject that many colleagues and administrators view as
unimportant. In addition, the realities of their workload, and the emphasis on
performance over academic studies, create a situation that is not conducive to
complex or extensive lesson plans.
     In her keynote address at the conference Musicians and Musicologists as Teachers in
2014, Professor Giuseppina La Face Bianconi spoke of the “unnatural divorce
between musicology and music pedagogy” and the “evident marginalization of


     1 Following American convention, we use ‘public school’ to refer to any pre-college
teaching situation, and we use ‘general music’ to refer to academic music courses where
ensemble performance is not the priority.




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music teaching”.2 The words ‘margin’ and ‘marginalization’ seemed to capture much
of what we were struggling with: ‘margin’, denoting a place outside the conventional;
and ‘marginalize’, which denotes the action that pushes something to the side. First,
it is largely true that music is seen as a subordinate discipline in public schools. In
addition, and perhaps more importantly, general music, and music history in
particular, are often treated as secondary to performance within the music
curriculum. What happens at the collegiate level is oddly similar: music history and
theory are kept to the margin of the college music education curriculum, while at
the same time, college history and theory teachers ignore the role of music history
outside of their classrooms, unintentionally isolating music history from teacher
preparation and its potential within public school classrooms.
      One result of this marginalization is that discussions about teaching music
history in the public school classroom often rely on ideal, predetermined situations
where a music history topic is concisely presented to interested students as part of
an integrated curriculum. Unfortunately, such situations do not make up the
majority of what professional music teachers face every day. So instead of focusing
solely on the perfect setting to teach music history, the three of us also looked at the
margins, to see how music history can be part of a liberal arts education and make
cultural connections even when confronted with limited time and non-traditional
settings.

JESSICA LOTYCZEWSKI – Music History from Baseball to Broadway
     Looking back on my collegiate experience I feel that undergraduate music
majors, and music education majors in particular, are overloaded with coursework
and music history and musicology are certainly not the focus. The focus is on the
process and application of teaching, not on the content. I found the study of music
history fascinating and therefore enrolled in numerous electives to pursue this
interest. I believe this interest is now evident in my classroom, even though much of
my focus is necessarily still on performance. Thankfully, New York State (in
conjunction with NYS Music Educators) has created a set of standards to guide
music teachers to create a learning environment that is inclusive of numerous
musical elements, be it in the classroom or rehearsal (see Fig. 1). This includes a
standard specifically on connecting art to history and culture (see Standard 11 in Fig. 1).



     2
        G. LA FACE BIANCONI, “Musicology and Music Pedagogy: An Unnatural Divorce”,
Journal of Music History Pedagogy, V, 2014, pp. 157-163: 159, http://ams-
net.org/ojs/index.php/jmhp/article/view/168 (last accessed, 29.09.2019).




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Figure 1 – From the New York State Education Department. “Conceptual Framework for
the 2017 New York State P-12 Learning Standards for the Arts.” Internet. Available from
http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/programs/curriculum-instruction/2017-implementation-
guide-9.2-.pdf (last accessed, 22.09.2019).




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Even though the final objective of most American and New York State music
classes is heavily designed to focus on performance, these standards are intended to
help create a balance of learning.3
      I currently teach in a rural district in Central New York. The Waterville district
is a small public school; the senior class at our graduation ceremony on June 16,
2018 consisted of 57 students. We have 4 music teachers in our district and I teach
a variety of classes in 7th to 12th grade (12-year-olds to 18-year-olds) including two
choirs scheduled during the school day and a general music class for 7th grade
students. I also direct and produce the annual musical production and have a
number of co-curricular (after school) ensembles.
      In my general music class, I have the most time strictly devoted to the study of
music history. This includes a “Music History” unit that focuses primarily on the
Classical Period and the study of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Students begin to
make cultural connections during the discussions that naturally arise on a daily basis
and the unit culminates with a research project: The Composer Baseball Card. For this
project, students select a composer from a list and research their composer’s stats.
Most students are familiar with the format of a baseball card, and athletics –
especially “America’s pastime” – are heavily ingrained in American children. All of
the students present their completed cards to one another in the class; this includes
an illustration of the composer drawn by the student, the composer’s birth and death
dates (if applicable), where the composer lived, what instrument(s) the composer
played, the genre for which the composer primarily wrote, notable works, the
historical period of the composer, and one piece of information that the student
found interesting about the composer. At the end of each presentation, the class
listens to a piece by the composer, and students are surprised at how many of the
pieces they already know from popular culture. General music rounds out part of
the curriculum with similar units on American Musical Theatre (including a final
presentation researching a Broadway musical and writing a journal response to “If
you were asked to create a Broadway musical, what would it be?”) and Pop Music
(with a final project researching pop groups from the 1980s and 1990s).
      In choir, the focus of the class is on rehearsing and performing. While I would
love to delve into the cultural influences of our repertoire, given the limited amount
of rehearsal time it simply is not an option. I try to spend some rehearsal time on
cultural connection (“What is a golliwog?”; “How is the mood of Walt Whitman’s
poem O Captain! My Captain! reflected through the music?”; “What kind of


     3  For more detailed information regarding the New York State Arts Learning
Standards, see http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/arts-standards-implementation-resources
(last accessed, 19.09.2019).




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environment does Sydney Guillaume’s music suggest for carnival season in Haiti?”).
While I may feel it is necessary to address these connections in order to address the
NYS Standards or to help my students better understand a piece, I find that they
will ask questions relating to the culture or history of our repertoire. While
musicology may not be the focus of the performing ensemble, it is still information
that my students genuinely want to understand.
     Perhaps the most surprising aspect of developing this presentation was the
realization that my students are making the most organic cultural connections in our
co-curricular ensembles, most notably the annual musical production. Each show
allows us to investigate and explore a different culture every year. While rehearsing
Anything Goes, I had students asking for an explanation of all the references Cole
Porter makes in the song You’re the Top, which then led to natural discussions about
what life was like for different social classes during the 1930s. One of the sillier
moments occurred during 9 to 5: The Musical when a student was frustrated that he
was getting tangled in one of the office phone cords; this was a part of the intended
choreography and I had to explain that with corded phones, your privacy only
stretched as long as the phone cord. We also discussed the professional work
environment of the 1970s and briefly investigated the prolific songwriting career of
Dolly Parton. West Side Story leant itself to the exploration of the connection between
Bernstein’s score and the choreography in Cool, as well as the similarities and
differences between West Side Story and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Finally, one
of my colleagues hosted a workshop for his cast of the musical Aida on traditional
African dance, which was then incorporated into their choreography for the show
and gave the cast members a better understanding of the importance of dance and
drumming in African cultures.
     I was surprised to find how organic and natural these interactions were.
Sometimes it would start with an anecdote I knew, or a student would ask an
intriguing question, and the next thing I knew the entire cast was listening and
wanting to know more. I hope that some of this fascination stems from my own
interest in music history and musicology, and that my excitement to learn or share
my knowledge with my students piqued their own interest. As public school teachers
know, some of highest praise one can receive from a student is: “I already knew this,
but before I didn’t care that I knew it… I didn’t realize it was so cool”.

HENRYK LOTYCZEWSKI – Research, listen, play
     As I reflect on my undergraduate education, I remember being interested in
music history and musicology but not often concerned with its practical application
in my future classroom. Perhaps that was because I could only imagine what the
classroom looked like or perhaps it was because I was consumed with my education




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courses and the theory behind teaching music. Although there was quite a bit of
training on the periphery, there was little in actual curriculum design. Once the
imaginary teaching position became reality, it was up to me to infuse music history
and musicology into my curriculum. Still, the majority of my position is ensemble-
based with a heavy emphasis on performance. Although incredibly important, it is
not always conducive to implement all the standards within each lesson when there
are public concerts that loom large at the conclusion of each quarter. A holistic
approach to music education is necessary regardless of specific foci demanded of
me. This is where creativity is necessary.
     I teach at the Sauquoit Valley Central School District. The district is a
conglomeration of several municipalities within a fifteen-mile diameter found in
Central New York. As of the start of the 2017/2018 school year, our K-12 student
population was 1000. I am one of three full-time music teachers for the district. My
assignment includes (but is not limited to): Beginning Band (grade 5), Junior Band
(grades 7-8), the pull-out lessons that are included with each Band, General Music
(grade 6) and as an extracurricular class: Middle School Jazz Band. I will discuss the
ways in which I infuse music history and musicology into my Beginning Band,
General Music, and Jazz Band curricula, respectively.
     In Sauquoit, students are given the opportunity to start playing a band
instrument in fifth grade. Despite the fact that they have Band within their schedules
we can’t actually start playing as a band until the fundamentals are taught within
their pull-out lessons. It is roughly six weeks before students can start playing as a
full band, or, about 4-5 total lessons. Within this time, I partner with the librarians
to do a students’ Band Instrument Research Project. The objective of this project is for
students to learn about their respective instruments through directed research.
Students will organize their conclusions by constructing a Google Slide presentation
and answer the following essential questions: “Which materials make up the
instrument?”, “What are some ancestors of the instrument or When was the
instrument invented?”, and “How does the instrument sound in the hands of a
famous musician specific to that instrument?”. Through the use of Google Classroom
and library media sources, students are able to listen, research, cite, and create their
slides while gaining important research and technological skills that help them
throughout their school careers. As for my particular class, students are able to gain
more of and insight and appreciation of their instruments.
     In addition to their research project, students gain historical insights into their
music throughout the school year. Examples of this include the following pieces:
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, Banana Boat Song (Jamaican traditional) and Take Me Out to the
Ball Game (Norworth and von Tilzer). In the case of Ode to Joy, students listen to the
entire 4th movement of the Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and identify the number of




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times Beethoven uses the theme as well as the specific instrumentation. We discuss
the meaning that Beethoven might have intended for Schiller’s poem. Banana Boat
Song is centered around Harry Belafonte’s performance of the song on The Muppet
Show. Through the video, students learn of the geography of where bananas grow
and how bananas are harvested. Students get a taste of Caribbean music as well as
learn about various Latin percussion instruments. The students also enjoy the
opportunity to make some noise on these instruments. Take Me Out to the Ball Game
is a joint venture with the local baseball team. Students play the piece during the 7th-
inning stretch of a Utica Blue Sox game. While learning to play the piece, students
listen to the original song and learn the form of the song. Although they take the
sport for granted, they find out much of modern American culture can be attributed
to baseball.
      6th Grade General Music is a semester-long class. The curriculum for each class
is the same, with the exception of one special unit per class: the first semester class
participates in a Nutcracker Unit and the second semester class does a Blues Unit.
Within the Nutcracker Unit, students learn the meanings of terminology such as
Romanticism, programmatic, and individualism. Students listen to examples of
music that reflect these terms and make brief comparisons to musical eras which
preceded the Romantic Era of music. Two class periods are devoted to the life of
Tchaikovsky so that they better understand the composer behind The Nutcracker. I
supply the students with a score of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and students
follow the score while listening to the excerpt. I have a guest speaker (the Sugar
Plum Fairy herself) come in to discuss the roles and requirements of the dancers as
well as the different sections of the ballet. Students also get to see some of the
hardware of the ballerina. As a grand conclusion to the unit, students see a live
performance of The Nutcracker at The Stanley Theater in Utica, New York.
      The second semester class has the opportunity to partake in the Blues Unit. This
unit is a partnership with Hamilton College Music Professor, Monk Rowe. Monk
comes into the classroom to teach the students about the form and the sentiment
that make up The Blues. Students listen to various blues examples and are asked to
define the general mood of each piece through a dissection of the lyrics. Students
also learn of a 12-bar form and how the lyrics are set within that format. Students
are then divided into groups of four or five and create lyrics of their own using the
12-bar blues format. It is often fascinating and entertaining to see the topics the
students use for their lyrics. Topics have been as whimsical as school lunches as
heavy as a family member’s illness. Their “songs” are edited by Monk and myself,
and in the final class Monk brings his blues band to perform the students’ pieces
with the students performing along with the band.




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      The Middle School Jazz Band is an extracurricular group that meets once a
week in the evening and performs selections in each of the school concerts. Each
rehearsal is divided into three sections: Listening-Snack, Improvisation-Warm-Up,
and Rehearsal. The latter two sections don’t often directly apply to music history
and/or musicology but the examples used for learning the theory behind reading
chord changes as well as our concert selections are all the sources of our Listening-
Snack section.
      In the Listening-Snack section students learn of jazz origins through music and
culture. While students listen, they can enjoy a snack that a student brings to
rehearsal based on a rotating schedule. Eating a snack while they listen often helps
with interest and focus. After listening to an example, we discuss its style as well as
its place and significance in history. A brief biography of the composer is provided
prior to listening. As the year progresses, students start readily identifying defining
characteristics of particular styles and make connections to various composers. In
addition to learning about history, styles, and composers, some students start to
learn how to approach their music from a performance standpoint. Through
listening, discussion, demonstration, and improvisation, students are able to better
“authenticate” their performance of their concert pieces.
      My hope is that students can learn more and have an enriching music
experience through addressing music history and musicology within the curriculum.
Although the lives of students are infiltrated with a barrage of on-demand music, it
holds little meaning without historical and cultural context.

JAMES A. DAVIS – “Saying” vs. “showing” Musicology
     After many discussions about with Jessica and Henryk regarding collegiate
music history and public school teaching, I decided to focus on something very basic
for reasons that I hope will become clear. Let me say that I do not believe there is
anything brilliant about this approach, nor do I consider my ideas to be
revolutionary. Here is an extremely brief overview.
     At some point my music history seminar, I will ask a question: “How would
you teach this to an 8th grade music class”, or “Tell me how you would present this
same material to a collegiate ‘Introduction to Music’ class”. This simple question,
along with carefully chosen follow-up questions, achieves a number of objectives.4
     Asking students to consider how they would present the information to others
serves as an excellent capstone; students need to internalize, reflect on, then

     4Additional questions include “What part of today’s topic might be relevant to high
school students?”; “Would you include this information in program notes? If not, why?”;
or even “How would you explain this material to your parents?”.




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demonstrate what we just studied. Then, they must organize that material into a
coherent, streamlined form to “teach” it to a distinctive audience. They must decide
what information is most important and how best to convey that. A key element to
this is rewording or “translating”; to not rely on terminology and concepts that we
are familiar with, but to find a way of communicating the information to those with
little to no background in music history. At this point 2nd and 3rd order questions are
particularly powerful, allowing me to guide students in useful directions or to follow-
up on any noteworthy points they raise.5 If I have handled things correctly, the
students are now balancing the information learned with a hypothetical audience –
they are learning the relative value of information to a given population.
      So there it is – nothing brilliant, though this exercise has been very successful.
But what I learned working with Jessica and Henryk was that the potential benefits
of this exercise may come less from the questions I have asked or the discussions
that followed, and more from the situation in which the activity occurred. It was not
what I was saying, but rather what I showed, that mattered.6 Saying, that is, verbally or
visually presenting information or leading a content-based lesson on music history
is undeniably valuable. Showing, that is, doing or demonstrating, can have even
deeper and enduring impact. In my case, telling students that musicology is
something that can be included in the pre-college classroom might influence them
to some degree, but doing it myself demonstrates that I see no separation between
the world of academia and the public school classroom. The same is true for public
school teachers in a much more focused and pragmatic fashion. When Henryk made
the history of the Blues part of his rehearsal, he showed, by his actions, that knowledge
and practice were intertwined, above and beyond what he may have said to his class.
For Jessica, by addressing specific cultural topics that arose organically from a
musical rehearsal, she showed that cultural understanding was a natural part of the
performing process. In both cases, Jessica and Henryk were demonstrating that
studying music history is not something that exists only in the margins. They were
doing musicology.
      The same should be considered by college teachers. Are we not guilty of
marginalizing our own discipline? What Henryk and Jessica showed me was that by

      5 2nd and 3rd order questions might include “What does your audience already know

that you can draw upon?” or “Are there any problems you foresee that you can avoid?” For
a more in-depth exercise, ask one student to suggest a lesson plan for 8th grade students,
then ask a second student why the first student’s suggestions would or would not work for
a class of adult learners.
      6 Here I am borrowing loosely from Wittgenstein’s distinction between ‘saying’ and

‘showing’ first introduced in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus (London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1922).




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casually introducing public school teaching in a music history seminar I can break
the boundaries between the margin and the mainstream; I can show that public
school teaching should not be kept apart from the analysis, biography, or social
investigations we pursue in my upper-level classes. In fact, this is why I will start
including pre-concert lectures, program notes, and other situations as part of my
method. By doing it myself, by showing that public musicology is a normal part of my
discourse, then I can display for my students that musicology is not something that
occurs only in the music history seminar. It reaches beyond our campus and can –
and should – be a part of our profession at every level.
       Jessica, Henryk and I are excited by current efforts to strengthen musicology in
the public school system. There is a real need for designing great assignments and
new approaches for bringing music history to the pre-college classroom. But we feel
it is also necessary to consider the potential for marginalization in what we do. If we
limit our activities only to those classes where music history traditionally appears,
then we run the risk of permanently imprisoning the study of music history in the
margins.
                                                                              davisj@fredonia.edu
                                                                   jlotyczewski@watervillecsd.org
                                                                           hlotyczewski@svcsd.org




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