The Norton Guide to Teaching Music History ed. by C. Matthew Balensuela

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Norton Guide to Teaching Music History ed. by C. Matthew Balensuela K. Dawn Grapes The Norton Guide to Teaching Music History. Edited by C. Matthew Balensuela. New York: Norton, 2019. [xxi, 278 p. ISBN 9780393640328 (paperback), $49.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliographies, index. In recent years, educators have increasingly asked, "What sort of curricular models will best prepare twenty-first century music students to create opportunities for themselves in a rapidly changing world?" This question has resulted in heightened scrutiny of the purpose and function of different kinds of academic music courses. Some highprofile university programs have reevaluated the role of music history courses in an effort to diversify content, calling for more time to be devoted to music in global contexts and music making in underrepresented populations. With this aim, content revision is often required. At the same time, renewed attention has been given to best teaching practices, as manifested in conference presentations, publishers' webinars, and peer-reviewed articles. Touching upon questions of both content and practice, The Norton Guide to Teaching Music History is a welcome addition to recent pedagogical discourse within the field of musicology. True to its name, the volume's twenty essays present multifarious creative ideas for teachers of collegiate music history courses. In many instances, the focus is on subject matter regularly covered in traditional Western art music surveys. Yet, as general editor C. Matthew Balensuela makes clear in his introduction, the suggestions made throughout the volume are also appropriate for and adaptable to courses dedicated to other musical styles and topics. [End Page 310] Balensuela solicited an impressive list of respected scholar–pedagogues to write chapters, which are grouped into four topical sections. At first glance, the initial section's title, "Style Periods in History and the Survey," may give some readers pause, considering the current atmosphere in which a traditional, canonic approach to Western art music and its standard time periods has come under fire by some. Yet a principal theme emerges in these seven essays: there are ways to approach time-periodconstructed courses that chip away at old formulas. Some of the foremost names in textbook authorship appear in this section, with an opening contribution from J. Peter Burkholder, primary author of the latest four editions of Norton's History of Western Music. Appropriately enough, Burkholder's essay immediately speaks to the question, Why study music history? He approaches the inquiry from the viewpoint of students who may wonder what relevance a music history survey has to them, especially if their own applied music studies do not overlap with the styles or time periods being covered. In doing so, Burkholder offers up a defense of the traditional model, convincingly introducing the music history survey as a framework necessary for students to contextualize any piece they may eventually perform. The remaining chapters in this section are written primarily by authors of Norton's most recent music history series, Western Music in Context: A Norton History. The authors focus on one or more pedagogical methods designed to make their respective time periods come alive. Margot Elsbeth Fassler advocates for the use of online portals to study primary-source medieval texts, offering up those used by women in convents as a case study. Through this process, she stresses the importance of introducing students to original artifacts while expanding an awareness of long-overlooked music making communities of the time. Richard Freedman suggests the use of topical units within the Renaissancemusic classroom to foster critical thinking, Walter Frisch examines problems related to defining the nineteenth century as an all-encompassing artistic period, and Joseph Auner sums up issues in defining "contemporary" music. Wendy Heller's essay on teaching baroque music is especially compelling, as it points to listening as an avenue for assessing historiographical performance practice, one not entrenched in the notion of being "informed" but that expands students' perceptions of different conventions in different times, as applied to music of multiple time periods. Melanie Lowe's approach to the eighteenth century is perhaps the most intriguing among the opening chapters. Lowe is the only scholar in this section who did not write a textbook in the Norton series, but her past...