Musical Accomplishment Research Articles

Young Musicians' Accounts of Significant Influences in their Early Lives. 2. Teachers, Practising and Performing

This article reports further qualitative findings of an interview study involving 42 students (aged 10–18) attending a specialist music school, and parents of half of them. The students were encouraged to talk about events and experiences that influenced their progress in learning musical instruments. Observations by the children and their parents concerning perceptions of instrumental teachers, various aspects of practising activities, and attitudes towards performing. These insights complement previous quantitative and qualitative findings (Sloboda and Howe, 1991; Howe and Sloboda, 1991) and contribute descriptive knowledge of the precursors of musical accomplishments.

Substance and Function in Concepts of Musical Structure

thought which have taken place in this century are, in my view, not so much assertions of radically new structural premises as they are small evolutionary steps by which the premises of the past are not overthrown and discarded, but are rather subsumed; in the process a new concept of structure is given birth. The very terminology -tonal, atonal--supports the idea of an antithesis, an incompatibility between the two idioms which obscures the conceptual dependence of the latter on concepts of structure gleaned from tonality. The link between the two, however, is far from obvious: the triad, as a tonal paradigm, does not evolve into some nontonal structure in accordance with some evolution of musical materials per se. Schoenberg's notion of the emancipation of dissonance proclaims such an evolutionary process, in which nontonal music results from a material process inherent in tonality. Here atonality emerges from the nurturing cocoon of past history into the spring sun of musical freedom. Such a notion is unreasonable for several reasons. First, it tends to see in the musical ideologies of the past a primacy of potential-a music yet unfulfilled, struggling like a natural force toward its inevitable destiny. This supports an injustice toward the musical accomplishments of the past. Second, it equates the development of harmony with

Fifty Years of Music in Canada? Good Lord, I Was There for All of Them!

1930 was, perhaps, a low point in the history of music in Canada. The economic conditions were not entirely to blame; they just administered the coup de grâce. The flourishing life of the nineteenth century, mostly visible in the two major cities, Toronto and Montreal, was first brought low by World War I; and conditions after the war militated against a full revival. Much of that flourishing life was amateur (if you wanted music you had to make it yourself); musical accomplishment was a social rather than a professional asset, and professional music was mainly in the hands of touring artists or immigrants, although Montreal's French community had a number of native professionals, reflecting a longer tradition and a different attitude to the arts. The means of livelihood for the professional musician were mainly teaching and playing in theatre orchestras. In all parts of Canada the aristocrat of the professionals was the church organist, although he could not make a living from the church alone. The status that his position gave him meant that he was in demand as a teacher, sometimes in musical areas where he was least qualified. In some communities he was the only professional: not only was he organist and choirmaster, but he taught organ, piano, theory, and singing, he would be the logical conductor for the local operatic society (what would he have done without Gilbert and Sullivan?), and he was even expected to assemble the local worthies into a raggle-taggle amateur orchestra. In Anglophone Canada he was often an Englishman or a Scotsman (indeed, in one church, Metropolitan Methodist in Toronto, the organ endowment specified that the incumbent must have a music doctorate and be a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, requirements which for many years precluded anyone other than a Britisher from holding the post).

Predicting Choral Achievement Through Use of Musicality and Intelligence Scores

Evaluating the potential and the progress of vocal pupils is a major problem of choral directors in the secondary schools. Of equal importance is the assessment of the musical ability and attitudes of those pupils who participate in performing groups. Evaluating potential and assessing musical ability and attitudes are necessary in order to group pupils according to ability and to maintain the high standards set for choral groups. The function of the choral director is to place better pupils in select choirs often designated as the performing or concert choirs. Judgment is based on individual auditions and teacher observation of pupil progress during the school year. Pupils new to the choral department at Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia, through transfer or schedule change, do not have an opportunity to audition. They are assigned to nonselect choirs by the guidance counselors. The chorus teacher observed that the pupils in these choirs who exhibited superior ability and interest frequently missed the challenge they would have had in a select choir. On the other end of the spectrum, some pupils assigned to choir were unable or unwilling to show musical accomplishment. They often denied they had an interest in singing or that they had chosen choir as an elective. Pupils of limited ability were placed in situations where they could not do as well as the rest of the class. These misplaced pupils were unable to contribute to the joint effort of the class and often became behavior problems, hurting group morale and wasting valuable rehearsal time. This study explored the possibility of using musicality and intelligence test scores to predict the potential success of pupils in

Araucanian Indian Instruments

t is a well-known fact that at the time of the European conquest America had undergone the first two stages for the evolution of instruments as established by Rowbotham: the cycle of drums, and the cycle of flutes. Ethnographers have today completely abandoned the idea of the existence of stringed instruments in the Pre-Columbian era. Consequently, the alleged presence of rabel players at the Court of Montezuma belongs to the sphere of the many myths generated in some early Spanish writings. Garcilaso de la Vega never mentioned them, and all available iconographic documents from the Inca empire, so rich in designs of flutes and drums, show no traces of stringed instruments. References to Araucanian Indian music are somewhat scarce among colonial chroniclers and historians, and those few that are available in their writings reflect a poor evaluation of the same. Nevertheless, the opinions of contemporary ethnomusicologists do not agree on this. Isamitt,1 Allende,2 Lavin,3 and others, have certainly found musical accomplishments among these natives worth considering on a level of interest in no way inferior to those of other Indo-American groups. In spite of their complete unawareness of harmony, Isamitt writes, we can observe in their music clear melodic forms and great rhythmic variety.'4 The prevalence of the intervals of the fourth (sometimes combined with those of the third and fifth), and occasionally touching upon sevenths and octaves and even on some intermediate intervals not available in our temperate system, constitute their basic stylistic devices. The nature of musical activity among the Araucanian Indians, as well as that of the instruments employed by them is intimately related to ritual and religion. Even today, the magic spell attached to each of their instruments largely determines the occasion and place of its use. Their worship of Nanechen, God and owner of the World,'5 as well as their conjurations against evil spirits are always linked to certain instruments, or even, at times, to certain combinations of instruments; these festivities are even associated with certain melodic patterns well known to contemporary musicologists. A wind instrument known as the trutruka is perhaps the most commonly used by these natives; it is made of a kind of bamboo known as kiila which grows wild in the inlands of Southern Chile. Its employment is always linked with collective rituals of supplication having to do with such matters as lack of rain or food, the weather, or prayers to get rid of pests and social misfortunes. This instrument is also used by smaller groups on the occasion of family reunions or of funeral ceremonies.

Tests and Measurements Department

Tests and Measurements Department