Music-ITE

For the purposes of this resource we conceptualise the terms listening and appraising as follows:

• listening is an intentional auditory and cognitive engagement with music. It is this intentionality that distinguishes listening from simply ‘hearing’ music
• appraising is the process of internalising and evaluating music.

From listening and appraising emerge responses to music. Musical responses can take many forms. However, whatever the mode of the response its quality and ‘meaningfulness’ depends upon the quality of the listening and appraising experience upon which it is based. It follows from this that teachers should enable children to:

• engage with listening experiences which enthuse and motive them. Where children are enthusiastic about their listening they will …
• intellectually and emotionally engage with music. Only with intellectual and emotional engagement can effective appraising take place
• respond in a variety of musical ways appropriate to their stage of development, their learning needs and the musical style and tradition with which they are engaging

Let us begin, however, by considering the beliefs and ideas that underpin traditional approaches to listening and appraising and the extent to which these reflect the reality of our, and our children’s, relationship with music.

Traditional curriculum approaches to listening and appraising reflect the processes and protocols which underpin western art (‘classical’) music and a particular view of the relationship between ‘the music’ and ‘the listener’. These processes and protocols are exemplified in the act of concert-going. You arrive at the concert hall and buy a programme. The programme describes the music’s form and development of themes. It draws your attention to important moments in the work and makes explicit links between the organisation of the materials and the emotion the music is said to express. If the music is programmatic, connections are made between the organisation of the musical materials and the ‘narrative’.

You then sit in the area of the building designated for the ‘audience’ and at the appointed time the performers arrive and take up a position in a space designated for them – typically a stage. The music is performed and, aided by the programme notes, you ‘understand’ the music by understanding how the different elements of the music fit together to create the musical ‘whole’ or ‘object’. Overt physical responses are limited to applause at the end of the performance. Ongoing responses take place in the mind. You distanced from the music in three ways:

• through space – including the barrier of the stage
• through engagement – you metaphorically stand apart from the music, observing how the elements relate to each other to form the musical whole
• you are not allowed to react immediately to the music, surrendering yourselves to the sensory sensation of the music. Rather your responses are restricted to those that take place in the mind.

Consider now how listening and appraising is sometimes taught. The classroom is organised as a surrogate concert hall: children sit in neat rows facing the source of the sound (the CD player or laptop, perhaps) which occupies its own space and acts as a kind of inanimate symphony orchestra. A quiet and attentive atmosphere is seen as the only context in which listening can take place, followed by responses that are in essence a post-facto discussion of the music: what it ‘means’ (by which we mean what we construe the composer means by it) and the way the materials fit together, etc. As Small says, the role of the listener is seen as ‘simply to contemplate the work, to try to understand it and to respond to it, but that she or he has nothing to contribute to its meaning. That is the composer’s business’ (Small, 1998, p. 6).

Listening and appraising are seen as activities which take place ‘in the head’. Consequently they are discrete activities which stand apart from composing/improvising and performing which require physical engagement. Responses to listening are thus restricted to those that can be articulated without recourse to physically ‘making music’: the verbal and the written.

However, do we really experience music as being ‘out there’ and are our responses to it exclusively ‘in the mind’? Is our relationship to music akin to that of the ‘looker’ at the picture in an art gallery? Stephen Handel (1989, p. xi) suggests not, arguing that listening is pulling ‘you into the world’ whilst looking ‘separates you from the world’. Looking is about ‘things out there’. Burrows speaks tellingly of the fact that we ‘see the world as a noun but hear it as a verb’, that listening ‘fosters an intimacy with the world that looking never can’ and that listening ‘captures and reflects aspects of the world and our place in it that nothing else can’ (in Elliot, 1995, p. 127).

Don Ihde describes listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony ‘in an acoustically excellent auditorium’ in the following way:

Young people describe their responses to the music at a Bruce Springsteen concert in a similar way:

Dalcroze writes of his students responses to listening in the following way:

Small argues that ‘In all these activities we call art we think with our bodies’ (Small, 1998, p. 40, my emphasis).

Lamont (2002) has described how babies in the final months of pregnancy physically respond to music and also respond to similar music up to 12 months after birth. Thus their first experience of listening to music is of being surrounded by it and responding to it physically. Glover and Young (1999) talk of the importance of re-educating ‘a sensitivity for sound’ through enabling children to experience it at the ‘physiological level’: ‘the chest-deep resonances of a giant gong, the skull-dry hardness of a woodblock’ (p. 20). Indeed the early stages of musical development focus very much on the sensory aspects of music, and to deny children these is to deny them access to personal engagement with music.

We need to enable children to respond to music in ways which acknowledge that we ‘think with our bodies’ (Small, 1998) and allow them to respond immediately and musically to their listening. The access and inclusion principle that underpins this programme requires that children be supported in all kinds of listening and appraising activities, not just those promoted by one particular musical tradition. Listening and appraising rooted in one tradition will almost inevitably reflect and value only one type of musical response and thus fail to accommodate the many different ways in which children wish to meaningfully respond to music.

One of the main challenges for teachers is actively engaging children in listening and appraising and enabling them to respond to music such that these responses are personally meaningful, of musical value and provide evidence of their musical learning and understanding. In this section we look at strategies for achieving these aims.

Glover and Young (1999, p. 19) suggest that ‘Aural awareness cannot be taught by direct instruction. It can only be supported by managing the conditions which foster it’. The dimensions of the environment which are open to being managed are:

• the physical environment
• the social environment
• the degree of challenge.

Physical environment

As we have already suggested, it is not necessary to try and recreate the physical conditions and protocols of the concert hall. It is likely that most of the children you teach will not have attended a concert, and therefore asking them to sit in neat rows behind desks and facing a CD player is likely to be an experience that is alien to them.

If the listening activity is to be an extended one, consider whether there are rooms where the physical environment is more welcoming than the classroom, or indeed whether the classroom itself can be made more welcoming. Clearing the desks and chairs away and allowing children to lie on gym mats or sit on cushions, eyes closed perhaps with the curtains drawn, will create a calm and reflective atmosphere for listening which enables children to respond to the music in a personal and private way- this is just one way of responding to music. Placing speakers around the room rather than at one end of it allows children to experience the sense of being surrounded by sound, thus increasing the bodily and sensory engagement which, as we have discussed earlier, is a key way in which we respond to music. A larger clear space also provides opportunities for physical responses to music through dance and movement (see below).

Of course a key characteristic of any environment designed for concentrated listening and appraising is that it is as free as possible of external noise pollution. As Glover and Young say, ‘It is unrealistic to expect children to listen with focused attention to sounds unless they are placed against a white background of silence’ (op. cit., p. 18). Remembering that the kind of discrete listening activity that we are discussing here is only one way of ‘listening’, it is worth ensuring that the conditions are at their most propitious to ensure that children get the most out of it. Glover and Young make the point that ‘in the long term less musical activity of better quality may be more valuable than compromises’ (op cit, p. 18).

Social environment

Discussing music with others is one of the ways in which we refine our thoughts about music and enrich our own understanding through learning from others’ perspectives. This applies equally to children who often learn best when learning together. Think carefully about ways in which you can plan for children to talk about their listening, appraising and responding with other pupils. This might be at a very basic level where they discuss together questions about the music which they might typically consider alone, e.g. what instruments are playing in the music? What style is it and why?, etc.

Teachers might organise pupils into ‘listening and appraising forums’ where they discuss and debate the particular merits of a specific piece of music, informed by their developing musical understanding. These debates and discussions might focus on:

• The effectiveness of the music as music. Here pupils will discuss the way in which the music works in terms of the organisation of its musical materials. Is there sufficient melodic/rhythmic/dynamic variety? What do they think might improve it? Where do they feel that best moment is and why?
• The effectiveness of music in fulfilling a particular function. Pupils watch a section of a film and discuss the music which accompanies it. How successful is it in contributing to the atmosphere of the film? They discuss examples of music from around the world written for particular social occasions, such as weddings or ‘coming of age’ celebrations.
• Comparing different performances of the same music (including cover versions). How do the performances differ and which is most effective and why? This could be structured as a kind of debate. Two groups of pupils prepare to defend the version which they think is most effective and argue their case in front of the other pupils.

Challenge

Listening and appraising sessions should be well planned and challenging. Children respond well to high expectations in all aspects of their learning, and listening and appraising is no exception. If listening and appraising is not challenging then it will be seen by the children as of little value and therefore will not interest and motivate them. Challenge in a sense is what makes meaningful responses possible:

• listening: ‘Listen carefully; are you really listening? Try hard to take your ear down into the music and track the drum; close your eyes and listen hard – there, do you hear it?’ (Glover and Young, op. cit., p. 19).
• appraising: ‘Think about the rhythm the drum is playing. How might you describe it? What bit of the music do you like best and why? Why do you feel this part of the music works really well?’

The aim is to encourage children to engage with music beyond a superficial level. To drill down into it, if you like. Glover and Young give an excellent example of how forensic listening in one context can inform learning in another:

This kind of detailed listening has much to offer of value in the context of instrumental learning. Similar questions to those above can be asked of children as they explore the range of potential sonorities available on their instrument. Teachers can ‘rationalise’ technical issues in the context of the sound that is produced: ‘If you hold your bow like this, this is the sound that you get, but listen to the sound if you relax your wrist and hold it like this’.

Challenge needs, of course, to be related to where-the-child-is in their development. Otherwise what you ask pupils to do may simply be too difficult for them and therefore be demotivating and result in little learning. Drawing on Swanwick and Tillman’s (1986) spiral of music development, Durrant and Welch (1995) suggest that the following are the kinds of understanding one might expect children to demonstrate through their listening, appraising and responding at particular ages (see Table 2).

(Durrant and Welch, 1995, p. 76)

The prospect of listening and responding to music should create in children a sense of excitement and anticipation. This will not happen if the music is always of the same musical style or tradition or listening always takes place in the same way. Listening opportunities need to include music that children listen to outside of school, the music that they may ‘brush against’ in their everyday lives without paying much attention to it, and music which is beyond their present experience.

Apart from the pure excitement of exploring the richness and variety of the world’s music, listening to music from a range of traditions and styles allows teachers to:

• enable children to experience the different musical sonorities of a wide range of instruments and vocal techniques
• demonstrate how similar musical devices (e.g. repeated bass patterns) can be found across a range of music to produce similar or different expressive and structural effects
• enable children to learn about the different ways in which music is used in different societies
• enable children to appreciate the production, dissemination and reception practices of different musical styles and traditions.

For example, a lesson looking at the ways in which the violin is used in different cultures might consider

• classical string playing, including the different styles of violin playing within this tradition and early string instruments such as the viol
• ‘fiddle’ playing including, as well as Irish and Scottish examples, the vibrant and physically engaging music of Eastern Europe and Klezmer fiddle
• Arabic and Chinese ‘fiddle’ music
• jazz, bluegrass and Cajun music.

A rich source of information on different styles of violin/fiddle playing can be found at http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk.

Table 3

In the opening section we argued that developing opportunities for children to respond to music in ways other than written and verbal is key children’s access and inclusion. In this section we look briefly at the range of responses to listening and appraising that you should support, including the verbal and written.

Verbal and written responses

The main thing to remember when asking children to respond verbally or in writing is that they may well implicitly understand more than they are able to express through speech or writing: their language/literacy skills can act as a barrier to their musical response.

When asking children to respond verbally to music, teachers should encourage them to employ metaphor and analogy rather than just technical terms. For example, in a lesson in which children listen to excerpts from Carnival of the Animals, the teacher shows the children pictures and video extracts of a number of animals. They discuss together the way the animal looks and moves and the sound it makes. They then listen to the music and through making links between their discussions and the ‘kinaesthetic’ aspects of the music decide what animal is being described in the music. For one example make it an animal that is not included in Carnival of the Animals. This begins to get over to children the idea that their personal construction of musical meaning is important and that it can be of value and legitimate even when it does not accord with the composer’s intention.

Durrant and Welch (1995) suggest that for young children it might be best to rely on responses other than verbal. Written responses might include choosing from a range of graphic representations of music which broadly outline the shape and structure of the music, but then adding to these to represent the nuances of the music as they listen ever more deeply. Once they have begun to understand how music can be represented graphically, they can create their own graphic representations of music.

Dance and movement

In many cultures movement and dance are inextricably bound up with responding to music. In his seminal work on African music, Chernoff writes that ‘one who “hears” the music “understands” it with a dance’ and that ‘an accomplished African dancer uses different parts of his body to emphasise different parts of the music; dancing gives the rhythms a visible and physical form’ (1979, p. 143).

We established in the first part of this resource the centrality of physical response to music. Dance and movement allow this ‘thinking with the body’ to happen in the most direct and literal way. Glover and Young refer to Loane’s concept of ‘dance listening’, where children’s ‘listening sensitivity, concentration and musical memory become intrinsically connected to the acting out of the music in time and space’ (op. cit., p. 127).

Dance and movement can be used to respond to music in three ways:

• the abstract – here the physical patterns of dance reflect and respond to the musical patterns in the music being danced/moved to. This is about giving music ‘visible and physical form’
• programmatically – dance and movement illustrate a narrative or extra-musical reference, either explicitly stated by the composer or constructed by the child in relation to the music
• social – specific dance forms such as the minuet or samba

In all cases the teacher will need to consider how the child’s dance/movement expresses their understanding of the music they are responding to. Talking with children about how their dance/movement reflects their response to the music is a very important way in which we come to understand children’s responses.

Responding through other art forms

Painting, drama and materials work, such as plasticine and clay, can all be used as the means through which children respond to music. Again it is important that the teacher talks with the children about their responses in order to gain a good awareness of how these responses reflect their musical understanding.

Responding through performing and composing

Listening and appraising activities are arguably at their richest when they are integrated with performing and composing/improvising.

Children can respond through performing in some of the following ways:

• Listening to and appraising their own performances and those of others. Their subsequent performances then demonstrate the richness of their listening and their critical and evaluative skills. They should be encouraged to go beyond the surface level issues of technical accuracy to the expressive features of their performance, considering phrasing, dynamic control and the nuances of performance that make for effective communication.
• Listening, appraising and responding to the performances of others, evaluating them and drawing on these evaluations in their own performances. These performances can be recordings or performances by other pupils. Teachers can perform music, or parts of music, in different ways and discuss these with children, enabling them to make performing decisions.

Improvising provides the context for one of the most immediate kinds of musical responses. The improvisational interplay between those performing in a jazz group is an example of listening, appraising and responding at its most integrated and immediate. Call and response activities which form part of many music lessons require the same kind of integrated response.

There is a sense in which all composition is listening, appraising and responding in action. No musical creation takes place in a vacuum but is always informed by what the creator has listened to and appraised, and the composition is a response to this listening and appraising. More specifically, however, there are examples of music composed in direct response to pre-existent music. Webern’s realisation of music by Bach, Maxwell Davies reworking of Tudor consort music and John Coltrane’s jazz reworking of the song Roger and Hammerstein’s ‘My favourite things’ are examples of these.

Building on this idea, children might be asked to respond to music they have listened to by composing or improvising music that reflects the structure – the ebb and flow – of the music that they have appraised. Alternatively they might focus on a particularly interesting or engaging quality of the music. If musical teaching and learning is focusing on one particular aspect of music, e.g. rhythm, then this kind of activity gives the learning an integrated and musical context. As in all musical learning, listening, appraising and responding should take place in musical contexts which reflect music as it happens outside of school.

Chernoff, J. (1979) African Rhythm and African Sensibility,Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Durrant, C. and Welch, G. (1995) Making Sense of Music, London: Cassell Education.

Elliot, D. (1995) Music Matters,Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Glover, J. and Young, S. (1999) Primary Music: Later Years, London: Falmer Press.

Handel, S. (1989) Listening. An Introduction to the Perception of Auditory Events, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ihde, D. (1976) Listening and Voice: A Phenomology of Sound, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Lamont A (2002) Transcript from The Science Show (BBC). Dowloaded July 16th 2009 from: www.abc.net.au/.../717810.htm

Philpott C. and Spruce, G. (eds) (2007) Learning to Teach Music in the Secondary School (second edition), London: Routledge.

Philpott, C. and Plummeridge, C. (2001) Issues in Music Teaching, London, RoutledgeFalmer.

Small, C. (1998) Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Swanwick, K. and Tillman, J. (1986) ‘The sequence of musical development’, British Journal of Music Education, 3, 3, pp. 305–39.

Acknowledgement

Table 1: Durrant, C. and Welch, G. (1995) Making Sense of Music, Cassell Education.