Mason believed that all students can and should learn to sing, play piano, and appreciate fine music. In order to facilitate this, however, we must understand that music instruction carries equal importance with subjects normally described as “core” subjects. Music education should help students see music as a regular part of living as a human being, not as an extra-curricular subject.
Mason’s model helps us see how to incorporate music into our daily lives.
Composer Study (11 min.)
Students in Grade 1 study Music Appreciation by learning about the instruments in the orchestra and by listening to accessible pieces such as "Peter and the Wolf" and "The Carnival of the Animals". Starting in Grade 2, students study a composer (or occasionally, multiple composers) per term, the selection of which is correlated with the historical time period. While there are lessons just for listening to the composer’s work, the music often spills over into dance, piano, and music theory or even sol-fa lessons. Students will compare pieces with other works and other composers studied. Older students copy parts of musical works in their Music Journals and may learn to perform pieces by the term’s composer, as they are able.
In this video Erika McKnight encourages incorporating music beyond composer study time. She wants students to build deeper relationships with various genres of music as well as various composers.
Composer Study Immersion (9 min.)
In this video, Erika McKnight leads a composer study lesson. Take time to enjoy some classical music and gain new insight on how to gently direct students to listen attentively.
Reflection
Respond to the following in the comments or in your journal:
1) How can you make music appreciation a more natural part of the atmosphere in your home or classroom?
2) What new ideas did you glean from the videos? What will you implement with your students?
3) What do you find hard about composer study? What is one thing you learned that you can incorporate into your lessons?
4) What are you wondering?
In Mason's Own Words
“Use every chance you get of hearing music (I do not mean only tunes, though these are very nice), and ask whose music has been played, and, by degrees, you will find out that one composer has one sort of thing to say to you, and another speaks other things; these messages of the musicians cannot be put into words, so there is no way of hearing them if we do not train our ear to listen” (Ourselves, p. 31).
“Many great men have put their beautiful thoughts, not into books, or pictures, or buildings, but into musical score, to be sung with the voice or played on instruments, and so full are these musical compositions of the minds of their makers, that people who care for music can always tell who has composed the music they hear, even if they have never heard the particular movement before” (Ourselves, p. 31).
Further Reading
A Touch of the Infinite by Megan Elizabeth Hoyt
What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland
The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influences by Jane Stuart Smith and Betty Carlson
A Taste for the Classics by Peter Kavanaugh
Boyhoods of Great Composers by Catherine Gough
Biographies about Composers from Opal Wheeler
