Teaching choral repertoire through score study and performance practice.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to propose an alternative approach to teaching an undergraduate choral literature course that embraces a diversity of learning styles in helping students arrive at a meaningful, personalized, and intuitive interpretation of a musical score. This is accomplished in part by integrating Bernice McCarthy's 4MAT System with Michael Rogers' Communication Chain for Musical Performance in the development of a systematic procedure that requires the choral student to go beyond the surface details in determining the musical essence of a particular composition.

Chapter One of this study reviews current conducting and methods textbooks, and recent and related research specific to teaching score preparation procedures, particularly as they relate to the use of primary source material.

Chapter Four provides additional sample lessons that incorporate the tenets of performance practice in the investigative process of decoding and interpreting the musical score. Specific choral compositions provide the basis for these examples. The final chapter places these lessons within the context of a one-semester course along with suggestions for sequencing, assessment, and the possible correlations to a comprehensive undergraduate music education curriculum.

Chapter Two describes the aforementioned pedagogical approaches espoused by Bernice McCarthy and Michael Rogers, while providing a framework for teaching score analysis skills to undergraduate music education students. This approach is illustrated in the presentation of two sample lessons.

Chapter Three provides an overview of performance practice ranging from the Sixteenth through the Nineteenth centuries, including quotations dealing with sound quality, tempo and meter, phrasing and articulation, rhythmic and melodic alteration, and expression. While far from exhaustive in scope or depth, these quotations provide the undergraduate choral scholar with a cross-section of materials available for those who wish to glean musical insight from contemporaries of the composer.