Defining Music in the National Arts Curriculum: Values
Now let’s take a look at the next sentence in the definition proposed in the new Australian National Arts Curriculum.
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Defining Music in the new Arts Curriculum
Here in Australia we are going through a process of creating a national curriculum. For all these years the education
Generation Gap: Thomas Adès’ “Asyla” and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1
It has taken me 13 years to finally connect with the sound world of Thomas Adès, with the moment of sonic truth happening last Thursday night at the second of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s most recent Meet the Music concerts (a repeat of the program from the night before). [Meet the Music is the SSO’s high school student oriented concert series]. I had hurriedly bought a ticket that afternoon after realising that Asyla was on the program (although on discovering Adès was both featured in the program and conducting his work himself it really wouldn’t have mattered which of his compositions were slated to be played); with only 24 seats left unsold I didn’t have much to choose from, but that suited me well, as new work is always fun to experience with an excellent view of the percussionists. This was to be my first experience of Adès’ music in live performance, but I’d heard some excerpts from his opera
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When has a student ‘learned’ a piece of music?
I’ve had some interesting discussions over the past few months about how I define ‘learning’ a piece of music. This
Teacher As Guide Update
About two weeks ago I wrote about a ‘post-exam’ lesson I had given to a student who had sat her Grade 5 exam only a few days earlier. In her 40 minute lesson we worked through six new pieces that she was to start working on, ranging from a ‘hard’ Grade 3 piece through to middle-of-the-road Grade 5 standard pieces. The next scheduled lesson was abandoned due to a sporting injury (a not uncommon occurrence amongst piano students who also maintain a sporting program alongside their instrumental studies!), so the two-week break between lessons really only allowed the student about 7 or 8 days to get any practice done. But even so, she returned having spent about 6 hours in practice since her last lesson. The Diversion 4 by Richard Rodney Bennett was fluid and basically flawless, but a little too slow. This week my student is focussing on creating balance within the right hand part, which consists of both
Some of the things that have been on my mind
In contrast to my normal 1000 word blog entries, today’s is one of my “quick – make a list of all things I want to blog about” pieces. Last week (for the first time) I joined in a twitter conversation held every Tuesday at 11am Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time called #musedchat. It’s an hour of thought-exchange between music educators, most of whom are working in classroom contexts, most of those it seems working with high school aged students. Last week’s topic looked at ways of assessing musical understanding, and I loved each of the 60 minutes spent involved in that conversation. Most music assessment looks at a student’s ability to do something, usually performing a technical feat, or recognising a musical occurrence, being able to label something appropriately, and so forth – many things which are not necessarily measuring a student’s understanding. Which raises the question, how much music education is directed to increasing or deepening understanding? I spent
What Are Piano Lessons For?
This is a very personal manifesto about the purpose of piano lessons. You may not agree. You may disagree vehemently.
Teacher As Guide: A Case Study
I’ve been writing and speaking about the responsibility of the piano teacher to be a guide for the student in terms of each specific new piece of repertoire, the importance for piano teachers to take this role seriously. Students gain enormous value from good guidance both in terms of enjoyment and sense of accomplishment as well as saving the student a lot of wasted practice time. This last week a student of mine had a ‘post-exam lesson’ – that first lesson after the exam where new repertoire is assigned, and the piano teacher spends more time playing the piano than the student does. Even though my student had just passed Grade 5 Trinity Guildhall (with distinction, as it turned out) her first new assignment was Diversion 4 by Richard Rodney Bennett (a piece considerably easier than Grade 5!). Before she played it through I talked about the style of the piece: it’s clearly a 20th century work, but very lyrical,
Resuming Normal Transmission
It’s been exactly a month since my last post to this blog, and in the intervening time my journalist husband has been working overtime making commentary on the unique electoral result Australia achieved (and on the final makeup of the minority government) while I’ve had a fairly full schedule myself, with a weekend in Wagga Wagga participating in a composing festival (premieres of specially commissioned works at night followed by workshops for aspiring composers during the day) and many pages of proofing for some new books coming out over the next few months. Oh, and my sister has just had her first baby, so the whole family (yes, that includes me!) has been enjoying this newborn phase with the delighted parents. But transmission is about to be reset to ‘Normal’, with a backlog of issues, ideas and music to discuss. I’ve been playing through the new ABRSM (2011-12) piano exam books, and revisiting the AMEB Series 16 selections as well.
Examination Rules: How Many Hours Practice Does it Take?!
One of my ‘rules’ for a while now has been that students need to do at least 100 hours practice
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Elissa Milne 