At this point in the year, the students in my Music in the Twentieth-Century course are just getting started with the first assignment that will eventually build to an end-of-term paper. For this component, they have to provide me with a topic and an abstract that is focused on methodology.
In anticipation of this assignment, I have had many conversations with students, both formal and informal, about what might work well for such a project. It is not a large class, and yet I have heard proposals ranging from “Why does Schoenberg give such strange names to his pieces?” to “What aspects of banjo picking did Joe Venuti incorporate into his solo style?” Some of the topics will work better than others, but in working through each one, I have gained a new insight into what students find interesting about this music—whether it is a perspective that is colored by their own experience or a hearing that is informed by the sound of their own instrument. They all come to these meetings with a completely unique perspective. Beginning the term paper so soon in the course has fore-fronted these perspectives and has helped me to take notice of the many ways in which each student is engaging with the course material.
Moving forward, I hope to integrate these types of perspectives in my teaching in order to engage my students more directly with the course material. In particular, I have noticed that many of my students understand the music presented in class through the lens of their own instrument. In the most basic sense, this means that guitarists listen for what the guitar is doing and that piano players listen to the piano. In a broader sense, it means that the roles of their instruments inform their listening. For example, in discussing the innovations of the bebop style, the drummer in my course really doesn’t care about the soloing of the treble instruments; he just wants to know how it swings. I would never have brought that up in a lecture, but I really should. Not only because it is interesting but because it engages the drummers and the bassists and everyone else who doesn’t hear like I do.
Writing can serve as a neutral ground, as a place where instructors and students approach the material on the same footing, as co-inquisitors.
This is one of the many reasons why I feel that a writing-intensive course design is so valuable. It gives the students a chance to take control of the material and to draw attention to what they find interesting. I think that if instructors are willing to be flexible and to listen to these perspectives, then our classes will be better for it. It can serve as a reminder that our perspectives are very much our own and that they can only be improved by incorporating the perspectives of others. By incorporating these ideas, we can break down the standard paradigm that has the instructor leading students. Instead, writing can serve as a neutral ground, as a place where instructors and students approach the material on the same footing, as co-inquisitors.
Cameron is musicologist and baroque violinist currently pursuing his PhD in musicology at the University of Georgia. His research is focused on performance practice in the late eighteenth century. As a performer he has appeared with a number of early music groups across the United States including the George Mason Baroque Ensemble and the Amherst Early Music Festival Orchestra. He is also an avid claw-hammer banjo player and an excellent cook.