3.1 Primary and Secondary Schools
Music structures presented for observation by listening need to be adequate to the ex- perience even of less prepared listeners. It means that the tasks need to be manageable for almost everybody. However, by proper training, you can notice remarkable progress; it is just enough to gradually equip your students by appropriate vocabulary, which will enable more and more precise differentiation. The contrast of heights, their semantic potential and some other fundamental acoustic sound characteristics (e.g. timber, dynamics, etc.) are also manageable. Furthermore, they strongly stimulate imagination and open up the possibility of playing creative games. Camille Saint Saëns entrusted the main music theme of the fifth part of the “great zoo fantasy” to the contrabass. Together with children we can discuss whether such orchestration is suitable and we may ask: how did the composer reach the effect of the contrabass melody being associated with the walking elephant? Even the small children surprisingly feel that this association does not consist only in the low pitch. They can recognize that it probably relates to the fact that moving in the lowest
pitch is rather difficult. Subsequently, the rough sound of the dancing contrabass melody (the piano interpretation of the contrabass part requires transposition one octave lower and it is necessary to play the record in the contra octave with all the stroke complements) will spontaneously widen the smile on the listeners’ faces when they imagine the elephant walking across their school yard nonchalantly. Electronic keyboard instruments allow us to change the sound of a contrabass for another music instruments and thus we may ask our children listeners to express their opinions about the adequacy of those images. Thanks to these possibilities we may also radically change the rhythmical structure of the original (e.g. to tango), which can be highly motivating too.
(Listening: Elephant, the fifth part theme of the Carnival of Animals, transcription for tenor saxophone and pan flute, in tango stylization)
3.2. Training University Students to Become Music Teachers
All previous activities are adequate and motivating for primary and secondary school students. Nevertheless, comparing two different piano stylizations of the Elephant is un- doubtedly a much more demanding task; therefore, it seems to be more appropriate for university students preparing for their teaching practice. I suggest this activity could be in- cluded in semantic seminars or in the complex analyses of school music seminar, seminars for children, alternatively even in seminars teaching harmony and counterpoint. To achieve a certain proficiency in reading music and mastering the piano are essential. Before start- ing the actual activity, let us revise which particular versions of the Saint-Saëns’ music we will compare. The first one is our piano arrangement, which respects the original author’s score (Ex.3). The other one a simplified arrangement by Hans-Günter Heumann. 4 (Ex. 4)
The listening comparison may help you check the level of mastering a particular schoolwork part (e.g. which stave contains a difference; which bar contains a change; com- pare the level of dissonance between two chords; etc.). The differences are almost tangible from the sheet music examples, especially, when a person can “feel it below his/her fin- gers” (finger harmony). The transposition from the Schott edition does not really have any influence on the semantic value of the sample – the dancing melody transposed major sec- ond up has not made the melody any lighter. The pronunciation of the contrabass melody stays preserved (all statements are deduced from the immediate interpretation). The right hand changes in the Schott version (Ex. 4) are motivated mainly by the attempt to facilitate the performance for the non-proficient pianist. Judge yourselves whether they have any semantic value and if so, then from which level of preparation.
(Repetitive listening of examples 3 and 4; gradual concentrating on the 3rd and 4th bar)
Record the results of your observations into a simple table in such a way that each student may follow you and see it. The difference in keys will be solved by means of using functional symbols.
Takt 1. 2. 3. 4.
příklad č. 1 T T D7
D4 D7
příklad č. 2 T T D7 D7
The listeners will not notice the differences in the 3rd bar; they will notice it only after
you draw attention to it by playing it and commenting on it. They will hear the differences but will not be able to rationally explain them at first. The sheet music containing remarks
on particular, appropriate and already discussed topics from harmony will open the way to an individual assessment.
How does the prolonged tone (Ex.3) influence the emotional assessment of the music part? To use a metaphor from our sense of taste, we would call it a delicious thing; a detail which gives flavours the melody by its dissonance, subsequently it causes an excitement and then brings the satisfaction after a slight calming down by distributing the dissonance (Ex.4). Right now we have maybe encountered the rudiments of asserting expressionism, which always offers an opportunity for individual experience. It might arise spontane- ously; it may also be based on a strengthened effort to search and find causes of such an emotional delicacy. The semantic value of the discovered detail will become even more obvious if the third and the forth bars are compared with the following Schott arrange- ment. The piece as a whole is somehow deprived; it misses something which got lost via the individualized interpretation into the other language – into the language typical for folk and pop music, in which the tonal tenseness is by no means relevant. On the contrary, it is based on maximum simplification at all levels of sound construction, reaching the level of a certain uniformity of the music speech in which every striking swerve may disturb communication. A distinctive group of consumers lack enough experience to absorb such “eccentricity”. When we later, after multiple analyses of the details, employ the acquired experience of listening (the Elephant), we can state that Saint-Saëns probably did not use those playful details just for the purpose of formal enriching of the harmony flow but more likely he respected their share in the legibility of the energetic richness of music thoughts. This, actually, corresponds to his intention to entertain the listeners by means of the whole cycle of pictures. „He does not try to be the innovator. He simply acts with an excellent mastering of the composer’s craft …“ 5
And now, let us at least shortly imply some possibilities of utilizing the nowadays ever so popular PowerPoint. Except for textual information it is possible to integrate some drawings, photos or video clips into PowerPoint sheets. What is more, we may integrate even the sound presentation according to didactic needs. You just need to press a small loudspeaker and the music demonstration prepared in advance can be heard in the clear space context with the content dominant feature counting with various multimedia pos- sibilities of didactic processing. Technical innovations open up completely new horizons for current music teachers and music education.
It is time for a short recap. We wanted to offer a few impulses to consider possible toip- ics for master and dissertation theses. It could be helpful for those looking for a topic use- ful for music education. This is, nevertheless, a vast area and it would be definitely worth to establish a team of coordinators to map it. The issues of active listening to music are attractive if only because there are so many controversial opinions which reflect the spec- trum from the absolute age-long ignoring this seemingly transparent field to the whole array of diversely distorted perspectives. You do not necessarily need to agree with our perspectives; and we strongly recommend verifying the other perspectives face to face to children’s eyes and the prying questions asked by the teachers.
5 Ašenbrenerová, I. Karneval zvířat v učebnicích hudební výchovy. In: Aktuální otázky současné hudebně výchovné teorie a praxe II. Ústí nad Labem 2007, p. 117.
Wishing you lots of pleasure in your work.
The contribution was translated from Czech origin which was published in the collection of proceedings from the conference of Czech and Slovak doctoral students and pedagogues in Prague in 2009.
English translation