Teaching Theory: Learning individual units & applications of Part-writing

[m1469]

Okay, I am setting goals for what I want my students to be learning from their time with me.  Theory is a big thing to me.

Using repertoire as the tool for acquiring a command on theory, I have the following questions :

1.  Does it make sense to address smaller units before larger units or vice versa ?
 Example : Roman numeral anlaysis vs overall form.

I personally find I am forever wanting to discover the larger picture first, the overall form, to then fit the smaller units into context.  But, by now I am not sure whether this only makes sense to me because I learned the smaller units first.

2.  I am considering giving my students part-writing assignments, however it dawns on me that I don't rightly know the practical applications of this exercise.  It is just what I did in first year theory as an exercise to, at worst, learn rules and at best, learn what types of note combinations give which arual affect.  So, is this primarily a compositional exercise ?

Perhaps I have just not made a mental connection yet.

I am simply having a hard time knowing how to organize my thoughts and aims.  I have a number of books covering the specifics of theory and form, but I am not certain of their overall efficiency and ability to lead the student into cogent thinking as it may relate to piano playing.  And I don't think I will have the desired results to just hand them a book and say "here, read this".


Thanks in advance,
m1469

[abell88]

To answer your first example, I think even very young/early level students can see the overall picture...ie. lines 1 and 2 are similar, line 3 is different, line 4 is like line 2, so the overall analysis is A A' B A'. (Just thinking of a minuet some of my students are working on.) IMHO, the Roman numerals are harder to see at first...they may know them as degrees of the scale, but to recognize them in inverted/spread out chords is harder.

But, I don't know if that's true in general, or just for this example.

Alice