Resources to teach music history

[BuyBuy]

So what do you fellow teachers use to teach music history in a consistent way?

I've tried to write progressives lessons, but it's really time consuming.

Do you recommand using books such as "Then enjoyment of Music", used in Music Appreciation in college level? Any software? Any online lessons or resources to teach music history? Thanks for your insight.

[m1469]

Here is a cool (to me) composer timeline that I found.  It is a good reference anyway, though it does not "teach" history, per se. 

https://www.edinboro.edu/cwis/music/Cordell/timeline.html
(timeline of composers)


I have done some web searching for forums and such and found a few which I haven't explored too extensively, but here you go:

https://www.datadragon.com/cgi-bin/pmessage.pl?action=open&fid=hist

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/mainforum.asp?messageSectionID=47
(Gramaphone: includes a number of other forums also)


I haven't looked into how exactly to have my students learn more about history.  I try to give them assignments based on the repertoire they are studying and so on, but this is not as organized and efficient as I would like.  I have some history books from when I was in Uni that I will refer to for some things, some books on specific composers and such (here is one of the books found at amazon: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393969045/102-7942739-8836110?v=glance ).  For some of the students in school, my dream is to learn what they are studying in their history sections and find a way to relate what we are learning in music with what they are learning about history in shcool.



This is always a decent resource for specific composers and some general history

https://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/classmus.html
(homepage)

https://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/musical_history.html
(a short history of Western music)



Here are some other online resources for history in general:

https://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/music-history.htm
(brief overviews of the eras and some introduction to terminology)

https://dmoz.org/Arts/Music/History/
(Huge directory to online resources covering specific aspects -- actually the more I explore, the COOLER it gets  )

https://hector.ucdavis.edu/Music10/HistoryTP.htm
(Great resource and directory for more online resources: very clean in appearence and easy to read)

https://www.questia.com/Index.jsp?CRID=history_of_music&OFFID=se1&KEY=music_history
("questia" : HUGE resource, though they only give tid bits before you have to give them money...)



Search your local libraries, they should have some books. 




Here is a thread from the forum :

History brief
https://www.pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,1915.msg14894.html#msg14894
(Bernhard lists some books on specific pianists)

So, these are only resources...LOL.. I hope it helps.  Your students could go to some of these things on their own to fulfill assignments from you.  I am sure other teachers have organized approaches to teaching history.  I am interested also as what I have given here is basically all the further I have gotten with this.


m1469

[dveej]

In my lessons I have evolved a kind of storytelling, where I tell a story about a composer or, sometimes, an entire country (that can get into stereotypes, which I warn the student about, then do anyway  ).
For example: when trying to get a student to play Mozart with lightness instead of heaviness, I tell her/him about Austria, and its delicious light pastries, of which the dough must be beaten by hand to incorporate lots of air, and how Austrians compare themselves to Germans and see themselves as sunnier, lighter, more "fun". Then I take the horrible stereotypes to a new high and say that some people see Germans as stodgy and thick like a pie crust made of flour and lard, as opposed to Austrians who are a light flaky fluffy delicate strudel. I always finish up by denying any truth to any of this, and then demonstrate the lightness of Mozart by playing a motif from the piece we're working on and having the student imitate my lightness. Then as a joke I say "Now let's pretend we're a German from Hamburg and we're playing this piece" and then I play the same motif exaggeratedly heavily, having the student copy my silly playing, and we have a bit of a lark doing all this.
No, my students don't end up hating Germans. They all know enough not to believe my silly stories; but what sticks in their mind is the essence of the lightness and how it feels/sounds to play it.
Sometimes I supplement these criminal indoctrinations with visuals like pictures of buildings and paintings and people in period national costume and videos, like the Composer series or Beethoven Lives Upstairs. There is also a set of books on composers with line drawings published by Bellerophon, including one on Women Composers. Each composer is described in a two- or three-page bio, with accompanying line drawings and caricatures from the period. But mostly I tell stories, sometimes very fanciful and unreal. Storytelling is fast and I don't have to dig for a prop or remember to lug it to the lesson. I try to have several stories for different pieces which I feel are important enough that I will teach them to all my students when they get to that piece's level. So I practice my stories and refine them over time, and I hope they are getting better...

[ludwig]

Do you mean music history for you piano students? Or in general (like in the classroom)?
I think the most important thing is to go from the character of the period/composers/genres of music....You can talk about  the elements and concepts of music to explain each different period and the style of compositions and then go from there to explain why these things happened in history, what else was happening to create the style of music in a certain period etc...  So you might like to analyse music and find out more that way...I think learning from score and listening exercises are better than any text book...I know lesson plans are time consuming (god knows how many I have to for secondary school music classes) but once you do them, they are resources for the future, you can just get out a lesson plan anyday and repeat it for however many students on a certain topic. You can incoporate some composition tasks and aural in there too, for example, compose in the style of air/theme and variation and use Mozart's pieces as an example of how to compose in the style of the classical period etc... You can anaylse the chordal progressions of different pieces also to get a sense of how the harmonic elements developed through music history (why they sound different and characteristic of a certain period or style) and do some aural exercises (learning important cadences, chords, or melodic dictations of a simple line from a piece such as Mendelssohn's violin concerto)...

Its always good to have resources handy, and music teachers in schools build it up in 10/20/30 years and they are the best people to be friends with  when you're looking for resources on musicology/musicianship etc... There are heaps of stuff on the net on projects you can do (make your own instruments, understanding the classical orchestra, learning about different composers, webquests etc...) Some great sites are created by the education departments through orchestras/choirs etc... Just do a google on the specific topics you want to teach, if anyone's interested, its also a good idea to share resources and lesson plans for teaching too.. I'm willing to