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We Should Teach Music History Backwards

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Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#111

Post by wolf550e »

w-ll wrote: post #106
c3534l wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great essay a while back that I can no longer find that summarized Guns, Germs, and Steel by continually asking the question "why?" It start with "Why is Western Europe and America so dominant culturally and economically?" Then regressed back to questions like "why did Europeans colonize the Americas instead of the other way around" to "why did the Europeans have steel, disease, and gunpowder but the Nati…

There's a book by that title. I havn't gotten a chance to read it yet, but was told its very good. https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0...

Beware, historians don't like the book: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#113

Post by JasonFruit »

I'm going to disagree with everyone! You should learn history — or any subject — by starting with the things that interest you and working outward from there. Studied that way, nothing is dry, because your motivation to learn stems from what you're passionate about. For example, I learned 20th-century world history based on its relation to aviation, and in the process gained a real, abiding interest in history; I learned medieval history based on my interests in the music and religion of the time. I'm weak in the Enlightenment, but I'm sure I'll get there. I strongly recommend this approach, not because it is systematic or comprehensive, but because it encourages you to actually learn, not just bone up for tests.

Being old and curmudgeonly is fun, too.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#114

Post by c3534l »

wolf550e wrote: post #111
w-ll wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a book by that title. I havn't gotten a chance to read it yet, but was told its very good. https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0...

Beware, historians don't like the book: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...

The criticism seems to be mostly that it's too broad and lacks nuance rather than being something akin to pseudoscience. When I read the book I never thought the book was meant to be the be-all and end-all of history, so I never really understood that criticism. Yes, history is complicated. I'd just keep that in mind. It kind of reminds me of when people criticize the book Code for not being a technical enough discussion of computer hardware.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#115

Post by jcranmer »

c3534l wrote: post #80
bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

There was a great essay a while back that I can no longer find that summarized Guns, Germs, and Steel by continually asking the question "why?" It start with "Why is Western Europe and America so dominant culturally and economically?" Then regressed back to questions like "why did Europeans colonize the Americas instead of the other way around" to "why did the Europeans have steel, disease, and gunpowder but the Nati…

The problem with that approach is that you can end up begging the question and not realizing that your proposed answers start to deviate wildly from evidence.

For Jared Diamond, the answer to the question of European domination is solely that Eurasia won the agricultural jackpot [1] and the Americas lost it, and anything that happened in the intervening 10,000 years doesn't factor into it. But... the Americas won the agricultural jackpot (there's a reason why potatoes became a staple crop in much of the world). And the European conquest of the Americas was anything but preordained: the Spanish only conquered Tenochtitlan (which was a larger city, it should be noted, than likely any of the Spanish had ever seen before) with the help of their 20,000 Tlaxcala allies.

[1] The astute will notice that there's a related question that Diamond 100% completely ignores... why didn't China dominate?

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#116

Post by JasonFruit »

sailfast wrote: post #79

Counterpoint: learning in this way is a good method of keeping attention ("you should learn this because your favorite artists liked these artist!") but if you actually listen to the old stuff first, you can also appreciate it in the RIGHT order of things. It is, however, pretty difficult to listen to much of what's come before. I think a healthy appreciation in both directions, digging into whatever node you happen…

What do you think is difficult to listen to about earlier music? I can't say that music of the past was difficult for me, except for music written before leading tones became almost obligatory, i.e. before the advent of functional harmony — and that was a pretty rapid adjustment. I suppose some of the medieval music that uses parallel fifths between raised 4/7 and 5/1 at cadences took a little getting used to, as well.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#117

Post by WhompingWindows »

I think music history should be taught thematically. Rather than going Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. in chronological order, use music theory to make connections across all time periods in each lecture. For instance, one could teach about open chords, those containing 1 and 5 only. That might be illustrated in both 2001: A Space Odyssey or monastic music from medieval churches. One could examine how melodies are shaped, what makes music sing. Harmonic analysis could be the aim, looking at how dissonance was increasingly used to create tension and drama. There's also storytelling in music, whether through words or not.

All of this to say, I'd rather not use chronological time as the axis of any musical study. We love music for its beauty and power, which is not a function of time but of the intricate neurological systems devoted to hearing and musical thought.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#118

Post by airwebster »

c3534l wrote: post #80
bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

There was a great essay a while back that I can no longer find that summarized Guns, Germs, and Steel by continually asking the question "why?" It start with "Why is Western Europe and America so dominant culturally and economically?" Then regressed back to questions like "why did Europeans colonize the Americas instead of the other way around" to "why did the Europeans have steel, disease, and gunpowder but the Nati…

The essay you read might have been by Yanis Varoufakis. (Former Greek finance minister.) The aboriginal peoples of the world .... had everything they needed, so tend not to invade for "more." To answer the question, "why" maybe a bit deeper view is worthwhile.

An alternative way to look at it could be Yanis Varoufakis passage:

"Debt, money, faith and state all go hand in hand. Without debt there is no easy way to manage agricultural surplus. As debt appeared, money flourished. But for money to have value, an institution, the state, had to make it trustworthy. When we talk about the economy, this is what we are talking about: the complex relations that emerge in a society with a surplus."

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#119

Post by resu_nimda »

ljw1001 wrote: post #103
resu_nimda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It seems like this author got really into Sam Smith, did a deep Wikipedia dive, then somehow extrapolated that into a wide-sweeping theory of pedagogy, with bold assertions like "That’s how we learn about music: backwards, always backwards." There are so many counter-examples. I am instantly reminded of a childhood friend who was really into classical music. I don't think he arrived there working all the way…

As someone who learned young to love Charlie Parker, & co., I suspect your friend loved what he grew up listening to at home. Classical music _was_ the contemporary context for your friend, just like your context included the Who. If you didn't ever go back further than the Who, btw, I'm not sure you 'learned history' in the usual sense of the phrase, and I'm not sure you can teach a history class based on random enc…

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of learning about the diversity of musical styles and cultures than specifically "music history" in a more academic sense. Random encounters can expose you to music you were not familiar with, in a way that a history lesson might not, and then you go and start digging into it.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#120

Post by SwellJoe »

nautilus12 wrote: post #84

I disagree whole heartedly. This will end up putting an overemphasis on contemporary work, and not enough on classic works. Think about how often cirriculum never gets to the end of, when such seminal and formative composers such as Bach are fit into the last weeks you will inevietably gloss over them. We already make Gods out of our contemporary world view at the expense of downplaying the brilliance of past thinker…

What is "too much" and "not enough" when it comes to what a student is passionate about?

I think there's currently a tremendous, almost unbelievably large, over-emphasis on music that has a written score in most music programs, which leaves out literally everything that is popular and contemporary. One has to specifically pursue those subjects in elective classes (there are jazz programs that make it up through the 70s as part of the primary coursework, but popular modern music is practically absent from most college music programs). Even when modern music is covered, it tends to be those pieces written by composers using traditional methods, which includes a written score...which is not what is popular.

This is a new phenomenon (though, I guess, studying music in college is also a new phenomenon, when speaking on the time scale of music history). Bach was popular in his time, and he paid attention to other popular composers of his time. What we think of as the "repertoire" that is sort of widely regarded as what someone ought to study as a music major is also pretty new-fangled. There was much less awareness of music from even different parts of the same continent during Bach or Beethoven's time than we have today (I mean, we likely know more about contemporaries of Beethoven from across Europe than he did in his day, and we certainly have better access to history on both sides of his life than he did), and yet we pretend this is how it's always been and that it's the way it should be.

There's a good argument to be made about a common language among musicians...and that historically has been the western repertoire that is generally taught in universities, but there are other common music languages that have similar depth and rigorous analysis (jazz being one of them, perhaps surprisingly, given its origins as popular dance and party music). A music education is supposed to prepare someone to make and/or play music (hopefully music that they like) often with others, and always for others. The musical language they use to speak to those other people doesn't have to be deeply informed by Bach to be valuable.

Of course, if that is the music someone loves and the music someone wants to make, it's great that it's available to them. But, I think it's Eurocentric and extremely limiting when imposed as a requirement.

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