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Journal of Research in Music Education 61(1) 80–96 © 2013 National Association for Music Education Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0022429412474826 jrme.sagepub.com 474826JRM 61 1 10.1177/0022429412474826Journal of Research in Music EducationBrenner and Strand 1 Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Corresponding Author: Katherine Dagmar Strand, Indiana University, 1201 E. 3rd Street, M145D, Bloomington, IN 47405. Email: [email protected] A Case Study of Teaching Musical Expression to Young Performers Brenda Brenner 1 and Katherine Strand 1 Abstract What does it mean to teach musical expression to child performers? Is it teaching how to interpret a piece of music “correctly,” or is there more involved? In this case study, we explored the beliefs and practices of five teachers who specialized in teaching children to perform in a variety of musical performance areas, including violin, cello, piano, guitar, voice, and musical theater. To discover their pedagogy for teaching musical expressivity, we asked the initial questions, “How do these teachers define musical expression?” “What are the characteristics of an expressive performance for children?” and “Can musical expression be taught to children?” Data were collected through interviews with teachers and students, observations of lessons with children, and archival materials about each teacher’s studio practice. Transcripts of interviews, artifacts, and observed lessons were analyzed through emergent category coding and axial coding, using member checking and negative case analysis. Findings are discussed in relation to extant literature. Implications for teacher training and future research are explored. Keywords musical expressiveness, performance pedagogy, case study Among the studies about expressivity in musical performance, there has been a great deal of attention paid to defining and characterizing expression and teasing apart the dimensions of expressive composition, performance, and response. Research on developmental trends in expressive performance indicates that even small children may be able to control aspects of timing and dynamics in their sound production,
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Page 1: Brenner 2013

Journal of Research in Music Education61(1) 80 –96

© 2013 NationalAssociation for Music Education

Reprints and permissions:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0022429412474826jrme.sagepub.com

474826 JRM61110.1177/0022429412474826Journal of Research in Music EducationBrenner and Strand

1Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

Corresponding Author:Katherine Dagmar Strand, Indiana University, 1201 E. 3rd Street, M145D, Bloomington, IN 47405. Email: [email protected]

A Case Study of Teaching Musical Expression to Young Performers

Brenda Brenner1 and Katherine Strand1

Abstract

What does it mean to teach musical expression to child performers? Is it teaching how to interpret a piece of music “correctly,” or is there more involved? In this case study, we explored the beliefs and practices of five teachers who specialized in teaching children to perform in a variety of musical performance areas, including violin, cello, piano, guitar, voice, and musical theater. To discover their pedagogy for teaching musical expressivity, we asked the initial questions, “How do these teachers define musical expression?” “What are the characteristics of an expressive performance for children?” and “Can musical expression be taught to children?” Data were collected through interviews with teachers and students, observations of lessons with children, and archival materials about each teacher’s studio practice. Transcripts of interviews, artifacts, and observed lessons were analyzed through emergent category coding and axial coding, using member checking and negative case analysis. Findings are discussed in relation to extant literature. Implications for teacher training and future research are explored.

Keywords

musical expressiveness, performance pedagogy, case study

Among the studies about expressivity in musical performance, there has been a great deal of attention paid to defining and characterizing expression and teasing apart the dimensions of expressive composition, performance, and response. Research on developmental trends in expressive performance indicates that even small children may be able to control aspects of timing and dynamics in their sound production,

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suggesting that expressivity may be a natural music behavior (Trehub, 2001). How-ever, when teaching performance means teaching instrumental or vocal performance technique and helping students to memorize repertoire, read notation, and acclimate to an audience, encouraging expressiveness can become a challenge.

Examining Musical ExpressivityThe term expressiveness is used to describe the process a performer uses to identify and manipulate the moments in a piece of music that are, according to sensible pat-terns of change, appropriate for deviations from the norms of tempo, dynamic level, articulation, and tone quality (Clarke, 1987; Palmer, 1997). Palmer (1997), Repp (1992), and Sundberg (1993) identified patterns of change that “make sense” to listen-ers. However, there is more to musical expressivity than deviations within a musical structure. Gabrielsson and Juslin (2003) explained that a musical performance can be “expressive” of musical conventions, tension and release, emotion, physical move-ment and energy, and the more ineffable dimensions of personality characteristics, events, objects, beauty, religious beliefs, or social conditions. Juslin (2003) summa-rized all the various dimensions of expressiveness in music based upon Gabrielsson’s (2003) review of literature, in which five dimensions of expressivity were examined: piece related, instrument related, performer related, listener related, and context related. The five dimensions are co-occurring and all can be evaluated for levels of expressivity.

Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983, pp. 17, 18) derived gestalt-based rules that can pro-vide information about how to perform a musical line expressively. According to Lerdahl and Jackendoff, musical lines present groupings and accent patterns that pro-vide structure to the listener. The clarity of groupings is greater when the grouping and accent patterns coincide. Grouping preference rules (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983) suggest grouping boundaries under conditions of proximity or change at the following musical moments: the end of slurs or rests (Rule [R.] 1), an attack-point rule after prolonged sounds that are among shorter ones (R. 2), a change in register (R. 3), a change in dynamics (R. 4), a change in articulation (R. 5), a change in length (R. 6), or a change in timbre (R. 7). Similarly, Lerdahl and Jackendoff described three types of rhythmic accents that a listener will perceive to provide structure and expressiveness in a musical line: A metrical accent (MA) corresponds to the sensation of periodically recurring strong and weak beats, a structural accent (SA) is a syntactically important event at the beginning or ending of a musical phrase, and a phenomenal accent (PA) is an expressive accent produced by differences, which can be found in any point of a musical line.

When a performer heightens grouping and accent patterns, the performance of the musical structure is considered more expressive (Deliege, 1987). Decisions about how to perform accents and groupings can be made by using prior music learning and expe-rience (Seashore, 1938). However, according to Seashore, deviations in tempo, dynamics,

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articulation, or tone quality that do not follow commonsensical rules are likely to be considered by listeners to be a mistake rather than an expressive gesture.

Lisboa (2008) conducted a longitudinal case study of the learning strategies and performances of three children learning the cello. She captured information about per-formances after the children had practiced in one of three different conditions: self-directed learning, analytical learning under the teacher’s guidance, and multimodal learning with singing and contextual discussion. By examining the musical perfor-mance in comparison to Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s (1983) musical grouping preference rules, Lisboa found that the children who did not receive explicit instruction developed a more limited understanding of their music and gave no consideration to expression during their independent rehearsals.

Lisboa’s (2008) study suggests that teachers should help child learners develop a sense of expressiveness during instruction. But several questions remain unanswered: With many dimensions to address, what should teachers focus upon? Which dimen-sions are available to children, and which may be too mature for them? What tools, strategies, or ideas should teachers use to convey the expressiveness that each piece of music may need? How do practitioners’ definitions of musical expressivity in perfor-mance relate to research definitions (Sloboda, 1996)? To answer these questions, we sought to learn about the beliefs and practices of a group of teachers who work with children.

The purpose of our study was to investigate the beliefs and practices of music teachers who worked with children in order to identify patterns that might point the way toward a child-centered pedagogy of expressive musical performance. Our initial guiding questions were as follows: (1) How did these teachers define musical expression? (2) Did these teachers believe that musical expression could be taught to children? and (3) What were the characteristics of an expressive performance that these teachers could describe and or demonstrate in their instruction?

MethodWe conducted a collective case study, described by Stake (2000) as a study consisting of several cases in order to examine a “phenomenon, population, or general condi-tion” (p. 437). Our participants were teachers of school-age children in a midwestern university town that is home to a large music school (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Participants were recruited through snowball sampling (Kuzel, 1999) in which the first participant was asked to provide the names of other instrument or voice teachers who would have contrasting practices or ideas. In this way, we hoped to find the most heterogeneous sample of teachers related to the instrument, musical genre, and per-formance practices. Our participants were five teachers who lived and worked in a midwestern university town and up to three children from each studio.

Teacher A directed and taught in a world-renowned string program for children ages 5 through 18. She developed her pedagogy for this program that is a blend of her ideas and those of Paul Rolland and Shinichi Suzuki. At the time of the study, she had

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been working with this program for more than 35 years. Three students from her studio participated in the study: a 10-year-old female violinist who had participated in the program since age 4, a 14-year-old male violinist who had participated in the program since age 5, and a 15-year-old female violinist who had participated in the program since age 5.

Teacher B was a freelance piano and voice teacher with a performance degree from a well-known university and additional graduate work in performance. He composed for and with his students and held recitals in a large performance hall in town. He drew inspiration from a gospel singer and conductor with whom he had worked and studied and, at the time of the study, had taught for approximately 5 years. The three partici-pating children from his studio were siblings. The youngest, a boy age 7, had studied voice in this studio for a year. The middle child was an 11-year-old female who had studied piano and voice in this studio for 5 years. The oldest was a female, 13 years old, who had studied piano and voice in this studio for 5 years.

Teacher C, a violinist and violin teacher with a PhD in music education, had studied with a prominent violin pedagogue. She taught beginning students in her home studio. In addition, this teacher participated actively on the local school board, writing and presenting on music education topics. This teacher learned, just before data collection, that her students were moving and/or unable to continue their lessons, so she did not have any violin students. After some discussion, we decided to include this teacher’s discussions about pedagogy in the analysis as confirmatory or comparative to the other participants.

Teacher D was a jazz trumpeter who had completed graduate studies at a prestigious East Coast conservatory. While there, he was invited to participate in the development of the state music learning standards. He developed and directed a program that taught children ages 4 through 18 how to sing and play the instruments in rock bands. He also taught a summer program for youth, for which he composed a rock musical theater production. At the time of the study, he had been teaching in this program for 11 years. The two child participants from his studio were a 9-year-old male who had been in the program (specializing in electric bass) for 3 years and a 7-year-old female who had been in the program (specializing in singing) for 2 years.

Teacher E was a cellist and codirector of the string program directed by Teacher A. She was an internationally active performer and teacher. She referenced several artists with whom she had worked or who had influenced her pedagogy, including cellists, violinists, pianists, oboists, hornists, conductors, and painters. At the time of the study, she had been teaching in her situation for approximately 15 years. The two child par-ticipants from her studio included a 10-year-old male who had studied in her studio for 3 years and an 11-year-old male who had studied with her for 4 years.

Data collection began with semistructured, open-ended interviews and informal conversations with each of the teachers and the child learners (Stake, 1995). We began the semistructured interviews by asking the teacher participants to define and describe musical expressiveness. We asked, as well, whether the teachers believed that children could be taught to be expressive performers, and if so, what strategies would they use

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to accomplish that end. The participants added their own topics, which we explored as the conversations developed. For four of our teacher participants, we continued data collection by recording and taking field notes during three lessons for each child par-ticipant and by collecting any available written program materials from each teacher’s studio. Our intent in collecting these two forms of data was to observe each teacher’s pedagogical beliefs in practice.

During interviews with child participants, we asked for definitions and descriptions of musical expressivity and for descriptions of their own expressive capabilities relative to their definitions. However, we found their inability to articulate their ideas provided limited useful data. In this capacity, they served to corroborate teacher interviews and our observations but did not serve as true informants.

After transcribing all interviews, we analyzed the data through open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). We coded the first interviews and observations independently and then compared our findings. We used constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) as the ongoing analysis began to reveal patterns of information and negative case analysis to search for elements that might contradict our findings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Finally, we used axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to examine relationships between the identified categories. Music that children played during lessons was ana-lyzed according to Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s (1983) grouping preference rules and types of rhythmic accent. Finally, findings were discussed with the participants to ensure that our interpretations were accurate.

FindingsCategories that emerged during the coding process and related to our guiding ques-tions included (a) definitions of expressiveness, (b) child-specific teaching strategies, (c) considerations for learner development, and (d) pedagogical practice for teaching musical expressiveness. The first three categories provide a framework for the fourth, in which we found hierarchical relationships among the themes related to individual pedagogical practice. The emergent themes within each category are explained in the narrative that follows.

Given the differences in age, gender, musical genre, instrument, length of time teaching, and child populations, we were surprised to find the amount of consistency in these teachers’ beliefs and practices. However, personal beliefs about the purpose of music lessons, levels of teaching experience, and individual personalities did produce variations in ways that individuals taught musical expressivity. Like different chefs using the same recipe, each teacher used similar ingredients but in differing amounts and with his or her own personal flare.

Defining Expressive PerformanceThe teachers uniformly defined the processes by which a performer develops expres-siveness as technical skill plus interpretation plus creativity or spontaneity, although

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their definitions differed somewhat from clinical definitions (Sloboda, 1996). The three elements—technique, interpretation, and creativity—formed the content of their instruction.

Technical skill was defined as the ability to sing or play with good tone, in tune, and with correct notes. Beyond this, all of the teachers defined expressive technical skill as physical flexibility and connection to the instrument. Interpretation referred to the knowledge of the background of the composition, historical style, composer’s musical characteristics, and musical structure. The teachers’ definitions were similar to Juslin’s (2003) discussion: “The term interpretation typically refers to the individualistic shaping of a piece according to the musical ideas of the performer” (p. 276). The teachers defined creativity as personal decision making through the use of imagination and/or personality, a process that involved risk taking and imagination. Teacher E described, “Creativity . . . is exploring your imagination, coming up with something that is indi-vidual to you. You have to walk into the unknown. They have to be willing to take a risk and try something.” This definition is similar to definitions of creative process found elsewhere in research literature (i.e., McPherson, 1998; Webster, 1990).

All of the teachers expressed that they taught to develop each child’s emotional and personal growth integrally with his or her technical growth on the instrument. Teacher C explained, “Expressiveness in music relates to all of your attitudes about life.” The care given to the child’s personal growth was evident in the teachers’ practices. For example, the story line in the musical theater production that Teacher D wrote for students was based upon a story line of a boy who experiences hardship in life and retreats to sleep as an escape. In his dream world, he is a king and a great leader. At the end of the story, his dream characters convince him to wake up and face his own future.

Although each teacher explained that all three elements were important for expres-sive performance, each teacher’s actual practice differed in the amount of attention and instructional time devoted to addressing each element. Contrasts emerged in explanations of the purpose of expressiveness in performance, along with the amount of time that each teacher devoted to instruction in each of the three elements. These differences could be tied to the individual teacher’s belief about the purpose of learn-ing to perform. Teacher C explained that the purpose of learning expressiveness was to develop an individual’s creative abilities. The purpose of performing, in her view, was to discover oneself as a human, so the focus of her teaching was on the creative aspects of expressiveness more than technique or interpretation. Teacher A and Teacher E focused their teaching on the development of technique and interpretation, with less attention given to creativity. Teacher D and Teacher B shared a focus on all three aspects fairly equally, but their idea of creativity focused upon the felt qualities of a work the performer brings to the audience.

Teaching Strategies Used With ChildrenVignette: Teacher A stands next to and slightly in front of the 10-year-old violin stu-dent as the child plays through a piece of music that she has just learned (Figure 1).

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The teacher is only slightly taller than the student, but there is intensity in her pres-ence that I can feel from across the room. The teacher leans slightly forward over the child’s shoulder with small and emphatic nods to the beat, with stronger nods on downbeats. But she is not thinking of the duple pulse—as the child plays the tune, a simple minor melody, the teacher hums the tune in snatches, listening and looking closely at the child’s bow hand.

Starting on the pickup to Measure 5, she sings rubato and full tone, “And take your tiiiiime. . . .” The teacher stops the child, talks about her bow placement, too close to the fingerboard for a beautiful tone. The child begins again. Again, nodding, leaning in, singing, “And take your tiiiiime. . . .” When the child finishes, there’s one more correction, and then the child starts once more . . . “And take your tiiiime. . . .” Not three times, not four; no fewer than eight times through the short piece and the teacher sings every time.

Sloboda (1996) wrote that learners store expressive musical gestures in abstracted templates that take the shape of extramusical analogies or metaphors in order to remember how to create expressive changes in music. Teachers help learners to acquire a repertoire of templates from a variety of sources, “the most plausible being those of bodily and physical motion, gesture, speech and vocal intonation, and expressions of emotions” (Sloboda, 1996, p. 119). Our teacher participants utilized a variety of teach-ing strategies. These included modeling (by playing the instrument, by singing, and through physical gestures), verbal instructions (directions, image-laden metaphors, and requests for mental rehearsal, such as “imagining the sound before playing”), humor, physical proximity, physical guiding, and multiple performance opportunities (such as mock performances within lessons, peer performances, and end-of-segment performances). Modeling was used consistently and as the primary strategy. As Teacher B explained, “I think that that is a more direct way. . . . [Expressiveness] is a really complex thing to do, to put all of the notes and rhythms and all of that. But, if you say, ‘Listen to this,’ you can play it.”

All of the teachers tailored their teaching strategies to their stated beliefs about child cognition and motivation. Teacher D spoke about the physical and cognitive

SA

MA MA

R.6

PA

MA

SA PA

MA

SA

MA

R.2

R.6

R.3

SA

PA

MA

SA

MA

SA

Figure 1. Analysis of melody played by violin student during lesson, with grouping preference rules (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).

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freedom that children have in comparison to adult inflexibility. He consistently taught his students to play several instruments through modeling and aural imitation. Teachers C and E both spoke about the ways that life experiences motivate music learning, and we observed Teacher E encouraging children to bring life experiences and other arts into their musical interpretations.

Four of the teachers made a point of distinction in the use of repetition as a teaching strategy for children but not for adults. They all stated that they believed children to be much more likely to have the patience and time to complete the repetitions needed for good physical habits to develop if task repetitions are presented in an interesting man-ner. Adults, in comparison, were thought to lack both time and patience regardless of the manner in which repetition was presented.

All of the teachers adapted teaching strategies (notably, repetition and modeling) specifically for children. For example, verbal instructions were not given in spoken tones; rather, the teachers sang verbal instructions as a model with many repetitions to help students remember both the model and the instruction. Similarly, all of the teach-ers tended to physically “overdo” their modeling with their child students. A musical or physical gesture was not just the crescendo or a movement of the arm; Teachers A and B would model an exaggerated crescendo, and Teacher E would throw her arm outward and hurl her body after the arm to follow the arc of a phrase. Teacher D used an almost “sports coach” persona with his students, exaggerating spoken dynamics to energize them and, in one instance, yelling excitedly and several times for a student to add energy to a performance until the child yelled back, “I will!” He yelled, “Good! Now sing like that!” The child broke into a grin, and she sang more expressively.

All of the teachers used metaphors and humor in combination with their physical gestures and modeling. The teachers explained that it was important to encourage creativity through metaphors that were age appropriate for a child’s sensibilities, such as asking students to imagine the taste of foods, the feel of a sunny or rainy day, or a particular mood. They used metaphors related to physical structures to describe the way a performer should shape a musical performance. Teacher A explained,

Expressiveness is a sense of timing, a sense of space, with a sense of the archi-tecture of a phrase and then of the movement and then of the whole piece. . . . The space is the distance between two notes and how you put those notes within a measure, and how you put those measures within a phrase, and then how you put the phrase within the context of the whole movement.

One difference that emerged through the study was in the focus of each instructional strategy. While Teachers A and E, each with many more years of experience teaching children than the others, used any one teaching strategy to accomplish a number of dif-ferent learning goals, Teachers B and D tended to think of one instructional goal at a time. Teacher A, for example, modeled rubato vocally while nodding the metric accents and guiding the hand of the learners. Teacher B, on the other hand, might use one opportunity to model rubato and then later to have the student find metric accents.

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Learner DevelopmentThe teachers all explained that individual children develop at different rates, so no one approach or set of tools works perfectly for all students. Teacher D explained, “It is different with each kid. Some kids are naturally very expressive and other kids are sort of robots. The challenge is, with the kids who are more like robots, to get them to shape a phrase.”

Teacher A observed, “I have a student who can play everything that was even written for the violin, but she doesn’t have yet that connection to the tone as a mature artist.”

They all agreed that it was easier to teach a child to be expressive than an adult because children have physical freedom. Adults were considered more rigid and less likely to drop poor physical habits than children. Teacher B said, “I’ve taught a lot of adults. Their hands are less supple so you have to get them to release a bunch of things. Children haven’t even come into their bodies yet. Children are more loose and relaxed.”

The teachers also believed that children were less likely to worry about playing things “right.” They explained that adults may be more in touch with their emotions but tend to become encumbered by the notion of doing things correctly. Teacher D explained, “Adults learn things in a box that stands in relation to how they have learned other things. . . . [Children] don’t have an idea of how they are supposed to learn things; they just do whatever you tell them.” When children were taught to move freely from the first lesson, “the rest of their lives are spent repeating correct basic movements.”

Pedagogy for Expressive PerformanceAll of the teachers taught musical expressivity as the child’s physical fluidity of motion and connectedness to the instrument. The teachers believed that the voice would be the easiest instrument on which to be expressive because it is within the body. The farther away the body is from the instrument, the more difficult the connec-tion and the more the teacher must focus upon helping the student become connected.

The teachers taught their students to make connections with their body/instrument in three different expressive realms. The first realm was the body/instrument connec-tion to the musical structure and lyrics. The second realm was the body/instrument connection to emotions and/or physical sensations. The third realm was the body/instrument connection to the audience. In the teacher’s discussions about how to define expression, these three realms emerged as equal in importance and necessary in combination.

The musically expressive body is the body connected to the instrument. The teachers all expressed that they believed it important to teach the physical relationship to the instrument from the first lesson and during every lesson thereafter. Each teacher expressed the belief that the least expressive performer was one who did not move freely. Teacher A used a sequence of instructions, a protocol that every student said

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and did with her at the start of every session to develop physical freedom. She stated that she asks her students to constantly check their bodies for tension:

We are always aware of our joints. We make lists of the joints that have to be free and flexible to ensure that the relationship between the head, neck, and back is open and that we are not locking our playing with our chin on the chin rest so that we are cramped here.

At the end of every piece, she had the students “circle off” (make a large circle with their bow hands in the direction of the last bow stroke) to encourage freedom of motion with the bow arm. Similarly, Teacher C discussed starting the first lesson with having the students sense their feet and find a way to sit expressively to play the cello.

Connection to musical structure. Vignette: Teacher B stands behind his 13-year-old student at the piano. She is playing through a piece she has chosen, slowly, eyes jerking up and down between the score and her fingers. The song is a waltz with a right-hand melody and a simple block chord accompaniment (Figure 2).

The student holds the first note and breathes in. Then she plays up the arpeggio, then pauses after playing the high pitch before laying down the chord with her left hand. With another pause as her shoulder swoops to the left and her fingers move back down the arpeggio. The teacher waits, silent and still. When she finishes, he quietly says, “That’s great. I think you’re just changing too late. Sometimes it’s not smooth. Next time, change it [his hand shapes into a chord] just the second you play this top note.” She leans farther forward, hunching deeply over the keys, looking up to check the score once more and down at her fingers. She plays the phrase three more times, each time checking herself and starting again. Finally, she moves through this phrase and finishes the piece. She pauses midway through each phrase, stopping on the high note to look up at the score and swiftly down to find the next left-hand chord. Waiting quietly until the end, the teacher sings the first phrase for her with a crescendo and slight lift off the top note but no pause. She plays the phrase. He sings once more, as his hand rises and falls in a gentle parabola, and she plays this time with his phrasing.

R. 6

R. 1

R. 3 R. 2 R. 3

MA MA

SA

PA PA

MA MA

PA

Figure 2. Analysis of melody played by piano student during lesson, with grouping preference rules (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).

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“See, you can totally change it, depending on how you want to do it. I don’t want to tell you exactly how to do it.”

Teaching for the musical structure meant that the teachers addressed gestalt-like aspects of the musical exercises and repertoire that the children played in lessons. In the preceding vignette, Teacher B encouraged his student to crescendo to the MA, PA, and SA (supported by Grouping Preference Rules 1 and 6). Phrase structure and chord progression were the most common of the musical structures addressed.

The repertoire that the children worked on in lessons was almost uniform in the clarity of musical structure. Analysis for rhythmic accents and grouping patterns (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983) revealed that the musical selections the children learned had coinciding grouping boundaries and rhythmic accents. Moreover, the teachers chose to isolate and work on those specific places where rhythmic accents and group-ing preference rules suggested the clearest perceptual boundaries, which two of the teachers called “arrival points.” The teachers ignored musical moments when groups were less clearly defined, in places where perhaps more subtle expressive gestures would be appropriate. In the lessons that we observed, it appeared that the children were taught to seek out perceptual boundaries that would be most easily available for making expressive choices. For example, Teacher C stopped a child in performance to work on a musical phrase (Figure 3).

She asked the student to start on the arrival point of the phrase and “make that note beautiful! I really mean it, make it in the best way you can.” The child played the note a few times until it rang in a perfect arc. “Good! Now, let’s go back and find how to get there.” She worked with the student on the phrase leading up to this note, adding a crescendo and slight ritardando. Putting the phrase back into context, the child played the section again and continued. The next segment contained the same musical phrase with the same rhythm but offset metrically. With a confusion of accents, the student did not add expressive crescendo or ritardando, and the teacher left this moment without comment.

MA MA MA

SA

PA

R. 6

R. 3

R. 1

MA

Figure 3. Analysis of melody played by piano student during lesson, with grouping preference rules (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).

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The teachers all believed that expressing musical structure must be taught in com-bination with good intonation, tone quality, and playing through a piece without stopping. Breath, bow stroke, strumming on guitar strings, and other aspects of technique were taught as expressive gestures. Teacher B described expressiveness as the layering of good technique and a lack of expressiveness as the result when a student forgets good technique. Toward this end, Teachers A, C, and E said that they graded their students’ repertoire for difficulty, both so students could achieve the technique for each piece quickly and then concentrate on expressivity and so the children could understand the theory behind the repertoire more easily. For example, Teacher C’s graded list of rock repertoire began with songs that have I, IV, and V chords, progressing to more com-plex chord progressions for more advanced students.

Finally, the teachers in our study all stated that they taught music analysis to a child’s knowledge and skill level. They used metaphors to help the students connect the musical structure, historical context, and stylistic characteristics to the free physi-cal gesture.

Connection to the audience. A connection with the audience also was considered crucial to expressive performance, although Teacher D stressed this more than the other teachers. He explained that a performer must learn skills to enable both a physi-cal presence and musical sound that will “move” the audience: “The performer can communicate a story, an emotion that one is trying to clarify or ‘all of life.’” Teacher D explained further: “They understand that they are out there to . . . make a connection with people who are listening and to have a good time. No one ever sat through a per-formance and said, ‘Wow, he got all the notes right.’” The other teachers described a performer who could not make a connection with an audience as a block of wood or a robot whose music sounded like reciting a grocery list.

Free physical movement was considered essential to this connection. We observed that the same movement exercises that promoted flexibility were used to encourage connection to an audience; teachers encouraged students to move “appropriately,” nei-ther too much nor too little. One of Teacher D’s students (the bass player) explained that he felt he needed to learn to move more in order to become an expressive performer.

The choice of repertoire was considered of prime importance in teaching young students to connect with the audience. By treating all of the music children play as performance music rather than as exercises for technical skill development, all of the teachers reinforced the notion that each selection had expressive potential. They explained that the simplicity that allowed their students to understand their repertoire also allowed them to focus on their public performance.

Practice performances during lessons, performances for and with peers, and several performances at every level of development were used to help students gain comfort performing in public. Therefore, multiple performance opportunities were given to help students learn to make expressive connections with their audiences.

Connection to emotions and sensations. Vignette 3: Teacher D stands at the piano, knees braced against the piano bench. He is enveloped by a flock of 20 children

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ranging in age from 7 to 12. They lean on the piano as they run through the final song of the show, a standard rock ballad with a blues chord progression and lyrics this teacher has written for this group (Figure 4). They all nod their heads heavily on the three eighth-note pickups and belt the opening note, but no one sings as loudly as the teacher . . .

He calls out between the phrases, “Come on, you have to mean it!” and accents the left-hand chords while riffing jazz licks between the verses with his right hand. Some children step away from the piano and wander a few feet away with heads down, eyes closed, singing and listening. Each one who walks away comes back to lean on the piano in a different place. Others look across the piano at each other and raise their heads in a croon as they sing, “You can do anything!” smiling at them-selves and each other.

All the teachers agreed that emotion and/or sensation was important to musical expression. They varied, however, on ideas about how and why to focus upon emotions and physical sensations during lessons as well as how to go about draw-ing these out from the students. Teachers A, D, and E explained that it was impor-tant for a student to have an emotional connection to the music through understanding the theoretical structure and historical context. Teacher E spoke about understanding the composer’s intent and putting oneself into the composer’s shoes, posing questions such as “What do you think the weather was like on the day that Haydn wrote the concerto? What color was the sky?” to help students relate the music to their own sensations.

When teachers encouraged emotion or sensation, their discussions were grounded in the students’ life experiences. Teacher C felt that teaching music was a way to assist children from difficult emotional backgrounds to connect with beauty and hope in life. She believed that music “can offer the child another vision of the world that might help

you are a king, you are the on ly- one you can do a ny- thing...-

R. 1

R. 7

R. 6

R. 1

R. 2

R. 1

R. 7R. 6 R. 6

MA MA MA

SA

PA

MA

SA

PA

MA

PA

SAMA MA

SA

PA

Figure 4. Analysis of invented song for voice and piano, sung by children during musical production rehearsal, with grouping preference rules (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).

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them [sic].” All of the teachers asked students to draw upon their experiences in dance, games, or sports. Teachers C and E used metaphors from other arts, and had students create stories and artwork, to enable them to establish emotional connections to their repertoire through creativity.

Teachers B, C, and D believed that emotional connection to the repertoire was important. Each stated that they allowed students to select some of their repertoire, and Teachers B and D wrote music specifically for students in order to encourage an emo-tional connection to the music they performed.

Teachers A, B, D, and E used competition and collaboration to heighten emotional connections to the music (and to prepare for performing for an audience). The connec-tion of shared emotions within groups, both intermusically and socially, was perceived to strengthen the emotional quality of the performances. Teachers A, B, and E pro-vided group classes and group performance pieces with peer leadership. Teacher D divided students into rock bands, charging the leader with deciding upon the “emo-tions” that the band should create for each piece of music. Teacher B explained that his students treated performances by more experienced players as a personal challenge to less experienced performers. He stated that the novices became more expressive just so they could show off their skills for their peers.

Summary and DiscussionSome threads appeared throughout the findings that bear consideration for practice and future research. Our findings are summarized in Table 1.

Similar to Juslin’s (2003) summary, the teachers in our study discussed and demon-strated that expressive performance has many dimensions; repertoire, performer, and listener specifically received instructional attention. However, these elements were not considered equal in importance. These teachers believed that physical freedom and

Table 1. Teaching Strategies Addressing Expressive Elements in Three Realms of Expressivity.

Realm of Expressivity Teaching Technique Teaching Interpretation Teaching Creativity

Musical structure and lyrics

Providing flexibility and connection exercises Simple repertoire

Incorporating music theoryTeaching phrase structure Relating repertoire to other arts

and images

Allowing students choose some repertoire

Relationship to audience

Providing “appropriate movement” exercises

Simple repertoire

Teaching performance practices for different genres

Using humor to help students relax with audience

Encouraging students to invent story or image

Emotions and sensation

Relating beauty and emotional communication to tone quality and technique

Encouraging emotional/physical connections

Encouraging personality in repertoire

Choosing repertoire that speaks to child emotions

Competition/collaboration

Composing for students

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connection to the instrument was central to all musical expression. Repertoire choice was essential in developing expressiveness. We were surprised to find that regardless of instrument, these two principles were imperative. Additionally, visual expressive-ness was considered part and parcel of expressivity. Our teachers believed that the audience’s ability to see the performer was as important as its ability to hear the music.

The choice of repertoire permeated the discussions of teaching children to become expressive performers. Teachers chose their repertoire for technical skill develop-ment, to help students understand music theory to enable them to make musical choices for expressive purposes, and to entice students to practice. The teachers taught expressivity for those moments in the repertoire where expressive gestures were the most obvious, to the exclusion of more subtle moments. This finding sug-gests that music teachers of all performance mediums should pay close attention to the choice of repertoire for children based upon more criteria than simply the ease of technique required for performance. Score study will enable teachers to identify the “arrival points” so they can more easily build lessons around those musical moments. This finding also suggests that teachers should incorporate score study during instruc-tion to help students find arrival points and then have the children use their knowl-edge of style, music theory, and instrumental technique to make their own decisions about how to heighten musical expression.

These teachers clearly believed in, and taught, expressiveness as part of founda-tional instruction. They did not teach technique and then teach expressivity but, rather, developed expressiveness in each piece that they taught. If expressivity is defined as physical flexibility between the body and the instrument in relation to musical struc-ture, emotions and sensations, and the audience, then even the simplest of exercises can be made expressive for a child performer. Our findings suggest patterns of studio practice that also could inform school music education practices. A more holistic approach to teaching musical expressiveness is suggested, with attention to all of the realms in which a performance can be expressive.

Finally, it became clear to us that not all of the realms of musical expression were addressed through each expressive element. Creativity, for the most part, was the least addressed during instruction on musical structure but better addressed in the realms of connection to the audience and emotion or sensation. The disconnect between the teachers’ stated beliefs and their pedagogy revealed that this is an area ripe for further investigation into teaching practice.

This study examined the teaching beliefs and practices of five very different teachers in one town. We noticed that expressiveness was uniformly considered valuable but was incorporated in lessons in different ways due to variations in teaching personalities, approaches, and student responses to instruction. We wondered whether these differ-ences were due to differences in music repertoire, differences in gender, the style of teaching dictated by the different genres, or some combination of these variables. Furthermore, we did not attempt to evaluate or compare the relative success of student learning. Our current study findings suggest that there should be further research to

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examine the effect of musical genre, teaching personality, or even gender on the devel-opment of children’s expressive performance skills.

Finally, the students in this study were only minimally able to describe expressivity in playing, words coming slowly and sometimes not at all. We believed that the stu-dents may not have been able to articulate the concept of expressivity or were more focused upon technique, interpretation, creative thinking, standing in front of an audi-ence, and so on. This, of course, raises the question of the value of expressive perfor-mance instruction for children. Research is needed to examine child perceptions of expressiveness and to compare the quality of expressive performances when children are taught to perform with various combinations of these pedagogical tools.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Author Biographies

Brenda Brenner is Associate Professor of Music Education, Director of the Fairview Project, and Codirector of the String Academy at Indiana University. Her research interests include string pedagogy and early music instruction. E-mail: [email protected]

Katherine Strand is Associate Professor of Music Education and the Director of the International Vocal Ensemble at Indiana University. Her research interests include musical creativity, action research, and multicultural music education. E-mail: [email protected]

Submitted June 8, 2011; accepted August 31, 2012.


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