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Teaching Music Slowly

Fred Everett Maus, Department of Music, University of Virginia

Creating, studying, and teaching music offer many opportunities to learn about
different constructions and experiences of time. Thus, music places us in experiential
contexts from which we can criticize institutions and practices that reduce temporality
to goal-directed instrumentality. In the college/university context, music study and
musical activities are potentially a rich counter-culture to the corporate-style university,
the latter committed to efficiency and narrowly-defined outcomes. More generally,
interactions with music give a central role to experience, and respectful attention to
personal experience draws us in different directions from an emphasis on productivity
and measurable results.
However, common ways of teaching music reduce its experiential, exploratory
aspects and thereby it’s critical potential. The “music history survey,” a standard
component of classical-music curricula, takes students swiftly through a chronicle of
musical change in which individual pieces serve as briefly-visited specimens, chosen to
exemplify general stylistic traits. In such teaching, individual musical examples allow
students to recognize aspects that can be described verbally and that recur across many
musical instances.
The “music theory sequence,” while often more humanely paced than the history
sequence, creates a sequential, teleological progression of increasing complexity,
offering an orderly acquisition of musical techniques, understood as ways of organizing
sonic elements, with attention to identifying those techniques analytically and using
them compositionally. Usually there is relatively little attention to meanings and
experiential qualities. Here, musical examples—usually, brief passages excerpted from
longer musical contexts—illustrate technical features that recur across many instances.
Such courses can be useful; otherwise they would not be nearly universal in
college-level curricula. But they have limitations. As already indicated, they treat
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specific musical instances (such as individual compositions, songs, performances,

improvisations, and so on) as examples, cited to illustrate stylistic or technical
generalizations. Knowledge of such generalizations, and cognitive or practical skills
related to them, seem to be the primary goals of teaching. And such courses treat
knowledge of music as something codified, something that already exists, normally
held between the covers of a published textbook and thus originating outside the
interactions and explorations among students and instructors. The work of a music
course, then, is to get that codified knowledge from outside the students to inside them.
The basic relation to time comes from the goal of efficiency in accomplishing this
transfer.
This kind of pedagogy, with its pull toward generality, leads attention away
from individual musical instances. But characteristically, musical experience outside of
classroom settings orients intensely to individual objects—the pop song someone finds
meaning in, and listens to on repeat; the classical piece that seems to reverberate with
richly personal meaning; the performative experiment that seems to open new
possibilities for what music and art might be. Musical life is often about falling in love
with particular objects made of sound. It is also about finding the resources for such
encounters partly within oneself, individually and in groups of listeners. In developing
a relation to a specific musical object, one experiences it, which means, more precisely,
experiencing the interaction between oneself and the object. When music courses do not
emphasize or even acknowledge these relations to music, they create a strange gap
between the music classroom and musical life. This can create an impression that one or
the other—the classroom learning style, or the nonacademic musical life—is
illegitimate.
I don’t want to exaggerate: I know that many music teachers in colleges and
universities are aware of problematic differences between musical experience and
classroom styles that standardize and objectify, and have sought ways to relate the two.
Still, a glance at widely-used contemporary textbooks confirms my generalizations
about mainstream models for core-curriculum music courses.i
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This chapter describes some of the techniques I have used in my teaching to

encourage students to integrate their personal musical and aesthetic lives—as they
already exist, and as they may develop under new stimulation—with the content of my
courses. Some have to do with uses of classroom time—I describe a number of
contemplative practices and experience-oriented classroom activities, all of which
require a relaxed, unhurried relation to the passage of time. Another concerns the
structuring of student time in a multi-part writing assignment culminating in a final
paper. These techniques were created for courses with relatively small enrollment,
usually around 20 students; significantly larger classes might require revisions. I will be
reflecting on aspects of my teaching of the music I know best—Western classical music
and its successors in American experimental music, and Euro-American popular music.
I will not try to address issues that would arise for other musics, or for teaching music
when the instructor is not an “insider” to cultures that use that music.
I began by noting that music can show us different constructions and experiences
of time, broadening our awareness of varied temporalities. To approach such issues in
the classroom, one needs to teach in a way that encourages personal experience of
music, through which one can encounter the varied temporalities of music. This chapter
focuses on teaching techniques that value the exploration of experience, leaving for
another occasion the important issues of music itself as a rich discourse on temporality.ii
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Meditation in the music classroom

Mindfulness meditation, originating in Buddhism and now familiar in many

modern adaptations, basically involves sitting quietly and giving attention to the
experience of the present moment. Often an “anchor” is identified, a readily-accessible
object of present-moment awareness; an anchor might be, for example, the breath, the
physical sensations of one’s body resting in a chair, the sounds in the room, or the
sensations of one’s skin in contact with the air or clothing. Inevitably, as one sits with
the anchor, thoughts arise. In early stages of meditation, one is encouraged to let these
thoughts go, gently, and bring attention back to the anchor. At more advanced stages,
one might turn attention to thoughts or feelings that arise, hold them in gentle, non-
judgmental awareness, and investigate them.
Such meditative practices figure in Buddhism as part of an extended project of
reducing the sense of oneself as a separate being and reducing one’s dependence on
objects of desire. Modern adaptations may define somewhat different goals such as
stress reduction.iii
In my classes, mindfulness meditation serves various goals. I often begin a class
meeting with a five-minute period of meditation. This communicates that the
temporality of the gathering is not solely about rapid, purposeful instruction. It shows
that relaxation is an appropriate starting-point for learning, as opposed to the tense
alertness that students may assume they should cultivate. Since the students, in
meditating, are resting attention on their own experiences, a period of meditation
communicates that it is important to feel one’s own experience, from inside, and that
such self-exploration is an appropriate use of class time. Students also find that a brief
meditation allows them to separate from the thoughts and preoccupations that they
may have brought into the classroom, and enhances their focus on the rest of the class
meeting. As mentioned, environmental sounds are one possible anchor for meditation.
Resting awareness on sounds is particularly significant in relation to music, as a way of
practicing the skill of open, non-judgmental listening. It also relates directly to the
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emphasis on environmental sound in the work of midcentury composer-theorists such

as John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and R. Murray Schafer, and thus serves as excellent
preparation for study of their work.
Another common meditative practice is walking meditation, in which one walks
slowly, giving attention to everything one can notice about the bodily processes and
sensations of walking, which become the anchor.iv This is closely related to the practice
of soundwalks, as developed by Schafer and others, in which one walks through an
environment with attention centered on sound.v I teach both these practices in classes,
as further means for accessing experience. I sometimes take a group of students out of
the music building for a soundwalk around the university. This can be challenging for
students who do not want to be perceived by peers as behaving strangely. Thus it offers
another kind of learning—how to give attention to one’s own experience and not be
overly distracted by the real or imagined perceptions and judgments of others.
The body scan, another practice, involves giving attention to parts of one’s body,
one by one, for instance each toe of one foot, then the ball of the foot, then the arch, the
heel, and so on.vi Often a guide will lead a group through this practice. The goal is not
to change something about one’s body, but only to notice whatever sensation is present.
(Thus a body scan is different from progressive relaxation, in which attention moves
through the body seeking any tension that can be identified and then released.) A body
scan is a good way to bring students’ attention to present experience, and especially
helpful before other exercises involving bodily movement or embodied self-perception.
In using meditative practices, and in the exercises I describe next, it is important
for students to know that they can opt out. Before initiating such an activity, I tell
students that instructions given to the class may work well for some individuals, not so
well for others. I state that if an experience becomes uncomfortable, students have the
option of discontinuing the activity—opening their eyes, thinking about something else,
leaving the room, whatever will help them.
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Music listening together

I use class time for listening to recorded music. This is common in music courses,
but typically the listening has a specific goal: students are supposed to notice certain
aspects of the music, as pointed out by the teacher, for instance an overall structure or a
pattern of motivic relations. I use shared listening in that way, too, but I also sometimes
ask students to practice a less directed form of listening. I invite students to close their
eyes or drop their gaze, and I begin with a brief guided meditation, inviting them to let
go of preoccupations and rest in the present moment. Then, just before beginning the
recorded music, I ask students to be with the music in whatever way comes up for
them.vii When the music is over, I suggest that students take whatever time they wish
for their experience to come to an end, and then journal for a few minutes. I encourage
them to write as a way of continuing or reflecting on their experience. I tell them that
the writing is only for them—I will not collect it or ask anyone to share what they
wrote. (This is my general policy for in-class reflective writing.) After the writing, I
invite students to share anything they wish about their experience.
Sometimes I ask students, at the end of the listening, to remain still and quiet,
with eyes closed if that is comfortable, as I speak a series of invitations and questions to
shape their reflection on what has just happened. I allow time after each of my
interventions, perhaps 15 to 30 seconds, for their silent reflections. Here is a set of
instructions and questions that I like to use:
Questions after Listening
Notice how you feel right now—your thoughts, your emotions, the state of your body.
Stay with those feelings for a moment. [pause]
Did your experience of listening to music have an overall feel? Try to call it to mind now.
[pause]
Did your experience change as you listened? If so, try to call some of those different states
to mind now. [pause]
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How much of your experience was centered on the music? how much on states of
yourself? how much on other things? [pause]
Did you have any sensory imagery as you listened? If so, try to call it to mind now.
[pause]
Did you have any bodily sensations as you listened? Try to call to mind the states of your
body during the experience. [pause]
Did you have any thoughts as you listened? If so, try to call them to mind now. [pause]
Did any memories come to you as you listened? If so, try to call them to mind now.
[pause]
What else do you remember about your listening experience? [pause]
Notice how you feel right now, after moving through this series of questions.
These in-class listening practices communicate to students that their
spontaneous, personal responses to music are valuable, and worth exploring in a
relaxed, nonjudgmental way. This doesn’t mean that moment-to-moment subjective
response is all there is to understanding music. But interpretive discourses—analytical,
critical, historical, social—are more meaningful in relation to music with which students
have already established an individual experiential relationship.
This in-class listening is different from ways of listening that most students
already practice outside of class. It is unusual to listen quietly, eyes lowered or closed,
in a group, without any external distractions, with the intention of simply letting
oneself have an unplanned, non-purposeful interaction with the music.viii It allows an
intensified experience of the relationship between the music and each listener’s
responses, along with an experience of the effects of the group setting. In showing
respect for each listener’s experience, this listening models an attitude that can carry
over to many other phenomena, including non-classroom musical and non-musical
experiences.
Not surprisingly, student experiences, as recounted in class discussion after such
listening and writing, vary. Some students report dream-like fantasies, a common
response to music. Such fantasy experiences might seem to be distractions from the
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musical sound, but I believe they are typically guided by the musical sound, even when
the music as such is not prominent in a listener’s consciousness. Other students have
less organized images, sensations, and thoughts. For some students, bodily images and
sensations predominate. Some students may maintain a focus on sounds, with or
without conscious analysis of musical relationships. None of this is wrong; all of it
provides information about responses in the presence of the music, valuable when we
turn to intentional, explicit consideration of interpretive concerns such as style,
structure, or shared cultural meanings. I want my students to respond to the music in
whatever way is spontaneous for them, without judgment, and then I want them to
observe the music closely, intentionally, in an intellectual context that includes those
responses.
Classroom conversation after listening sometimes reveals surprising similarities
in student experiences; often several students have had closely related fantasies, which
points toward a specific potential of the music. Sometimes students report surprisingly
disparate experiences, and then it is fascinating to try to understand how the same
music could lead in such different directions. Always, students learn about the diversity
of individual responses to the same music, and this gives a valuable lesson in modesty;
students learn that a critic who authoritatively attributes perceptual/experiential
qualities to a passage of music is simplifying.
I use a variety of other experiential practices in teaching. Many of them come
from a set of resources I treasure—Alexandra Pierce’s exercises for exploring relations
between music and embodiment, Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations and Deep Listening
Pieces, Schafer’s collection A Sound Education, and the event scores of the Fluxus
group.ix Some of these resources (Oliveros, Schafer, Fluxus) come from twentieth-
century traditions of experimental music and performance; thus, when I use this
material students are learning directly about aspects of these historical movements,
while also learning skills of attention and interaction that carry over to other musical
and non-musical contexts.
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Examples will illustrate the character of these classroom practices. Alexandra

Pierce’s work addresses the experiences of listeners and performers in relation to
classical music. She has developed many exercises that match technical aspects of
music, as identified in music theory, with bodily feelings. For instance, the sense of
repose in the tonic pitch or tonic triad of a key is like the feeling of balanced standing,
with readiness to move away from and back to that position of relaxed stability. x The
combination of flow and articulation in musical rhythm (“lilt” and “ping” in her lovely
terminology) can be felt in smooth arm movements punctuated by precise flicks of the
wrist.xi
One useful exercise matches the experience of musical climax to muscular
extension. Chopin’s brief Prelude in A Major moves to a moment of climax in a
surprising, registrally extended chord near the end, and then moves quickly back to
repose on a final tonic. Pierce suggests that this pattern may be experienced by
conjoining it with hand movements: beginning with a loosely closed hand, one can
extend the fingers outward slowly, reaching a point of maximum extension and
palpable tension as an image of musical climax, after which one matches the drop in
energy by relaxing one’s hand. Performing this movement while listening to the piece,
matching the timing of musical climax to the experience of physical tension, can create
an effect characteristic of Pierce’s exercises: the bodily sensations sharpen one’s
awareness of an aspect of the music, and the music heightens one’s awareness of the
bodily sensations.xii
In Oliveros’s meditation “Teach Yourself to Fly,” a seated group begins with
each person observing their own breathing. They allow the breathing to become
audible, and then, with the breathing continuing at a relaxed pace, they introduce vocal
sound. There are no wrong notes: the pitches are whatever each individual
spontaneously produces. The event continues until it is over—that is, until the moment
when everyone simultaneously knows that it is time to stop. (This sudden consensus
about ending can be startling.)xiii “Teach Yourself to Fly” is usually a deeply relaxing
experience for everyone, and also feels surprisingly intimate. It offers students the
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experience, unusual in musical contexts, of simply producing sound without worrying

about making the wrong sound; this is especially freeing for people who are timid
about singing in front of others. “Teach Yourself to Fly” creates a special kind of
ensemble, one in which the contributions of individuals do not have to match in timing
or in conventional harmony. It gives a sense of people interacting in audible difference
from one another, and thus a particular kind of social relation—a nonviolent,
noncompetitive, nonhierarchical coexistence of diverse individuals. The ensemble
performance invites present-moment attention to the contributions of each individual
and to the resulting overall sound. Since one feels the vibrations of one’s own vocal
sound from the inside, it also brings each participant into the group as an embodied
individual.
Some activities that I use are not primarily sound-based, and thus not directly
“musical,” but still draw students’ attention to present-moment experiences and
creativity in fruitful ways. Oliveros’s piece “For Alison Knowles” invites participants to
perform an action (“a sound/gesture/word/movement/graphic”) for each year of their
lives.xiv I have used this in many classes, but I do not introduce it until students have
become relatively comfortable with each other. I coach students, beyond Oliveros’s
spare instructions, before they begin the piece: they should not rush, but should
perform each action attentively, and perhaps pause after each one to feel what it was
like; they may call to mind an overall character of a specific year, or a particular event
from that year, or may treat the year simply as a number (which could be the number
for their age at a certain time, e. g. 16, or the number of a year, e. g. 2012); they do not
need to understand the relation between a particular year and their action, though
sometimes the relation may be clear to them; they should remember where they are and
with whom, and probably not work with aspects of their lives that would arouse
feelings they do not want to deal with in a classroom setting. Students tend to perform
this piece quietly, with calm focus. Often students are moved by the experience. The
first time I used the piece in a class, one student returned to his seat at the end looking
somewhat stunned, perhaps close to tears. I asked him if he was all right. He said, “Yes,
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I just realized something about my life that I hadn’t known before.” “For Alison
Knowles” creates an unusual sense of community within a group: every knows, in a
general way, what the other students are doing, while engaging their own personal
experience without any need to share detailed information. This creates a remarkable
atmosphere of non-intrusive intimacy and trust.
Sometimes I have designed experiential exercises to go with specific course
readings. I often ask students to read Sara Cohen’s beautiful essay “Sounding Out the
City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place.” xv Drawing on the history of Jews in
twentieth-century Liverpool, Cohen articulates many ways in which music-related
experiences create, for individuals or groups, the identities of specific places in the city.
To help students relate Cohen’s ideas to their own lives, I invite them to relax, eyes
lowered or closed, and draw on their own memories. I use this script:
Music and Place
Call to mind a place where you have had significant musical experiences. Try to imagine
that you are in that space again, at a musical event. [pause]
What is the music? How does it sound? [pause]
What do you see? If there are live musicians, what do they look like? Who else is there?
Imagine the other people who are there with you. What are they doing? Can you generalize about
the kinds of people who are present? Are there kinds of people who are not present? [pause]
How does your body feel as you are in this space? Are you aware of sensations? Are you
moving? [pause]
How did you get to this place? Where were you before? Imagine the feelings of your
bodily movements as you approach and enter this space. Imagine your bodily sensations as you
leave. Where are you going next? [pause]
If you had to choose a few words to summarize the quality of this place, in your
experiences of it, what words would you choose?
After these reflections, I invite students to journal for a few minutes about what
they have just done.
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In a course on “Pragmatist Aesthetics and Experimental Practices,” we studied

an excerpt from John Dewey, Art as Experience.xvi Dewey emphasizes that aesthetic
experience, and experience in general, take place as interaction between an organism
and its environment, and that this interaction is structured as “doing” and
“undergoing.” So, for example, a painter may look at an unfinished painting in order to
consciously receive the effect of their work up tothat time and then, in response to that
“undergoing,” add new marks to the painting, “doing” something, after which, again, it
is time to “undergo” the resulting new configuration. To allow embodied exploration of
Dewey’s ideas, I created an exercise:
Doing and Undergoing
Move around the space you are in, changing things. Changes can be small—a slight
change in the position of an object, for instance—or not so small.
Whenever you change something, begin by giving attention to the situation before you
intervene. Then notice everything you can about what it is like to make the change. Then notice
what the altered situation is like.
When you are done, take some time to look around the space with all of its alterations.
The exercise works especially well, and while it was created in relation to
Dewey’s ideas, I have subsequently found that it is enjoyable and illuminating beyond
that specific context. Students perform it with gentle, inquisitive attention. As they
continue, they realize that they can act on changes that other students have already
made—for instance, adding to a drawing that someone started on the board, or moving
a chair that was already turned on its side to a new place. Despite its simplicity, the
exercise is engrossing. It gives students a vivid model of Dewey’s concepts, and also
shows how simple, mundane objects and events can reward attention—an insight in
keeping with Dewey’s emphasis on the continuity between art and everyday life.

Student response to experiential classwork

At the end of each semester, the University encourages students to fill out an
anonymous online evaluation for every course. One question on the evaluation form is
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this: “What were the most valuable features of this course? In what ways did it
contribute to your learning?” When my classes have extensive experiential work,
student responses consistently emphasize its value. Here are seven student comments
from among many others that make the same points. “The ability to participate in forms
of experiential learning every class as opposed to watching powerpoints and
discussing. I felt the material was much easier to comprehend in this manner of
teaching.” “Everything we studied we also interacted with at some capacity in class in a
hands on or experiential way. It was an extremely thoughtfully crafted course and I
absorbed so much information this way.” “The activities and experiential aspects of the
course were extremely valuable to me. They would either be exercises from our
readings or something that would still drive home the main points behind what we
read. That allowed us to better understand their importance.” “The incorporation of
experiential exercises definitely pulled the class together, incorporating the information
we read about into actual activities that helped to synthesize the multiple aspects of the
class.” These first four comments praise the effectiveness of experiential work in
clarifying and enhancing course content that was also presented in traditional reading
assignments. The next three add that the course, partly through its experiential
components, crossed the boundary from coursework into everyday experience in
valuable ways. “I feel as if I learned more in class than I ever did in any of the books or
readings, which I can't say for many classes, and the bleed through between class and
life was incredible--truly a class that will stay with for me a long time.” “I really enjoyed
in-class activities that required active participation with other class members, such as
Fluxus performances. My participation in such activities made me realize that every
movement and sound that we make has significance. This class made me appreciate the
little things in life. Each class allowed me to focus on myself rather than my
responsibilities that I had to do later that day. I left each class feeling extremely relaxed
and ready to resume life outside of class.” “This course, by far more so than any other
course I have taken, transcended outside the classroom walls and touched our lives in a
very meaningful way. Because of our Fluxus unit and class performances, I will never
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think about art the same way again. Because of our mindful practices that we would
often start the class with, I will always try to shift mindsets when entering any
classroom to be in the most mindful state as possible. Because of our units on
improvisation, I have approached instruments, not just my guitar, but anything with a
desire to make music out of it, which has shaped the way I create music to produce
music I never thought I had in me.”
These experiential practices slow down the classroom in a specific way: they use
significant amounts of time that could be spent, instead, on more traditional activities of
verbal exposition and discussion. Thus, they slow the course in that they reduce the
amount of material that can be covered verbally. But this appears as slowness only from
a particular perspective. Since experiential work, as students attest, enhances
understanding and relevance of course material, it can be viewed from another
perspective as a form of efficiency. I would say, for instance, that my students are much
quicker to understand fully John Cage’s ideas and music, with their rich relationship to
Buddhism, when they have some in-class experience of mindfulness meditation.
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A semester-long writing assignment

As already mentioned, one common relation to music in everyday life is to

respond strongly to a particular musical instance (composition, recorded performance,
video, and so on), to fall in love with it and return to it for repeated interactions such as
listening or performing. The final project for a course I teach regularly, “Music and
Discourse Since 1900,” brings such relationships into coursework. The course number,
MUSI 3050, indicates an introductory course at the music-major level. The course has no
specific prerequisites. Required for music majors, it is the “gateway” course for a music
major curriculum that emphasizes diversity and allows students flexibility in designing
their own program. It offers case studies and methodological discussion in
ethnography, classical music history, and the history of U.S. popular music. Most
readings are either primary source material or professional-level texts. Preparation for
class meetings includes listening assignments and a few videos as well as readings.
Classes are small, capped at 20.
Here is the current version of the project assignment, as students receive it. Dates
in the assignment are for the spring semester, 2018.
MUSI 3050 Final Project. A 10- to 12-page paper, concentrating on a single piece of
20th- or 21st-century music. The goals will be to explore your own experience of, and relation to,
this piece; to relate your own experience to the experience of others; to situate your account of the
individual piece in relation to other work from the same source (composer, performer, group,
whatever is appropriate) and in the same style; and to situate your thoughts in relation to
important public discussions of the piece and similar music. There will be three preliminary
assignments to help you prepare the final paper. These are likely to yield draft material for the
long paper. In addition to these assignments, you will need to do as much listening, reading, etc.
as you can manage, to settle into the sounds, words, etc. associated with your piece.
By Tu 2/27, please send me an email message indicating the music you want to write
about, and saying a little about the reasons this music interests you.
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Preparatory assignment 1. 2-3 pages. Due by email attachment or in my box by 2 PM Tu

3/27. Arrange to listen carefully to the music you have chosen along with one other person
whose reactions are likely to interest you. Immediately afterward, have a sustained, serious
conversation about the music—about its sound, about its uses, about its relation to other music,
whatever else seems engaging. Write a description of this conversation, bringing out whatever
you learned about the music, yourself, your interlocutor through this exchange. (Little warning:
since you're the one writing this paper, you might already have ideas about the music. Try to
bring out your interlocutor's ideas and learn from them. This may require self-restraint if you
have a lot of ideas yourself!) A good paper will evoke a lively sense of the interaction between the
two of you and, at the same time, will communicate something interesting about the music.
Preparatory assignment 2. 2-3 pages. Due by email or in my box by 2 PM Th 4/12. Give
a clear, vivid description of the music you are writing about. Try to focus on what you hear, and
describe it as freshly as possible; also, as you wish, consider relevant meanings, uses, contexts in
relation to sound. Try to avoid overly familiar or hackneyed language in your description. Be an
artist, and try to make your reader feel, while reading the paper, as though actually in the
presence of musical sound.
Preparatory assignment 3. 2-3 pages. Due by email or in my box by 2 PM Tu 4/24.
Identify, and briefly comment on, the main published materials that will be helpful to you in
thinking about the music you are writing about (articles, books, interviews, documentary video,
internet sites, etc.). Before you turn in your final paper you should be thoroughly familiar with a
range of significant discussions of the music.
Final paper. Due by email or in my box by 2 PM F 5/4. Based on the materials you have
accumulated, and your further thinking and writing, you will need to put together an attractive,
readable account of the music. There is no way I can predict in advance the best way to do this,
let alone give you a general recipe—but I’ll be available for consultation well before this deadline.
Students make their own choice of music for the paper. Typical examples include
classical and popular music, jazz, and opera and musical theater. I ask students not to
choose music from traditions unfamiliar to me (for instance, Indian classical music); this
project is their chance to benefit from my reactions to their work, more useful when I
have some relevant knowledge. I discourage selection of film scores, because MUSI
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3050 does not give models for interpretation of music and sound in film. Because
students choose the music they will study, they begin the project with enthusiasm and
commitment. I have learned a lot of wonderful music, new to me, through students’
choices.
Preparatory Assignment 1 is unusual but very productive. Almost always, it
disrupts students’ unreflective assumption that they can determine, by listening, what
the music is like, instead asking them to accept pluralism about musical experience.
Before writing this paper, students write a separate short paper (due 2/6 in spring
2018), a description of a conversation with someone, not necessarily a musician, about
music in the interview subject’s life. Thus, the general format of this Preparatory
Assignment, a report on a conversation, is already familiar.
Preparatory Assignment 2 focuses on listening and on description of sound, with
no presumption about analytical method or normative style description. It emboldens
students to find words to convey their own musical experience. Student work at this
stage often inspires me by its sincerity and linguistic inventiveness. Before writing this
paper, students write a separate short paper (due 3/13 in spring 2018) based on sitting
quietly in two different locations and noticing ambient sound. Thus, they have already
confronted the difficulties and rewards of describing sound, though not musical sound
specifically.
Preparatory Assignment 3, more conventional than the others, is a literature
review. It is valuable for students to have a personal relation to the music, developed
through the first two preparatory assignments, before turning to the ideas of others. But
this stage, interacting with professional and other public discourse about the music, is
crucial, leading the student from personal experience to a recognition of the
perspectives of others outside their immediate context, and introducing students to
whatever styles of scholarly thought they may find.
I discourage students from thinking that their final paper needs to have a single
thesis, toward which the paper relentlessly argues. Rather, I tell them that they now
have significant experience of their chosen music, and they should decide what to tell
 18

readers about what they have learned. My goal is not to lead beginning students to
create professional musicology papers; I want them to use reflection and writing to
develop their relation to music, and to find excitement in the prospect of
communicating what they have learned.
Students value their work on this project, in particular their freedom to
determine the topic of the paper and the pacing of brief assignments over more than
two months. The relation to slowness is obvious. I give students extended time to
establish a relation to a single musical object of their choice. This allows a gradually
developing relation to the music, sustained experience in finding ways to write about it,
and a final paper that is a genuine culmination of prolonged thought and experience.
Students are familiar, from observation of other students if not also from their own
experience, with the dispiriting phenomenon of a term paper produced in a rush to
meet a deadline, perhaps during an all-nighter, an essay that is supposedly the
culmination of a course but is often the least successful work that a student turns in for
that course. In contrast, students typically feel pride and satisfaction in completing the
assignments I have described. When they submit final papers, they often add a
comment, some version of: “I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing
it.”
Writing in haste and fatigue, at the end of a semester, is an artifact of our
schedule of semesters or terms and an often wishful concept of a culminating project;
many teachers continue to assign such projects even when the results are regularly
poor. A term project structured in the way I have described replicates our sustained
relations to music we love, and acknowledges the characteristic slow pace of personally
engaged writing, which often requires a prolonged process of growth.
The various exercises and the paper assignment that I use have been effective in
my teaching. Of course, in publishing them I am encouraging readers to think about
similar approaches in their own teaching. Having done so, though, I want to emphasize
that techniques like these, designed to give a large role to the experiences of students,
can only succeed in the broader context of student-teacher interactions that show care
 19

and respect in every aspect of a course. If students do not feel that a teacher cares about
the individuality and potential of each of them, they will not adopt the attitude of trust
and vulnerability that such work requires.

i
This may be seen in fine textbooks by intellectually distinguished scholars, for instance Peter

Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude Palisca, A History of Western Music, 9th edition (New

York: W. W. Norton, 2014); Reebee Garofalo and Steven Waksman, Rockin’ Out: Popular

Music in the U.S.A., 6th edition (New York: Pearson, 2013); and Edward Aldwell and Carl

Schachter, with Allen Cadwallader, Harmony and Voice Leading, 4th edition (New York:

Schirmer, 2010).
ii
Reflections on the diverse temporalities of music may be found in two classic studies: Jonathan

Kramer, The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies (New

York: Schirmer, 1988) and Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).

iii
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body

and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (New York: Bantam Books, 2013) is an influential

secular adaptation of Buddhist thought.

iv
An elegant introduction to walking meditation may be found in Thich Nhat Hahn, How to Walk

(Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2015).

v
For sophisticated discussions of soundwalks, see Viv Corrington, “Listening with the Feet,” in

Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening, edited by Monique Buzzarté and Tom Bickley

(Kingston: Deep Listening Publications, 2012), 143-148, and

Andra McCartney, “Meaningful Listening through Soundwalks, in the “Proceedings of the

Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference: Meaning and Meaningfulness in

 20

Electroacoustic Music” (Stockholm, 2012. http://www.ems-

network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS12_mccartney.pdf).
vi
An excellent account of the body scan appears in Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, 75-97.
vii
This is an adaptation, for classroom use, of techniques developed by Helen Bonny for use in

psychotherapy. In the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music, an individual client, or

members of a group, relax and allow themselves to respond to musical selections without

intentional control over their responses. This often brings unconscious material to the surface.

Therapists use this access to the self for therapeutic goals. I use it, not with therapeutic

intentions, but to deepen students’ understanding of their personal relation to music. For

information on GIM, see Helen Bonny, Music Consciousness: The Evolution of Guided Imagery

and Music (Dallas: Barcelona Publishers, 2002), and Denise Grocke and Torben Moe, Guided

Imagery & Music (GIM) and Music Imagery Methods for Individual and Group Therapy

(London: Jessica Kingsley Publications, 2015).

viii
For some people, concerts of classical music may have a similar character.
ix
Alexandra Pierce’s career-long exploration of music and embodiment culminates in her

monograph Deepening Musical Performance through Movement: The Theory and Practice of

Embodied Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). Pauline Oliveros’s text

scores for sound-oriented practices may be found in her collections Sonic Meditations

(Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1974) and Anthology of Text Scores (Kingston: Deep Listening

Publications, 2013). R. Murray Schafer wrote a wonderful collection of pedagogical exercises, A

Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Sound-making (Douro-Dummer: Arcana

Editions, 1992). The event scores of the Fluxus group are compiled in The Fluxus Performance
 21

Workbook, ed. Ken Friedman, Owen Smith, and Lauren Sawchyn (A Performance Research e-

publication, 2002. http://www.deluxxe.com/beat/fluxusworkbook.pdf).

x
Pierce, Deepening Musical Performance through Movement, 14-15.
xi
Pierce, Deepening Musical Performance through Movement, 66-67.
xii
Pierce, Deepening Musical Performance through Movement, 106-108. I teach this in a way

different from Pierce’s presentation, with motion toward and away from a climax in each half of

the piece. Pierce orients the bodily movement to only one climax for this piece.
xiii
Oliveros, “Teach Yourself to Fly,” Sonic Meditations, unpaginated.
xiv
Oliveros, “For Alison Knowles a.k.a. All is on,” Anthology of Text Scores, 57.
xv
Sara Cohen, “Sounding Out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place,” in

Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, and George Revill, eds. The Place of Music (New York: The

Guilford Press, 1998), 269-290.

xvi
“Having an Experience,” in John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigee, Penguin

Group, 2005), 36-59.

References

Aldwell, Edward and Carl Schachter, with Allen Cadwallader. Harmony and Voice Leading, 4th

edition. New York: Schirmer, 2010.

Bonny, Helen. Music Consciousness: The Evolution of Guided Imagery and Music. Dallas:

Barcelona Publishers, 2002.

Burkholder, Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude Palisca. A History of Western Music (Ninth

Edition). New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.

 22

Cohen, Sara. “Sounding Out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place.” In The

Place of Music, edited by Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, and George Revill, 269-290.

New York: The Guilford Press, 1998.

Corrington, Viv. “Listening with the Feet.” In Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening, edited by

Monique Buzzarté and Tom Bickley, 143-148. Kingston: Deep Listening Publications,

2012.

Dewey, John. “Having an Experience,” in Art as Experience, 36-59. New York: Perigee,

Penguin Group, 2005 (first published 1934).

Friedman, Ken, Owen Smith, and Lauren Sawchyn, eds, The Fluxus Performance Workbook. A

Performance Research e-publication, 2002.

http://www.deluxxe.com/beat/fluxusworkbook.pdf

Garofalo, Reebee and Steven Waksman. Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A., 6th edition.

New York: Pearson, 2013.

Grocke, Denise and Torben Moe. Guided Imagery & Music (GIM) and Music Imagery Methods

for Individual and Group Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publications, 2015.

Hahn, Thich Nhat, How to Walk. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2015.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body

and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. New York: Bantam Books, 2013.

Kramer, Jonathan. The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening

Strategies. New York: Schirmer, 1988.

McCartney, Andra. “Meaningful Listening through Soundwalks,” in the “Proceedings of the

Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference: Meaning and Meaningfulness in

 23

Electroacoustic Music.” Stockholm, 2012. http://www.ems-

network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS12_mccartney.pdf

McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1991.

Oliveros, Pauline. Anthology of Text Scores. Kingston: Deep Listening Publications, 2013.

Oliveros, Pauline. Sonic Meditations. Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1974.

Pierce, Alexandra. Deepening Musical Performance through Movement: The Theory and

Practice of Embodied Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

Schafer, R. Murray. A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Sound-making. Douro-

Dummer: Arcana Editions, 1992.