Repositioning The Elements: How Students Talk about Music

Leslie Stewart Rose and June Countryman

Annotated by Nicholas Busch
We are concerned about what is lost when curricular imperatives pressure
music teachers to academicize music making and we observe that the
elements framework seems to invite this treatment: rigid definitions to learn
and precise verbal discriminations to make, followed by written tests to
measure the degree to which the set knowledge is acquired.
This frustrates me, because it makes obvious that non musicians are trying
to fit music into the same box as math and science. Yes a lot of music is
mathematical, but not to the point where you can use concrete formulas or
expressions to describe it. Having rigid definitions to the elements of music is
detrimental to the entire art. Music is highly metaphorical in definition, and
assigning permanent labels to it is unethical and just plain wrong.
We wish to include space for other frameworks [elements] for analyzing
music We also contend that students can generate their own robust
analytical frameworks
This is something that I strongly encourage. Teaching the old concrete
elements can be useful, but not as useful as letting the students create their
own way of describing music. In order to create their own ideas, they should
first be introduced to the old ideas, and branch their beliefs off of that.
King (2004) reports that 5.7% of students enrol in Grade 12 music. This
statistic is troubling given that adolescents report that listening to music is
their favorite activity few music education programs, in our experience,
engage students in critical conversations about the role of music in their
lives.
I also find this point interesting. It would benefit many if not all high school
music programs if they had several lessons where the class could share the
importance of the roll of music in their lives, or how music has influenced or
effected them. Including modern and popular music into a school music class
environment is a fantastic idea that is often not implemented nearly as much
as it should.
As we raise questions of power and authority, access and privilege,
representation and value, it becomes clearer that these issues have
everything to do with music education.

This comment surprised me, since I had never before contemplated how
much power a teacher could have over their students. The teacher can
choose what to teach or tell their students, and the way it is taught. They
can choose to completely omit one section of music teachings that could
extremely interest a person or group of people. A teacher must respect the
art of music and teach the full experience of it, which often times can be
very hard to do.
It is richly ironic that adolescents hear music in more complex ways than
the curriculum suggests they should. We believe that the elements
framework causes teachers to try to over-simplify a complex temporal
phenomenon, and thus interfere with the richness of the listening
experiences.
This does not surprise but interest me. As I mentioned (and as the article has
mentioned) earlier, using a concrete definition of the elements of music is
detrimental to the enjoyment of the art. As a child I always heard things in
music that I had trouble explaining, but also knew I couldnt define with the
simple music elements (such as rhythm, key, timbre etc.). Im certain that
other kids heard the same things I did in music and had the same trouble
expressing it, and this article is proving that point.
what they [the students] heard, might seem to be another version of the
elements
It is interesting to think how much the music education programs would
change for high school students if every teacher implored the same ideals as
Rose and Countryman do. It would definitely be a positive change, and one
that would interest more students in music and perhaps change many
students lives.
I do not have one specific thing to say to Rose & Countryman after reading
this article, but an array of questions. Questions such as: Did you feel any
discrimination from other teachers during this experiment? Did any kids
respond negatively? Were you still able to cover the entire curriculum along
with these new ideas? Rather than say one thing Id like to have a
conversation or an interview with them. The extensiveness of this article is
impressive, and its nice to see someone is making a change about modern
music education rather than just complaining about it and gawking at
statistics.
Nicholas Busch