early music textbooks

[JRCohen]

Hi, I've been using Bonds for lack, really, of anything else practical.
It's OK; but I find the two separate books (text and scores) clumsy,
awkward to use (and expensive for the students), and the website
appallingly useless compared to others.
Also, I am not crazy about the organization - I'd prefer chronological -
and I think the choice of pieces is often unfortunate - as is my gripe
with many textbooks - where is the FUN? Where is the sheer fun of
medieval and renaissance music? Why so much dreary (if undeniably
brilliant) stuff?

Forney and Machlis - forget it. For music appreciation I use the same
books I'd use for music majors - Kamien (possibly the best of the ones
I've used), Kerman & Tomlinson (also very fine, if a bit supercilious),
sometimes Yudkin.None of them does justice to medieval and renaissance
music, for which I always do a supplement - Kerman even suggests
skipping it!

Yudkin for early music, and Hoppin, are both good, but both need to also
lighten up and also provide up to date accompanying CDs or tracks. Bonds
for music appreciation "Listen to this" is horrible - completely
different from the early music volume.
Judith

[John Howell]

At 7:40 AM -0500 12/26/11, JRCohen wrote:
>Hi, I've been using Bonds for lack, really, of anything else practical.
>It's OK; but I find the two separate books (text and scores) clumsy,
>awkward to use (and expensive for the students), and the website
>appallingly useless compared to others.

My situation is probably quite different from
most. I teach a 2-semester Survey of Music
course in our Core Curriculum (a distributed
Liberal Arts curriculum from which students may
select designated courses in 7 specific Areas).
It must therefore be compatible with general
students (although it is the required music
history component for music minors), and I had to
decide the very first semester I taught it that I
could not possibly require the ability to read
music. Therefore I have no use for Anthologies
of scores, but definitely need Anthologies of
recordings. It's in my Early Music Literature
course that I would really like to have a set of
CDs keyed to the textbooks I use, but they don't
exist.

>Also, I am not crazy about the organization - I'd prefer chronological -
>and I think the choice of pieces is often unfortunate - as is my gripe
>with many textbooks - where is the FUN? Where is the sheer fun of
>medieval and renaissance music? Why so much dreary (if undeniably
>brilliant) stuff?

Bonds is a pretty good balance between
chronological and genre, although I much
preferred Stolba. What Grout and its descendents
fails to get across was the variety of music
happening simultaneously in EVERY time period.
One thing I didn't care for in Hanning was the
underlying assumption that every new idea in the
baroque came from opera, when that was only ONE
form in the 17th century and by no means the most
important one. Stolba didn't make that mistake.

I will never necessarily agree with the choices
in recorded anthologies. Stolba had no Telemann
for years, and when a single example was added it
was of an obscure chamber piece (which I love to
perform) that is by no means representative of
Telemann's work or of the reason for his very
wide influence. Bonds again includes no Telemann
at all, but then turns around and includes Bach
played on PIANO!!! However, Bonds seems to have
made many (most?) of his choices in order to
illustrate particular points, which I can
appreciate. Many years ago we tried to come up
with a "Hot Hundred" list of music that all our
majors should be familiar with before they
graduated, but nobody could agree. Selectivity
is always necessary, unfortunately.

As to the FUN, Amen!!! But that's the fault not
just of the editors of various anthologies (most
of which include a depressing sameness of
selections), but of the availability of
recordings that have not been made by out-of-work
opera singers who have no understanding of the
genres they are attempting to sing! And of
course the recordings have to be available for
inclusion, as well. The original CDs with Stolba
included over half recordings by college collegia
that were not at all inspiring, but each new
edition improved the ratio (admittedly at the
same time that more and more quality recordings
by professionals actually became available). *I*
have fun with medieval music; too many people do
not. But that's in part because I spent 20 years
as an entertainer before returning to grad
school, and I understand WHY that music was
created in the first place.

>
>Forney and Machlis - forget it. For music appreciation I use the same
>books I'd use for music majors - Kamien (possibly the best of the ones
>I've used), Kerman & Tomlinson (also very fine, if a bit supercilious),
>sometimes Yudkin.None of them does justice to medieval and renaissance
>music, for which I always do a supplement - Kerman even suggests
>skipping it!

Any one-semester course is going to neglect early
music, and I can't really fault them for that.
Music is long, and time is short! In my case I
was "asked" by my department head to take on a
FOURTH section of Appreciation because of the
huge demand, and I'm handling 200 students, so I
had no choice but to look for and adopt a turnkey
commercial course that was completely on line and
ready to go with. In fact three of us teach four
sections of Appreciation, and serve something
over a thousand students every semester, which is
kind of scary!!!

>
>Yudkin for early music, and Hoppin, are both good, but both need to also
>lighten up and also provide up to date accompanying CDs or tracks. Bonds
>for music appreciation "Listen to this" is horrible - completely
>different from the early music volume.

Hah!!! In my grad school courses I had the Reese
books for both Medieval and
Renaissance--affectionately known as the Old
Testament and the New Testament! Incredible
scholarship, and invaluable as handbooks, but not
written for easy reading or for easy learning.
Both Hoppin and Atlas are an order of magnitude
better, although they don't look for the fun in
music either. And the lack of CDs is a major
problem.

Good to hear from you.

John


--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
School of Performing Arts & Cinema
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:John....@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html

"Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön."
(Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms

[Judith R Cohen]

> t must therefore be compatible with general students (although it is
> the required music history component for music minors), and I had to
> decide the very first semester I taught it that I could not possibly
> require the ability to read music. Therefore I have no use for
> Anthologies of scores,

My course is for the same type of student, except they also come from
engineering, computer science, kinesiology etc. BUT - they can follow,
not full scores, but basic melodic contour and the kind of timed
listening guide most textbooks offer, just fine. I find the music
appreciation texts geared to non-majors are just too patronizing and
simplistic.
In fact, I usually make up a medieval section, and as an exercise, have
them invent their own systems of monophonic notation - which often end
up bearing significant resemblances to early chant notation systems.

re availability:
These days, Youtube is helpful. I get my students to vie for finding
good , accessible, recordings of specific things , and we discuss the
quality of artists from fine professionals to eager wannabees - that
alone turns into interesting classes, as we discuss criteria. Being a
performer, of course, helps - but then, I've always felt music profs
should be performers anyway, as a basic requirement.

> Any one-semester course is going to neglect early music, and I can't
> really fault them for that.

I'm talking about a two-semester class and there is NO excuse in any
case for neglecting early music - the foundation of WAM and the least
known and least understood. Frankly, I think the students can live
without the plethora of endless piano concertos and slow symphony
movements always foisted upon them (and me.)

> Music is long,

Another reason to focus on neglected repertoires such as troubadour
songs and light Renaissance dances - as close as one can get to what the
people's music was.

Or, for example, (still with non-music majors) - there's a free pdf and
midi recording online of Mozart's variations on "Ah vous dirai-je,
maman" (Twinkle twinkle ) - both majors and non-majors LOVE it. And they
love it when I bring out the chestnuts of the Romantic period most
textbooks don't bother with , - the William Tell Overture, Offenbach's
"Can-can"....and they can relate music they know only from commercials
to "real" composers. Oh - and they adore programme music. The head
rolling at the end of Berlioz' March to the Scaffold is always a big hit.

BTW you know who else was really good? Edith Borroff. Her old textbook
was great (came with LPs). I was given it as a student in the 70s, and
had a look at it recently - some great things in there, including a
medieval musical graffiti example, and some good discussions of mjusic
in colonial America.

Judith