On 27 Mar 2008 at 6:28, dhbailey wrote: > I think I would begin such a class with the statement "90% of anything > is crap. That includes the Baroque Era of music history, which we will > be studying in this class. You're lucky in that we will be studying the > 10% of Baroque music which isn't crap, but I want you all to remember > that while these composers we will be studying were creating these > masterworks, there were many more composers turning out efficient but > hardly worthwhile music that we won't be studying."
While I heartily endorse Sturgeon's Law, and teaching it to students, I think the above approach to teaching music history is badly mistaken. History includes the good and the bad, and what we consider "good" today is only clear in comparison to what we consider "bad" (which quite often differs wildly from the opinions of the time). Teaching nothing but "masterworks" is what got music history into such a bind in the first place, and the approach you outline just makes it that much worse. I'd leave the assessment of "good" and "bad" to the students and instead try to teach something that's representative of what happened musically during the historical period in question. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
