Reprinted with permission from Tempo, the official magazine of the New Jersey Music Educators Association.

Citation information:

Berz, William, "Choosing Music for the School Band," Tempo, 55 no. 4 (May, 2001): 46-47.

Choosing Music for the School Band

by

William Berz

 

I am currently involved with several projects that have required me to consider how we define quality in band repertoire. This has resulted in my writing some articles and working with Mark Custom Recording on producing part of their Distinguished Music for the Developing Band series. (The first volume was released in December of 2000.) With this as background, I am planning to write several Tempo articles on selecting quality music for band. This first effort will focus on philosophy. The next articles will stress the practical: discussion of specific works at different grade levels.

Why is Choosing Music Important?

As Frank Battisti says, "the kind of music you play matters" (quoted in Dvorak & Floyd, 2000, 11). Bruce Pearson echoes this: "without a doubt, one of the band conductor’s most important responsibilities is the selection of music for their ensemble" (Pearson, 2001, 45).While this may seem obvious, it is my experience that some instrumental music teachers do not really take music selection very seriously. Many do not see how important repertoire is to the musical growth of their students.

Teachers should choose music to accomplish two goals, hopefully together:

    1. The music must develop musical and technical skills in students at appropriate levels of difficulty.
    2. The music must further the aesthetic development in students (in other words, it is artistically GOOD MUSIC, music of quality).

While other factors must be considered, these other issues must be secondary. Band directors are required to perform a great deal of music that is intended for some specific purpose: school plays, special events, and school and civic ceremonies. In addition, there is considerable pressure from administrators and parents to program music that is entertaining rather than educational or musical. Obviously, band and orchestra leaders cannot ignore these requirements and pressures. However, these kinds of functional repertoire must not become the focus of the band program.

Many teachers choose music solely on whether it is attractive to the students. They fear that the study of "serious" music will discourage students from participating in band or orchestra. Certainly, music should be attractive and engaging. However, many directors use this argument to justify an over reliance on the performance of popular music. While a certain amount of lighter music has a place in the school band repertoire, it must be kept in balance. In the end, students will recognize the shallowness, and they simply will not learn all that they should. The majority of the music to be studied, must address the two goals listed above. In the end, motivation to participate in music class must come from a richer rationale than the study of pop music.

Ray Cramer puts the selection of repertoire into a larger educational plan and perspective.

There is so much great music to share with our students. We need to capitalize on every aspect of music to bring the "whole package" into our performance experiences, which will enhance the students involvement and musical fulfillment. Correct notes are obviously important as are attacks, releases, good balance, blend, careful intonation, clarity in texture, and articulation style. But these are all stepping stones to generating musical electricity and excitement. To accomplish this, we must, as teachers and conductors, give our students more than the basic musical stepping stones. They need our musical heart and soul, which can only be communicated by sharing everything we have compiled about the period, style, composer, and structure of the composition. In other words, involve the students totally, teach them about the music, through the music we choose. Ours is an awesome responsibility, but our energy and enthusiasm for the task must infect those over whom we have been put in charge. (Cramer, 1997, 9-10)

Artistic Evaluation

Evaluating a work on its artistic merit is very difficult. Trying to define aesthetic value is a human-long philosophical debate, one that is beyond the bounds of this short article.

Conductors do need to frame their choice of music against some kind of artistic measuring stick. And it is especially difficult in the educational setting where difficulty and technical development must be considered. What kind of broad factors should we then consider? What makes a particular piece good, or better than another? (See Berz, in press, for a more thorough discussion.)

Monroe Beardsley (1981) is often cited by music philosophers for his outline of three primary canons of criticism: unity, intensity, and complexity. The various musical parameters (e.g., harmony, melody, form, etc.) would be seen in light of one of the three canons. Musical works that exhibit these features in positive and balanced ways would tend to hold more interest than works that do not. Lewis Rowell (1983) expands Beardsley’s ideas by providing a set of guidelines on which to base objective musical judgments. It is shown below in simplified form. (Point 11 is almost a literal restatement of Beardsley’s three canons.) Rowell states that a musical composition is more likely to deserve a rating of excellent if:

    1. It invites perception as a unified, coherent structure.
    2. Its structure is clearly articulated and well scaled.
    3. It is complete and fulfilled.
    4. It is hierarchical.
    5. It is focused, typically by some tonal means [not to be confused with tonality], so that the mind is thereby directed through the work’s distinctive structure.
    6. It is perceptibly thematic.
    7. It imparts a sense of motion, continuity, and dynamic change.
    8. It has a textured surface.
    9. It is sonically "saturated" rich in intensity and tonal color.
    10. It avoids self-contradiction (e.g., poor text setting, clumsy use of the medium, pointless inconsistencies of the musical language).
    11. It strikes an appropriate balance between the following:
  • unity and variety
  • simplicity and complexity
  • frustrating expectation and immediate gratification of expectation ends and means

In many educational pieces, these qualities are almost totally absent. As one example, one might reflect on many — if not most — of the compositions of James Swearingen. While very flattering for the developing band, almost every work sounds the same. (My former colleague Joe Brashier tells a story where he played some half dozen Swearingen pieces simultaneously. The result was surprisingly uncacophonous!) The form of the music is very predictable, harmonies are basic, and the scoring is overly doubled with very few independent lines. There is little balance between the expected and unexpected in virtually every musical parameter. The one true advantage is that students can have a certain degree of satisfaction performing the music because there is so little exposure to difficulty, and the performance will most likely sound good. Unfortunately, there won’t be much growth along the way.

Particularly in the band area, there are many composers whose music is formulaic; James Swearingen is but only one example. This kind of music should be programmed only occasionally. Unfortunately, much of this repertoire has become a staple heard repeatedly at band concerts and festivals. (I confess that I have performed a body of this music, because much of it sells CDs.)

We need to rely on our training as professional musicians to help us to make informed judgments about the music that we choose to perform with our student ensembles. Although we might disagree on specifics, we would all recognize certain works as masterpieces. We need to look for qualities found in these major works that are also seen in less technically advanced literature. We must not divorce solid musical judgments from the process of choosing repertoire for our school ensembles.

Mark Fonder, national authority on instrumental music education, wrote a tremendous article on quality music for bands that will appear in the 2000 edition of the WASBE Journal. He tries to balance the sometimes-competing ideas of educational benefit and artistic value. In his summary, he makes the following point.

We can be sure that publishers of band music will provide us with whatever sells. If we choose music that is trite, poorly arranged, or is simply entertaining, we encourage publishers to produce more of the same. In doing so we cheapen the student’s educational experiences that in many schools is already shortchanged due to biased scheduling and poor budgets. We cannot let allow our choice of literature be either educational or artistic. It must be both. Over time we can collectively overturn the three truths posited early in this discussion. But, it will take integrity, fortitude and continuous study. If one’s optimism is allowed to prevail, sometime in the future we will hear, "it’s a good teaching piece" and know that is a good thing! (Fonder, in press)

Educational benefit might seem obvious to all teachers. Our reason for being in the classroom is to help our students to develop. However, as Fonder states, choosing music that helps to advance students’ skill alone is not the ultimate goal. We need to find music of artistic quality that accommodates these other kinds of goals. Technical development is not enough. We must not lose sight that we are musicians — people in the arts — in addition to being teachers. We must teach art!

 

References

Beardsley, M. (1981). Aesthetics: problems in the philosophy of criticism, 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Berz, W. L. (in press). Evaluating music in a multifaceted band world. WASBE Journal, 7.

Cramer, R. (1997). What materials are you going to teach "about music" "through music" while "performing music?" In. Teaching music through performance in band. (pp. 7 – 10). Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc.

Dvorak, T. L. & Floyd, R. L.(2000). Best music for beginning band: A selective repertoire guide to music and methods for beginning band. Brooklyn, NY: Manhattan Beach Music.

Fonder, M. (in press). Educational quality vs. artistic quality in band literature: Must it be either/or? WASBE Journal, 7.

Pearson, B. (2001). Selecting music for the young band. In R. Miles & T. Dvorak (Eds.), Teaching music through performance in beginning band. (pp. 45 – 60). Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc.

Rowell, L. (1983). Thinking about music: An introduction to the philosophy of music. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press.