Running Head: MUSICAL LITERACY FOR ALL 1

Michael McCormick

Musical Literacy In and Out of the Classroom

Critical Pedagogy III

Prof. Rachel Brashier

Westminster Choir College

2 December 2017
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We often speak of the importance of musical literacy in our classrooms and whether we

should be spending more time on learning to read than we should on making music. For the

purposes of this paper, “musical literacy” will include the ability to decode notation, have an

understanding of music history to make informed decisions and judgements on a piece of music,

listen critically to a piece of music, and be able to compose and improvise music. I focus here on

reading Western notation as it is the ​lingua franca c​ urrently used in academic music programs in

the United States, and as such should be part of any student’s public school education. Terms

such as musical fluency and competency are also good, but tend to leave out the notation portion,

which is an important part of musical independence.

How many times have we heard the statement, “I wish I had more time to teach sight

reading, but I have so much other stuff to teach.” Really? What else are you teaching? Oh, right,

how to sing or play the notes and rhythms since your students cannot read them because you are

not teaching them. This is a vicious cycle that never ends. Throughout my entire public school

music education experience, the first rehearsal of a new piece typically consisted of the teacher

playing some of the piece and then saying “okay, sopranos, here’s your part” and continuing on.

This process took so long that even through the week of the concert we were still having parts

played for us, with very little musicality mentioned. Of course, there is no other time to teach

sight reading when a rehearsal plan goes along like that.

In music, let us remember what Paulo Freire (1968) said, "Teaching implies, or demands,

the existence of two subjects. By subjects, I mean the educator, and on the other hand, the

educatee. However, there is another: the object to be known" (pg 85). Let there be a clear object

to be taught. Having fun and making music is great, but should not students learn to be musically
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literate, so that they can have even more fun and make even more music for their entire lives?

This is why we need to teach musical literacy!

The Listener

We sometimes forget that a crucial part of teaching music is teaching to listen. In

teaching literacy, we are also training students to be able to listen to a work, and make informed

judgements about it. Jerrold Levinson (1990) mentions a specific experience in his article

“Musical Literacy” concerning listening to Bruckner’s 4th Symphony. He asks what listeners

need, cognitively speaking, in order to grasp the work on a primary level. He goes on to list ten

things, ranging from being able to identify if the music is tonal or not, all the way to hving

knowledge of Bruckner’s life and writing style and historical influences on the piece (p.19). Now

of course, one can listen to any piece of music and decide whether or not they like it, but is that

really literate and informed listening? There can be a great deal of information lost in a piece if

the listener is not informed. And this relates all the way up the chain. Even I, a musician, am

constantly learning new things that get me to become more appreciative of different music.

Leon Botstein (1992) claimed that “newer musical literacy was designed to give the

reader familiarity with musical notation and terminology sufficient to follow written accounts of

music” (p.140). ​This is why musical literacy is so important for informed listening. If someone

can see the score for and read about a piece of music, and anticipate what it is that they are about

to hear with understanding, they will have a much easier and more meaningful experience. And a

musical experience like that is just incredibly freeing and empowering. Like John Dewey (1938)

said, “​The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence” (p.26). By
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educating our students to be able to think independently, they can finally have the greatest

musical freedom that there is.

Along with having an appreciation for the music, students can learn a great deal from

being musically literate. They will not only understand the music itself, but will also be able to

learn about that many composers were at the forefront of social justice issues and understand

how they put their ideas into their musical creations. They will also be able to recognize the deep

emotional tones of musical pieces, sometimes inspired by world events. And, they may even use

this information to inform their own decisions, whether it be in life or in writing their own music.

The Performer

“In Hetland's report of a meta-analysis, she noted that the effects of music instruction

were stronger for those children whose music experiences were reinforced with reading notation”

(Hayward & Gromko, 2009, p.27). This statement supports the notation part of musical literacy

in a powerful way. The ability to read musical notation brings students so much further in their

musical journeys. By being able to read music, free up more time to grow their musicianship.

Since singing the correct notes and rhythms is such a small portion of what music making really

is, it does not make sense to spend countless hours having to play the same notes over and over

again for a student. If students could just read the music for themselves, it would provide for so

much more time to grow their musicianship, musicality, tone, dynamics and all the countless

important musical concepts that go beyond pitch and rhythm to make music expressive and

beautiful.
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While learning notation is great for increasing musicianship, learning historical context is

also very beneficial and a part of being a literate musician. By understanding the implications

and intentions of the composer, the performer can bring so much more to the audience. The

audience may not be musically educated like the performers are (which is a shame, but out of the

performer’s control), so the performer must be so well educated that they can bring a sense of

life and passion to the piece which can be sensed by the audience. Now, this does not mean that

performers are to be “teaching” their audiences. That is not the purpose of performance by any

means. Although what this does mean is that the performer, with their well-informed and refined

practice, can create a world in front of the audience that is so beautiful that the audience will be

compelled to join in and become part of this musical world created before them.

The Average Student

Another popular argument against trying to teach musical literacy is that most students in

a public school music classroom will not go on to pursue music as a career. While this is most

definitely true, that does not mean these students cannot benefit from becoming musically

literate. It is totally acceptable, and in fact admirable, for students to have music as a hobby, and

still be well-informed about it. There are students that would love to write music and create

beautiful sounds, but do not have any idea on where to start. By using programs such as

GarageBand, where students see no traditional Western notation, they can still use musical

literacy skills to create more beautiful effects. If they have an understanding of form, harmony,

orchestration, and dynamics, then people are empowered to create something more beautiful than

if they had no musical literacy background.

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The average student can also use music notation in their future lives, especially if they

want to join a community chorus or church choir, or even start up a band. The understanding of

chords will allow any student to pick up a guitar and start teaching themselves, and then using

that knowledge to understand progressions. Expanding upon that, students may learn to

improvise over top of chord progressions that they learned in your classroom, incorporating

scales that you taught them to associate with particular chords. Improvisation is also beneficial

because it engages parts of the brain that involve notation. According to Beckstead (2013), in

using fMRI scans, it was found that “Improvised or spontaneous playing seems to involve an

entirely different area of the prefrontal cortex than does performing memorized or read passages”

(p.70). Improvisation not only shows creativity and improves composition abilities, but it also

shows a deep understanding of how to apply music theory. Being able to improvise requires a

great understanding of and facility with chord progressions, harmony, and melody. Improvisation

allows students to improve upon and demonstrate their abilities in these areas in a musical way,

without a pencil and piece of paper.

The Future Music Student

Music educators are responsible to teach a variety of students. Some students enroll in

music classes to fulfill a requirement and have no interest in the material, while some enjoy

music as a hobby or fun activity, and others are on a path to a future career in music. While most

students in public school music classrooms are not planning to continue on in music past high

school, they still need to be served by the teacher. One of the greatest things to teach to a student

toward lifelong music making, is musical literacy. Being musically literate allows all students to
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become independent in their music making, especially those preparing for a career in music. This

is a similar idea to being able to read. If you can read, you can teach yourself anything by

reading books, and everyone needs to learn to read, not just future English majors. Thus, you can

learn and improve on music if you are literate, especially in regards to decoding notation.

As Freire quoted Hegel in his book ​Pedagogy of the Oppressed ​(1968) as saying, “the

one is independent, and its essential nature is to be for itself; the other is dependent, and its

essence is life or existence for another. The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter the

Bondsman” (p.18). We are teaching our students to be Masters, not Bondsmen. Students going

into college for music should be masters of their art so that they can progress quickly and

efficiently without having to backtrack and learn things that should have been developed at a

much younger age.

The Teacher

Most simply put, musical literacy is important for the teacher because if they do not

possess it, they cannot properly teach it to their students. Although, beyond the teacher’s abilities

to properly teach literacy to their students, literacy does many other important things for them in

the music classroom. For example, a teacher that is well equipped to improvise and compose can

write some pieces or exercises that can tailor directly to their students in order to focus on

problem areas that they need the most work on. Also, when the teacher has strong aural skills

and abilities to decode notation, they can quickly and easily identify problems in choral music.

For example, if a note is missing in a chord, a particular section is out of tune, or someone is

singing a wrote note, a musically literate teacher could quickly identify that and then begin
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working on a solution, minimizing student frustration and the continual banging out of notes for

students on the piano.

Also, when a teacher is truly musically literate and informed, they have a deep

knowledge of historical background in regards to composers, genres, and form. Such facility

allows teachers to lead students in a clear and direct path toward interpretation and freedom to

construct their own musical ideas. Now, of course, any teacher can give students an

interpretation to follow, and the students can do a nice job of following that. But, the real goal is

to get students to be able to create their own musical ideas and original thoughts. This is the real

goal of a good teacher. Eventually, the teacher should become obsolete and the students should

be able to be fully independent to be able to live a musical life.

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Works Cited

Beckstead, D. (2013). Improvisation: Thinking and Playing Music. ​Music Educators Journal,

99​(3), 69-74.

Botstein, L. (1992). Listening through Reading: Musical Literacy and the Concert Audience.

19th-Century Music,​ ​16(​ 2), 129-145. doi:10.2307/746262

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. NY: Macmillan.

Freire, P. (2014/1968). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M.B. Ramos, Trans.).

Hayward, C., & Gromko, J. (2009). Relationships among Music Sight-Reading and Technical

Proficiency, Spatial Visualization, and Aural Discrimination. ​Journal of Research in

Music Education,​ ​57(​ 1), 26-36.

Levinson, J. (1990). Musical Literacy. ​Journal of Aesthetic Education,​ ​24​(1), 17-30.

doi:10.2307/3332852

Wink, J. (2011). Critical pedagogy: Notes from the real world. (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson

Education, pp. 83-120 & 178-180.