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4 books match the query 'Music in universities and colleges'

cover of Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music

Heartland Excursions

Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music

Bruno Nettl

University of Illinois Press, 1995

In Heartland Excursions, a legendary ethnomusicologist takes the reader along for a delightful, wide-ranging tour of his workplace. Bruno Nettl provides an insightful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, always pithy ethnography of midwestern university schools of music from a different perspective in each of four chapters, alternating among three distinct voices: the longtime professor, the "native informant," and the outside observer, an "ethnomusicologist from Mars." 

If you've ever been to a concert or been connected to a university with a school of music, you ll discover yourself--or someone you know--in these pages. 

"In the music building you can't tell the quick from the dead without a program."--Chapter 1, "In the Service of the Masters" 

"The great ability of a violin student whom I observed was established when his dean was persuaded to accompany him."--Chapter 2, "Society of Musicians" 

"Some teachers of music history would accuse students who listen to Elvis Presley not only of taking time away from hearing Brahms, but also of polluting themselves."--Chapter 3, "A Place for All Musics?" 

At commencement, the graduates "were perhaps not aware that they had just participated in an event in which the principal values of the Western musical world . . . had been taken out of storage bins for annual exercise."--Chapter 4, "Forays into the Repertory"

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cover of Powerful Voices: The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella

Powerful Voices

The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella

Joshua S. Duchan

University of Michigan Press, 2016

Collegiate a cappella, part of a long tradition of unaccompanied singing, is known to date back on American college campuses to at least the colonial era. Considered in the context of college glee clubs, barbershop quartets, early-twentieth-century vocal pop groups, doo-wop groups, and contemporary a cappella manifestations in pop music, collegiate a cappella is an extension of a very old tradition of close harmony singing---one that includes but also goes beyond the founding of the Yale Whiffenpoofs. Yet despite this important history, collegiate a cappella has until now never been the subject of scholarly examination.

In Powerful Voices: The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella, Joshua S. Duchan offers the first thorough accounting of the music's history and  reveals how the critical issues of sociability, gender, performance, and technology affect its music and experience. Just as importantly, Duchan provides a vital contribution to music scholarship more broadly, in several important ways: by expanding the small body of literature on choruses and amateur music; by addressing musical and social processes in a field where the vast majority of scholarship focuses on individuals and their products; and by highlighting a musical context long neglected by musicologists---the college campus. Ultimately, Powerful Voices is a window on a world of amateur music that has begun to expand its reach internationally, carrying this uniquely American musical form to new global audiences, while playing an important role in the social, cultural, and musical education of countless singers over the last century.


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cover of Teaching Difficult Topics: Reflections from the Undergraduate Music Classroom

Teaching Difficult Topics

Reflections from the Undergraduate Music Classroom

Olivia R. Lucas and Laura Moore Pruett

University of Michigan Press, 2024

Teaching Difficult Topics provides a series of on-the-ground reflections from college music instructors working in a wide variety of institutional settings about their approaches to inclusive, supportive pedagogy in the music classroom. Although some imagine the music classroom to be an apolitical space, instructors find themselves increasingly in need of resources for incorporating issues of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and historical trauma into their classrooms in ways that support student learning and safeguard their classroom communities.

The teaching reflections in Teaching Difficult Topics examine difficult themes that fall into three primary categories: subjects that instructors sense to be controversial or emotionally challenging to discuss, those that derive from or intersect with real-world events that are difficult to process, and bigger-picture discussions of how music studies often focuses on dominant narratives while overlooking other perspectives. Some chapters offer practical guidance, lesson plans, and teaching materials to enable instructors to build discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and traumatic histories into their own classrooms; others take a more global view, reflecting on the importance and relevance of teaching these difficult topics and on how to respond in the music classroom when external events disrupt daily life.
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cover of When Colleges Sang: The Story of Singing in American College Life

When Colleges Sang

The Story of Singing in American College Life

J. Lloyd Winstead

University of Alabama Press, 2013

When Colleges Sang is an illustrated history of the rich culture of college singing from the earliest days of the American republic to the present.
 
Before fraternity songs, alma maters, and the rahs of college fight songs became commonplace, students sang. Students in the earliest American colleges created their own literary melodies that they shared with their classmates. As J. Lloyd Winstead documents in When Colleges Sang, college singing expanded in conjunction with the growth of the nation and the American higher education system.
 
While it was often simply an entertaining pastime, singing had other subtle and not-so-subtle effects. Singing indoctrinated students into the life of formal and informal student organizations as well as encouraged them to conform to college rituals and celebrations. University faculty used songs to reinforce the religious practices and ceremonial observances that their universities supported. Students used singing for more social purposes: students sang to praise their peer’s achievements (and underachievements), mock the faculty, and provide humor. In extreme circumstances, they sang to intimidate classmates and faculty, and to defy college authorities. Singing was, and is, an intrinsic part of campus culture.
 
When Colleges Sang explores the dynamics that inspired collegiate singing and the development of singing traditions from the earliest days of the American college. Winstead explores this tradition’s tenuous beginnings in the Puritan era and follows its progress into the present. Using historical documents provided by various universities, When Colleges Sang follows the unique applications and influences of song that persisted in various forms. This original and significant contribution to the literature of higher education sheds light on how college singing traditions have evolved through the generations and have continued to remain culturally relevant even today.
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