Sunday, June 14, 2015

Music Marginalized in Higher Education

I receive emails from NPR Music, but rarely find time to open and read them. Finally, I had some spare time this morning to peruse the email and read and listen to the materials. I'm glad I did.

What caught my eye today was the article, "A Band of Their Own," which gives a brief description of the Darlinettes, a North Carolina jazz band formed and run by women. This picture from the article shows the director, Doris Funderburk, and the band.

Doris Funderburk directs The Darlinettes.

I normally do not see news of women in jazz and I'm glad that the Darlinettes story was featured.

Doris Funderburk Morgan played jazz all her life and enrolled in the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina in 1942 as a piano and vocal major. In her interview with NPR, Doris described how she had to hide her passion for jazz in college. As she practiced a jazz piece in one of the music halls, the door flew open and one of the organ professors burst in and said, "What do you think you are doing?!" (NPR, A Band of Their Own, 2015). This is interesting to me because a colleague I recently met at APME (the Association for Popular Music Education) described a similar experience he had when practicing jazz in college. 

This reaction from music faculty did/does not just occur with jazz, but modern "classical" music as well. I remember reading an article about composer Phillip Glass, who also experienced backlash from music faculty when visiting schools of music. Today, he says the students who were enrolled in those schools are now the professors at the schools and that he is welcome. Similarly, today jazz is welcome in music schools. 

While jazz and contemporary classical music might be more accepted in schools of music, I see other kinds of music being marginalized—popular and folk to name just two. I hope that we can keep pushing forward and working towards the inclusion of more diverse music in higher music education. I hope that we can learn from stories like Doris's to understand past prejudice and examine the current culture of music in higher education in a critical way.



Thursday, May 2, 2013

List of Women in Sondra Wieland Howe's Article


Here is a list of women mentioned in Howe's (2000) JHRME article, An historical perspective on contributions of American women music educators. Many of these women might be studied more in-depth. 

Dan Shevock

List of women in Sondra Wieland Howe’s (2000) article:

“This paper presents an overview of contributions of American women music educators from the late-nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century” (Howe, 2000, p. 147).

·      Elsie M. Shawe (1866-1962) – Teachers Training School, St. Paul, Minnesota
·      Emma A. Thomas, Supervisor of music, Detroit public schools
·      May Usher Griffin, Mankato Normal School, Minnesota
·      Julia Ettie Crane, Potsdam Music Institute (Crane School of Music)
·      Jeannette Meyer Thurber, National Conservatory in New York City
·      Clara Baur, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music
·      Mary Louise Curtis Bok, Curtis Institute of Music

o   African American Women
·      Harriet Gibbs Marshall (1869-1941), Washington (DC) Conservatory of Music
·      Lulu Vere Childers (1870-1946), Howard University
·      Emma Azalia Hackley (1867-1922), Vocal Normal Institute of Detroit
·      Mary Cardwell Dawson (1894-1962), Cardwell School of Music in Pittsburgh & the National Negro Company

·      Frances Elliott Clark Clark, Presided over first MSNC (64% of founders of MSNC were women)
·      Elizabeth Casterton
·      Lucy K. Cole, University of Washington
·      Frances Ellen Dütting, Hunter College
·      Constance Barlow-Smith, University of Illinois
·      Mrs. Elizabeth Casterton, Bay City, Michigan
·      Jessie L. Gaynor
·      Eleanor Smith, Chicago
·      Marie Burt Parr, Cleveland
·      Henrietta G. Baker
·      Lilla Belle Pitts
·      Mabelle Glenn, Bloomington, Illinois and Kansas City, Missouri
·      Marguerite V. Hood, MENC President 1952-54
·      Vanett Lawler
·      Gail martin Haake, Oxford Piano Course
·      Angela Diller
·      Elizabeth Quaile
·      Leila Fletcher
·      June Weybright
·      Ada Richter
·      Helen May Butler, Ladies’ Military Band
·      Consuella Carter & Anna Mae Winburn, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm
·      Ina Ray Hutton & Her Melodears, the Parisian Red Heads, Darlings of Rhythm
·      Mrs. Mary Stanley Dana Shindler
·      Mrs. Adelia L. Loughlin
·      Miss Lydia J. Cranston, New Bedford, Massachusetts
·      Rose Marie Grentzer, Birchard Music Series

References
Howe, S. W. (2000). An historical perspective on contributions of American women music educators. Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, 22(2), 147-158. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41300440

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Kate Hevner's Adjective Circle

This was my 2nd (or 3) papers for Dr. Thornton's class. It seems like there might be a chapter/article/or something of Hevner somewhere in there. Excuse the errors. ~Dan


Kate Hevner: Studies utilizing the adjective circle
Daniel John Shevock
Penn State
MUS ED 545: Psychological Foundations of Musical Behavior
Introduction
            For music educators, the music psychologist, researcher, and creator of the adjective circle, Kate Hevner Mueller (1898-1984) contributed extensively to our understanding of emotion in music. A prolific scholar, she developed tests measuring music discrimination, musical concepts, and attitude toward music (Ollen, 2013), wrote on music appreciation (Hevner, 1934), studied musical taste (Mueller & Hevner, 1942), and wrote on experiences of women in education (Mueller, 1954). While her contribution to music education was robust and varied, it was her adjective circle that initially interested me in her.
            She was born to a Presbyterian minister and a teacher in Pennsylvania, either Westmoreland (Kate Mueller papers, 1999), or Sunbury (Ollen, 2013). According to Ollen, Hevner was the second of three children, graduated from Wilson College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1920, Columbia University with a Master of Arts in 1923, and the University of Chicago in 1928 with a Doctor of Philosophy. At Columbia, Hevner studied with the foremost educational thinker of the early 20th century and father of experiential education, John Dewey, but was not impressed with his teaching style; “Dewey was bewildering to me, for he sat at his desk with his hand over his mouth, talking, or rather rambling and rambling, or so it seemed to me. I enjoyed the assigned readings and somehow got through the course, but I must admit I never could follow the lectures” (Hevner as quoted in Ollen, 2013). Ultimately, she decided to have another professor supervise her master’s thesis, but found the work “discouraging.”
            Hevner had a more positive experience at the University of Chicago due to smaller classes, which she found more pleasant and intellectually stimulating. Additionally, Hevner found, “there were no rules for graduate students, and I enjoyed that very much” (as quoted in Ollen, 2013). Ollen suggested Hevner put in long hours working with her doctoral advisor, L. L. Thurstone, and completed an 11 page doctoral thesis entitled An Empirical Study of Three Psychophysical Methods.
            Hevner became a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, where she worked between 1929 and 1935. At Minnesota she perceived an overwhelming pressure to produce and publish research, while teaching skills, teaching experimental psychology to undergraduates, were not valued. Hevner published 14 articles during these six years. While on a Carnegie Committee for the Study and Advancement of the Teaching of the Arts grant to study music appreciation testing at the University of Oregon in 1931, Hevner met her future husband, John Henry Mueller. She seemed to be attracted to him primarily because she and he argued about the nature of beauty in art. When John accepted a post as Associate Professor in Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Kate followed where she was the Dean of Women from 1937 to 1947, senior counselor for women from 1947 to 1949, and Associate Professor, and later Full Professor of Education from 1949 to her retirement in 1969 (Ollen, 2013). According to the author, Hevner served as the President of the Esthetics Division of the American Psychological Association, and was named one of the 70 women most qualified to serve as vice-president of the United State in 1959.
The Affective Character of Major and Minor Modes in Music
            Conducted in 1935, The Affective Character of Major and Minor Mode in Music, was a precursor to Hevner’s adjective circle. It utilized an adjective checklist. In this study, Hevner (1935) wanted to know: “(1) whether the historically affirmed characteristics of major and minor modes are apparent to listeners and (2) if they are, to what extent the recognition of these characteristics depends on training in music, on intelligence, or on the talent measured by the Seashore tests” (p. 103). Hevner identified several problems with research that had been done up to that point regarding major and minor modes and music perception. Because such research had used small melodies, taken out of context, Hevner believed “the stimuli cannot be regarded as music” (p. 105), were not musically expressive, and that music requires more than a single moment to be comprehended by listeners. She used a number of compositions for the study – written by Schumann, Rameau, Arensky, Bach, Beethoven, Durand, and Gluck – and arranged them for piano in both major and minor keys. This checklist (see figure 1) emerges in the next study (Hevner, 1936) as the adjective circle.


Figure 1: From Hevner’s (1935) adjective checklist – a precursor to the adjective circle
            As can be seen in the checklist, Hevner began categorizing the adjectives into groups. Hevner (1935) found that historically affirmed characteristics of major and minor were prevalent in the adjectives circled by participants. She also found that training, musical ability using the Seashore tests, and intelligence were influential in discriminating moods, but not essential.
Experimental Studies of the Elements of Expression in Music
Figure 2: Hevner’s (1936) adjective circle
            This study, Experimental Studies of the Elements of Expression in Music, conducted in 1936 seems to be Hevner’s first use of the adjective circle. In this study, she looks at three additional variables; melodic line, rhythmic motion, and harmony. She posits that many factors affect meaning in music: “the form and structure of the music itself, the attitude of the listeners, their previous experience, their training, talent and temperament, and their momentary mood and physiological condition” (Hevner, 1936, p. 247). With these wide-ranging factors affecting music meaning, Hevner began the article laying out methodological requirements for research into the psychology of music; the researcher must utilize real music rather than musical elements out of context, the researcher must be aware of the cumulative effect – “to choose those elements which involve successive moments of time, such as rhythm and tempo, rather than intervals and chords” (p. 248), and to look at the movement of chords instead of triads in isolation.
            Following the research method utilized in Hevner’s (1935) previous study, Hevner (1936) had 66 participants check adjectives appropriate to the music as they listened (see figure 2). Using these first 66 participants, she formulated the adjective circle among these participants’ answers and then by consulting the participants’ understandings:
… it was a simple matter to tabulate all of the votes for one adjective… or for all the compositions which are alike in certain respects. Then, by comparing the numbers of votes for different adjectives, the meanings or affective characteristics of the compositions could be ascertained. (p. 249)
In contrast to the previous study in which she used piano arrangements, Hevner (1936) used Victor recordings for this next leg of the study: Debusy’s Reflection on the Water, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Scherzo, Paganini’s Etude in E Flat Major, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, and Wagner’s Lohengrin, Prelude to Act III. In this leg of the study there were 52 participants. Each participants checked as many or few of the adjectives as seemed appropriate – most participants checked six or more.
Hevner (1936) felt this part of the study was successful in distinguishing affective moods within the entire compositions, and thought “the same process has been applied also to the study of the affective character of certain elements of musical structure” (p. 254). She isolated elements between two participant groups, arranging each piece so that only one element is different. The same pianist performed all compositions. Within six compositions, Hevner changed the rhythm, and within nine she changed the melodic rising and falling. She found that major and minor were the most significant with major “strongly associated with happiness, gayety, playfulness and sprightliness, and the minor with sadness, and with sentimental yearnings, tender effects” (p. 264). Many other adjectives on the circle were expressed equally well in multiple modes. She also found that melody is less important than harmony to affect answers on the adjective circle. Certain rhythms can also make compositions more serious, dignified, and vigorous.
The Affective Value of Pitch and Tempo in Music
            In The Affective Value of Pitch and Tempo in Music, Hevner (1937a) continued her exploration of musical moods through the adjective circle. The fast tempos she studied had means of 102, 104, 112, and 152 beats per minute, while the slow tempos had 63, 72, and 80. She found that tempo plays a great role than pitch. “It yields majorities on all groups and its effects are clear-cut and consistent. Modality is perhaps second in important, although its general usefulness is not comparable to that of either pitch or rhythm since its effects are severely limited to four of the adjective groups: happy, sad, humorous and sentimental” (p. 625).
An Experimental Study of the Affective Value of Sound in Poetry
            Finally, Hevner (1937b) used the adjective circle to describe emotion in poetry. She thought that poetry research had looked at three main areas; poetic image/idea, poetic sounds/formal elements in poetry, and relationships between formal sounds and thinking. “There must be some sort of system, some orderly scheme for using sounds to enhance meaning with such glorious effectiveness” (p. 420). The purpose for this study was to examine the grammar of the poetic language, and to find an fundamental system which is commonly understood. The elements of poetry Hevner isolated within four “nonsense” (p. 434) poems were; vowel sounds, consonant sounds, meter, and voice inflection. She recorded the poems and had participants listen to phonographs and circle adjectives on the adjective circle. The adjective circle for this study was the same circle used in her previous research. She found that meter had the most effect upon meaning with consonant sounds, voice inflection, and vowel sounds being consecutively less effective.
Conclusions
            My interest in studying Kate Hevner arose from my dual interest in emotions in music and my interest in female music educators in our gendered history. Her line of research was quantitative-experimental, but seemed to respect the holistic nature of music as a social activity more than other researchers of that era. For instance, while Seashore’s examinations were isolated sounds which ultimately showed more benefit in identifying people with potential to learn Morse code than music, Hevner seemed aware of music’s nature as a complete activity that is too often examined out of context.  In a time when isolating elements was the popular research paradigm, she made an effort to understand emotions to music in context while retaining her quantitative research beliefs. Though this study focused on the adjective circle, future studies might look at her writings on musical taste and music appreciation. She also wrote on women in education. Her studies were steeped in Western Art Music, and further research using the adjective circle to understand world music, jazz, or popular music might be interesting.

References
Hevner, K. (1934). Appreciation of music and tests for the appreciation of music. Studies in the Appreciation of Art, 4(6), 83-151.
Hevner, K. (1935). The affective character of major and minor modes in music. The American Journal of Psychology, 47(1), 103-118.
Hevner, K. (1936). Experimental studies of the elements of expression in music. The American Journal of Psychology, 48(2), 246-268.
Hevner, K. (1937a). The affective value of pitch and tempo in music. The American Journal of Psychology, 49(4), 621-630.
Hevner, K. (1937b). An experimental study of the affective value of sound in poetry. The American Journal of Psychology, 43(3), 419-434.
Kate Mueller papers (1999). Collection C170, Indiana University Archives. Retrieved March 16, 2013 from http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/findingaids/archives/InU-Ar-VAA2655.
Mueller, J. H. & Hevner, K. (1942). Trends in musical taste, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Publications.
Mueller, K. H. (1954). Educating women for a changing world, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Ollen, J. (2013). Kate Hevner Mueller (1898-1984), Ohio State University School of Music. Retrieved March 16, 2013 from http://www.musiccog.ohio-state.edu/Music829F/Biographies/Hevner.html

Monday, March 25, 2013

This morning I was preparing some material for my "Music in the Elementary Classroom" course. We are about to begin our music and movement unit and I wanted to re-read the articles I assign to my students. I came across the name of Susanne Langer and like Dan, I thought to myself, "Why have I never heard of this person before?"

I began searching through WVU libraries online to learn more. According to the Encyclopedia of Religion (Lyon, 2005), Langer was an influential German-American philosopher who wrote on symbols, myth, and aesthetic experiences.

The article I was preparing in class mentioned Langer in relation to her 1953 book, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art. Her work suggests that symbolic forms can manifest in more ways than in words, such as art pieces and dance. Language is limited by form and cannot express the full extent of emotion as well as music and paintings can (Lyon, 2005).

Like many women philosophers of the mid-twentieth century, Langer faced resistance and her work was and remains under-recognized (Lyon, 2005).

Although I do not have much to say about Langer today, I look forward to reading more about her and understanding the implications of her ideas for music education. This was an unexpected and happy exploration today!

References
Lyon, A. (2005). Susanne Langer. In L. Jones (Ed.)., Encyclopedia of Religion. (3rd ed., Vol. 8., pp. 5300-5301). Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.   

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Satis Coleman 1, Dan Shevock

Satis Coleman... some thoughts...

 I initially became interested in Satis Coleman when I saw a reference to her in something I was reading about improvisation. A jstor search led me to Volk's 1996 MEJ article on Coleman. I was intrigued. From what I have read--Volk's MEJ article, Southcott's (2009) the Seeking Attitude, and Coleman's own books--my interest and esteem in Coleman as an important music educator has only increased. This interest is connected in my love of improvisation, and my appreciation for the philosophy of John Dewey.

"Interest" is a central concept in Deweyan educational philosophy (Dewey, 1910). Continuity demands that educative experiences be rooted in children's interest, and Coleman's unique way of attending to student interest--taking students on field trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they looked at instruments from a variety of world cultures (Volk describes this as a precursor to "world music"), then returning to school so that students could build instruments and then perform on them--seems fresh and modern in 2013. This way of teaching seems outright radical for the 1920s. I cannot for the life of me imagine why Coleman's name isn't on the tip of every music educator's tongue.

One aspect of my own paper makes connections between Coleman's writings, which include improvisation, "primitive music for little primitives" and mother tongue, and similar ideas later made popular in American music education by music educators Carl Orff and Shin'ichi Suzuki. So my question is, why was Coleman's voice lost between the 1940s when she retired from the Lincoln Lab School, and the 1990s? Would her teachings have been more readily accepted if she were a man? As I read her, I am constantly stunned by the profundity of her writing, thinking, and philosophizing. A copy of the poster I presented at the Penn State Graduate Exhibition today is on my weebly page, http://danshevock.weebly.com/research.html. ...

Challenge: What other voices have been lost to our gendered music education history? ...

Dan Shevock
Ph.D. Student, Penn State
3/24/2013...

References

Coleman, S. N. (1922). Creative music for children: A plan of training based on the natural evolution of music including the making and playing of instruments. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Coleman, S. N. (1939). Your child’s music. New York, NY: Van Rees Press.

Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston, MA: D. C. Heath & Co. Publishers. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37423/37423-h/37423-h.htm. 

Southcott, J. (2009). The seeking attitude: Ideas that influenced Satis N. Coleman. Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, 31(1), 20-36.

Volk, T. M. (1996). Satis Coleman’s “Creative Music”: Hands-on music education for children was the goal of the innovative music educator Satis Coleman. Her legacy enriches today’s classrooms. Music Educators Journal. 82, 31-47. DOI: 10.2307/3398949.