# Fighting the good fight (music during class breaks)



## josecamoessilva (Nov 25, 2011)

Hello all.

For eight years now I've been playing music during my class breaks, trying to surreptitiously change my students' tastes by exposing them to art music. (I teach decision science, not art or music.) Just for fun I blogged the list of composers for the course I'm currently teaching,


Gee, it's really hard to tell my favorite composer and period, right?

Cheers,

JCS

PS: without going to the extremes of Musoc.org, I like the "art" vs "pop" music distinction.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Are you detecting any result? I hope you are not referring to the music as 'art' music in the hearing of the students... .


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

I tried to attract others to classical music sometimes in the university, using my classic mp3s on my mobile. ... I was unsuccessful often 

I have minor successes to at least make few of my close friends to like some pieces. 
Other than that I made one of my cousins to like some of Dvorak and Beethoven's work ... My little Brother is also interested in Brahms Symphony No.1 and Mozart's Piano works


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

We had a substitute who taught at our school last year... a great teacher... who began playing classic jazz (Miles, Monk, Coletrane, Ellington) as well as classical music... even opera... during class. These are inner-city urban kids who pretty much know nothing about music beyond the latest music played by the urban stations. If they are lucky, they might know of M.C. Hammer, Michael Jackson, Prince, L.L. Cool-J, and Run-DMC as "old school" music from their mommas... and on rare occasion they might also know "real old school" music (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gay, etc...) from their grandparents. Amazingly, however, this woman was able to interest these children in this music that was completely foreign to them. A few even began to ask for Maria Callas by name!

Unfortunately... a great many of the music teachers I have come across over the years knew less about music beyond the "classic rock and pop" that they grew up with than this woman. They certainly would have had no idea who Maria Callas was.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> We had a substitute who taught at our school last year... a great teacher... who began playing classic jazz (Miles, Monk, Coletrane, Ellington) as well as classical music... even opera... during class. These are inner-city urban kids who pretty much know nothing about music beyond the latest music played by the urban stations. If they are lucky, they might know of M.C. Hammer, Michael Jackson, Prince, L.L. Cool-J, and Run-DMC as "old school" music from their mommas... and on rare occasion they might also know "real old school" music (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gay, etc...) from their grandparents. Amazingly, however, this woman was able to interest these children in this music that was completely foreign to them. A few even began to ask for Maria Callas by name!
> 
> *Unfortunately... a great many of the music teachers I have come across over the years knew less about music beyond the "classic rock and pop" that they grew up with than this woman. They certainly would have had no idea who Maria Callas was.*


Wow, that's amazing and terrible. But I'd bet that in the coming budget wars, music education takes a big hit, and we might look back on this as the good ol' days.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

josecamoessilva said:


> I like the "art" vs "pop" music distinction.


academic music would be much better. A distinction like this is one of the reason for many people to hate classical music. It's an old, useless distinction that reminds of something like good Ingres vs bad Delacroix. Art is not in the genre, and there were classical music made for commissions and great "pop" music made for the sake of music without commercial reasons.


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## Toddlertoddy (Sep 17, 2011)

josecamoessilva said:


> PS: without going to the extremes of Musoc.org, I like the "art" vs "pop" music distinction.


I hate it because it makes classical music sound elitist and pretentious, making pop-music lovers hate classical-music lovers even more because they think we think that our music is better than theirs.


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

Toddlertoddy said:


> I hate it because it makes classical music sound elitist and pretentious, making pop-music lovers hate classical-music lovers even more because they think we think that our music is better than theirs.


But our music _is_ better than theirs...


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## josecamoessilva (Nov 25, 2011)

@ Hilltroll72: No, I never mention the break music at all; it just plays during the breaks. My hope is that by exposing the students to art music they will become interested or at least recognize it as familiar when they hear it sometime later, perhaps in a store or on a movie.

My philosophy is to bring art into the class as the discussion case, as long as it doesn't interfere with the learning objective. I don't overdo it: we discuss Yuja Wang once, as a marketing problem, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco once, as a networks problem. (These are business classes, so some of my students end up in positions where they can support the arts with PR money.) Some of my colleagues try to be "hip and with it," not noticing how pathetic/creepy a business professor in his fifties talking about hip-hop and club-hopping sounds. 

Regarding the "art" designation, I believe we need some way to refer to one millenium of music that goes from Adémar de Chabannes to composers working on their magnum opus today and to contrast it to music that is only heard for the six months that it's "cool," pop.

I find it selectively reductive to bundle one millenium of music under any one designation ("classical," as if it weren't a period within art music) while at the same time making a big deal of the difference between drum-and-bass-line-supported Sprechstimme from the West Coast of the United States and drum-and-bass-line-supported Sprechstimme from the East Coast of the United States -- like retailers and pop music audiences do.

Art is different from, not necessarily better than, pop. (That's a matter of taste and de gustibus non est disputandum.) But there's something in Hildegard von Bingen's O Jerusalem Sequentia that makes it listenable almost 900 years after it was written, while few pop tunes of my youth (Bee Gees, anyone?) are still heard except for nostalgia by the same people who listened to them when they were "cool."

And that's worth noticing and noting.

Cheers,
J

PS: the two most recent sessions were an all-Bach program: Angela Hewitt playing the Harpsichord concertos and Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations (the late-life Glenn Gould recording; seemed more appropriate for the classes); in all, eight impressions of Bach on the students.


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

this is great idea.

you could try playing some music from star trek, harry potter, mass effect, halo or final fantasy. mix it up with the other eras too.


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