Symphony Ravings

Let us now continue on the road of musical myths encountered in the college classroom setting. The title of this chapter should be just one word: SONG.

For my students every piece of music was a song. I use the past tense here because I am still hopeful and trusting that through my working with some 200 students through a semester of MUS101 they would learn that songs are pieces of music that are sung. That is different from a Beethoven composition titled Symphony which is played by 70 or more instruments that do not include guitars.

Here we get into a confusing situation for many of these students. They have never listened to any pieces of music that were not played on guitars. And there were drums. Usually just a few but they are not called drums. They are in the percussion section. Oh my! They have to learn foreign names.

And it gets more better (as one of them said to me). That group of instruments forms an orchestra and in an orchestra are instruments like they have never before seen.
The few students who are into jazz have seen a clarinet which they call knowingly by the name of "liocorice stick" but there are other "sticks" with names like bass clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon. And that is a whole new kettle of fish especially when later in the course we start talking that some of these woodwinds are played with only one reed and some others have to be played using two reeds. And the players need all the lung power they can muster so that even smoking cigarettes ia a no-no. As one student whispered to a neighbor: "They have no fun in life no more" which should have been grounds for shipping him off to English090.

But after a few sessions listening to selected compositions with commentaries slowly but surely the majority of students became more interested and knwledgeable. Before the end of the semester we all could tell the difference between a flute and a bassoon by the sounds they emanate. And there came a time when a couple of students sold their tickets to a big rock concert for half price and opted for going to a concert in downtown. I like happy endings. Don't you?

Alex H