Broomhead Article

Broomhead, P. (2005). Shaping expressive performance: a problem-solving approach. Music Educators Journal, 91(5), 63-67.

The music teacher assumed that students were learning from his but they actually were depending on his. He would give them a phrase from a well-known folk song; allowing them thirty seconds or so to decide how to shape the phrase, and then have the entire ensemble sing the phrase with no direction, coaching, or conducting from his.

They were using speech inflection as a basis for their phrase shaping, which involves a complex interweaving of volume, intensity, tempo, pitch, and even color. He thought He could see that these eighth graders apparently possessed a common understanding of speech inflection that enabled them to make musical phrase-shaping decisions, but also to agree, yield to each other, or both. He also assumed that they had developed an appropriate collective interpretation despite the absence of a director. While He was impressed with the uniformity of their phrase shaping, He noticed that it did not happen naturally during regular rehearsal--only during the phrase-shaping lessons

As high school students, these same students were given the opportunity to select and prepare a song to perform with no help from the conductor. He was surprised that the performance was disheartening. After all the year of training, the students sang with no noticeable phrase shaping. They demonstrated no ability to do so.

The strategy he was using allowed his-the conductor- to be expressive and the students followed his lead. They had been carefully watching an expressive conductor and skilled interpreter of music for a long time. They had become excellent followers, but not artists. He may have unwittingly nurtured expressive dependence more than expressive independence.

The focus then became on student learning. The theory of constructivism began to play an important role. While there are many different emphases within constructivism, one theme seems to prevail: students do not simply absorb conceptual knowledge; they actively construct it by combining and reorganizing preexisting bodies of knowledge. This challenges the behaviorist notion that conceptual learning takes place automatically as instructors break concepts down into smaller components and lead students through the, right sequence of activities, but it is far too passive on the part of the learner