Kansas Music Standard #5: The teacher of music has skills in listening to, analyzing, and describing music.

Knowledge

• The teacher knows technical and symbolic vocabulary of music.
• The teacher understands the organization of sound in musical forms.
• The teacher understands the common elements of music and their interaction through aural and visual analysis.

Performance

• The teacher identifies, through visual and aural analysis, composers and music representing diverse styles, periods, cultures, genres, and techniques of musical organization.
• The teacher describes compositional devices and techniques.
• The teacher demonstrates effective strategies for developing students’ growth through a variety of active musical experiences.

      Music is truly an aural art. This means that in order to fully understand, appreciate and teach one must be able to identify certain elements of music using only their sense of sound and then verbally describe it. Sound can sometimes be difficult to describe using words, but music teachers must be able to do so. This is important because many times students do not understand the elements of what they are listening to and need help from the teacher. These elements can include but are not limited to rhythm, tonality, form and style. It is crucial for a teacher to be able to verbalize musical ideas and elements in a clear and concise manner that students can understand. While at Kansas State, I have had the opportunity to thoroughly analyze several works of music, using the various techniques taught to me in my music theory and history classes. Another element that to this the idea of teaching students how to listen. Through my various music courses I have learned how to design lessons that encourage students to listen, organize and remember great works of music.

   

      Heiden paper: This paper serves as basic performance analysis of the Work Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano by Bernhard Heiden. This helps illustrate my ability to organize and verbalize my thoughts on music.

      Score analysis: This is a score analysis on “Chorale Prelude: Be Thou My Vision” by Jack Stamp. This illustrates my ability to interpret and research musical works suitable for instrumental ensembles. This is a skill set that I will use when preparing my scores and music for my ensembles.