 | I love to read and I love to research. Over the holiday vacation I took advantage of some extended downtime to do some reading in advance of participating in a digital bookclub for music teachers. We tasked ourselves with reading the first three chapters of a cornerstone text in the world of music education called Learning Sequences in Music, Skill, Content and Patterns: A Contemporary Music Learning Theory, by Dr. Edwin E. Gordon. Dr Gordon dedicated his life to researching how we learn music from the earliest days of infancy through adulthood and his findings have had a radical effect on his followers and their practice. In my next few posts I will attempt to summarize briefly each chapter that I read to help me to solidify my personal understanding of Dr. Gordon's work and perhaps deepen the understanding of how we learn music in those that live with, work with and love children. |
Chapter 1: AUDIATION
The bedrock of Dr. Gordon's theory is that, contrary to the talent theory, we all possess innate ability to be musical, albeit at different aptitudes. Our ability to reach our innate potential as musical beings lies in our exposure to and interactions with music from infancy, much as a young child learns to speak its mother tongue. It is through these many varied interactions with music that we begin to understand music's structures and syntax and develop the ability to engage in music with understanding. It is this foundational premise of Dr. Gordon's work that inspires me to dedicate myself to creating rich, playful and engaging musical experiences for young children.
| | "Audiating while listening to sound in music is much like simultaneous translation." | |
The first chapter of Dr. Gordon's book is full of wonderful analogies and gems of wisdom that draw frequent comparisons between language and music. "Sound itself is not music. Sound becomes music through audiation, when, as with language, we translate sounds in our mind and give them meaning." Dr. Gordon uses the term audiation to describe the particular way that we engage cognitively with music, that implies active, multi-faceted interaction with music. "Audiation is the process of assimilating and comprehending (not simply rehearsing) music momentarily heard performed or heard sometime in the past." Dr. Gordon sees the primary role of the music educator as nurturing musical cognition or audiation from a young age.
| Traditionally, music education relied heavily on rote learning, imitation and memorization. The notation on the page was seen as the music. But the essence of music is when one moves from notation to audiation. "The experience of audiation becomes magical, when compared to boredom and folly in memorization and imitation." (p. 6) Indeed Some of my favorite moments in the classroom are when I observe a student anticipating the end of a phrase or cadence, whether rhythmic or tonal, and notice their quiet delight when their prediction is confirmed. In the lower elementary music room this seems to happen most noticeably when we are engaged in movement activities. For me, these are the mini-successes that help me know that I must be doing at least something right! |
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