1st Edition
Expanding the Canon Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom
Directly addressing the underrepresentation of Black composers in core music curricula, Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom aims to both demonstrate why diversification is badly needed and help faculty expand their teaching with practical, classroom-oriented lesson plans that focus on teaching music theory with music by Black composers.
This collection of 21 chapters is loosely arranged to resemble a typical music theory curriculum, with topics progressing from basic to advanced and moving from fundamentals, diatonic harmony, and chromatic harmony to form, popular music, and music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some chapters focus on segments of the traditional music theory sequence, while others consider a single style or composer. Contributors address both methods to incorporate the music of Black composers into familiar topics, and ways to rethink and expand the purview of the music theory curriculum. A foreword by Philip Ewell and an introductory narrative by Teresa L. Reed describing her experiences as an African American student of music set the volume in wider context.
Incorporating a wide range of examples by composers across classical, jazz, and popular genres, this book helps bring the rich and varied body of music by Black composers into the core of music theory pedagogy and offers a vital resource for all faculty teaching music theory and analysis.
Foreword
PHILIP EWELL
Introduction
MELISSA HOAG
1 Our Field at Its Best
TERESA L. REED
PART ONE: Fundamentals and Diatonic Harmony
2 Rethinking Music Fundamentals: Centering the Contributions of Black Musicians
UZEE BROWN JR.
3 Change from the Middle, Right from the Beginning: Strategies for Incorporating Black Composers in a Music Fundamentals Course
ROBIN ATTAS
4 Rhiannon Giddens and Francis “Frank” Johnson in the First-Year Theory Classroom
JAN MIYAKE
5 From Counterpoint to Small Forms: A Cross-Stylistic Approach to Centering Black Artists in the Theory Core
KRISTINA L. KNOWLES AND NICHOLAS J. SHEA
PART TWO: Chromaticism and Other Advanced Topics
6 Modal Mixture
MITCHELL OHRINER
7 “Elite Syncopations” and “Euphonic Sounds”: Scott Joplin in the Aural Skills Classroom
AMY FLEMING
8 Modulation
ALAN REESE
PART THREE: Form 97
9 A Jazz-Specific Lens: Methodological Diversity in the Music Theory Core
BEN GEYER
10 Of Simple Forms and Firsts: On Francis Johnson and Harry Burleigh
HORACE J. MAXILE, JR.
11 A Trio of Art Songs on Texts by Langston Hughes
MELISSA HOAG
12 Teaching Sonatas Beyond “Mostly Mozart”
AARON GRANT AND CATRINA KIM
PART FOUR: Popular Music
13 Expanding the Scope of Analysis in the Popular Music Classroom
ZACHARY ZINSER
14 Formal Structures and Narrative Design in Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid
CORA S. PALFY
15 Diving Deeper into Rhythm and Meter Through Drum Parts in Twenty-First-Century Pop
DAVID GEARY
16 Developing Contemporary Rhythm Skills Through Contemporary R&B
TREVOR DE CLERCQ
17 Structural Shifts and Identity in Music by Ester Rada
ROSA ABRAHAMS
PART FIVE: Twentieth-Century Music
18 Inclusivity and the “Perfect Teaching Piece” in the Undergraduate Post-Tonal Classroom
CARA STROUD
19 Dream Variations: An Analytical Exploration of Florence Price’s “My Dream”
LEIGH VANHANDEL
20 Teaching Twentieth-Century Stylistic Pluralism Through the Music of George Walker
OWEN BELCHER
21 Teaching Julia Perry’s Homunculus C.F.
KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD
Index
Biography
Melissa Hoag (she/her/hers) is Associate Professor of music theory at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where she has served as Coordinator of music theory since 2007. She has taught all levels of undergraduate and graduate music theory and aural skills, as well as courses on counterpoint, form, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century music. Her publications on counterpoint, pedagogy, and voice leading in Brahms have appeared in BACH, Music Theory Online, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Gamut, Dutch Journal of Music Theory, and The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy (ed. VanHandel). She serves as reviews editor for Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and is a Question Leader for the AP music theory exam. In addition to a PhD in music theory, she also holds a certificate in Diversity and Inclusion through Cornell University.
