Newly Compiled Music Pedagogy

Author: Zhu Yongbei, Wang Haibei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: During the course of our research, we deeply felt that the reform of the curriculum structure system should be an important carrier for educational and teaching reform. Only when the curriculum structure system is reasonable and the settings of each course and its teaching materials align with the requirements of the basic educational philosophy and training objectives can we cultivate well-rounded, innovative music teachers for primary and secondary schools and other educational institutions. Therefore, all members of the research team unanimously agreed to organize the writing of the "Undergraduate Music Education Series for New Century Normal Universities." We are determined to leverage collective strengths and work together to improve the quality of the textbooks.
The selection principles for the 10 textbooks in this series are as follows:
1. To adapt to the implementation of the "Full-Time Compulsory Music Curriculum Standards for Primary and Secondary Schools (Experimental Edition)," textbooks that were previously not included or covered insufficiently should be prioritized for writing. For example:
- If "World Folk Music" is not offered, it would be difficult to achieve "understanding multiculturalism";
- If "Computer Music" is not offered, students would not be able to use computers for musical composition or create corresponding teaching materials;
- To guide students in correctly understanding and analyzing popular music, "Popular Music in China and Abroad" must be offered;
- To enable young students to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the forms, characteristics, and comprehensive nature of traditional Chinese music, as well as the traditional music of various ethnic groups and regions, "Traditional Chinese Music" must be offered;
- To implement the principle of interdisciplinary integration, music majors must not only master knowledge and skills in music aesthetics and performance but also acquire knowledge and skills in dance and theater performance. Therefore, "Dance and Theater Performance" must be offered;
- To help music education majors understand the nature, status, significance of their discipline, as well as the role and function of basic music education in music education, "Musicology and Basic Music Education" must be offered.
However, these courses and their content were either missing or insufficiently comprehensive in the past. Therefore, we organized the writing of textbooks for these 6 courses to meet the teaching needs of undergraduate students in music education at normal universities.
2. Some previous textbooks overly emphasized their own systems and lacked practicality, failing to meet the actual needs of undergraduate students in music education at normal universities. This time, we adopted an integrated approach, combining certain related courses into one, allowing them to complement and enhance each other, and applying knowledge in practice. For example:
- Combining the original "Harmony," "Introduction to Counterpoint," "Orchestration," and "Analysis of Musical Forms" into "Polyphonic Music Composition and Analysis" organically integrates 4 courses;
- Merging "Choral Music" and "Conducting" into "Choral Music and Conducting" enables students to focus on both the choir and the conductor while understanding and mastering conducting techniques. Conversely, they can also interpret choral music from the perspective of conducting and listen to the relationships between different voice parts.
3. We advocate understanding certain course content from new perspectives to adapt to the implementation of the new curriculum standards. For example:
- "Fundamentals of Music Theory" not only recognizes music theory from the perspective of basic musical knowledge but also understands it from the cultural perspective and its relationship to real life;
- "Band Arrangement and Training" aims to prepare future music educators in primary and secondary schools to be both composers and arrangers of band music and organizers and trainers of bands.
We hope this can serve as a starting point for the appearance of the second and third batches of textbooks. At the same time, we sincerely hope that (teachers and students) will continuously identify problems and propose suggestions for revisions and supplements while using these textbooks, in order to continuously improve all the textbooks in this series.