Creating a Music Appreciation Course

Because my goal in creating a music appreciation course is to provide an overview of musical ideas to those introductory students who are new to music, I will want to skim the surface, to offer only those fundamental ideas that will hopefully encourage students to develop a greater musical interest.

This is to say that a music appreciation course isn't necessarily created for those students who are already knowledgeable about music, but is instead meant to whet the appetite of those who are simply curious.

Composer Biographies

Instead of requiring students to memorize some strict set of dates in my music appreciation course, I will want to focus on the rather fascinating personalities of composers.

Why did Franz Shubert continue to compose, for example, when this love for music only led him to die young in poverty-stricken circumstances?

What were the psychological reasons that Peter Tchaikovsky was driven to compose in connection to his human relationships?

An appreciation of music seems better served by human interest, and I will want to highlight this interest in my thumbnail sketches of composers.

Musical Periods

Because composers create in the context of what is or isn't musically acceptable, I will also want to reference musical periods in my music appreciation course.

For example, Mozart, being dependent on the economic arrangement of the 18th century aristocracy, couldn't achieve the same artistic independence as Beethoven.

After the French Revolution and the creation of the middle class, artists such as Beethoven could be recognized as more than a commodity of the noble court. Artists could be recognized as people.

In creating a music appreciation course, my discussion of musical periods would show that talent isn't necessarily enough to find success as a composer.

Musical periods have often been governed by political favoritism.

Musical Instruments

Finally, I will certainly not want to overlook the impact of musical instruments in creating my music appreciation course.

The presence of musical instruments seems to tie together the biographical and contextual aspects of music appreciation in ways that might not be obvious at first.

The capabilites of the 18th century piano were not as dramatically disposed to the "loud-soft" range of the 19th century piano. Mozart, for example, played on a piano where the hammer action struck only one piano wire per note.

Chopin, on the other hand, could compose the more dramatic sounds of 19th century Romanticism because his piano was designed to strike three piano wires, thus creating a more powerful sound.

As I would suggest in my music appreciation course, therefore, it is the actual capabilites and creation of new instruments which is also very significant in the self-expression of composers and the creation of musical periods.
In conclusion, because everyone has to start somewhere, I will want to create my music appreciation course with the goal of introducing newcomers to those basic ideas that will hopefully stimulate an interest in music.

Part of the appeal of music lies in being able to understand the personalities of the various composers and what encouraged them to write music in the world they lived in and on the instruments that were available at the time.