Week 14 (23 Apr 2003): Guest Lecture + Tempo Rubato

Notes by Yun-Ching Chen, Frances Kao, Andy Lee, Cindy Lee, Arpi Mardirossian, Sean Mo, Xumei Tan, Erdem Unal, and Shivani Yardi on

"Learning Theories Unique to Music" from Chap17: Learning theories as roots of current musical practice and research. by L.Taelte and R.Cutietta (2002). In R.Colwell and C.Richardson (eds.) The new handbook of research on music teaching and learning: A project of the Music Educators National Conference. NY: Oxford University Press, pp.286-298.

Yun-Ching CHEN

This article reviewed several significant researches in music learning. It first talked about Ruttenberg's definition in music learning. And upon to this research, Edwin Gordon's work on developing theory of music learning, Jeanne Bamberger's work on understanding how music intelligence develops, Gardner's work on musical intelligence theory, and Cutietta and Regelski's researches on praxis of music teaching.

Among these researches, this article talked a lot about Bamberger's research where happened to be one of our guest lecture. It seems her research on investigating musical knowledge by observing young children is really a remarkable work in the study of music learning.

I personally like the way this article laid out different ideas in music learning study. This really gives us the idea how people did and how people are going to do in this field of study.

Frances (Hui-Yun) KAO

This section summarizes the research focus and influence of several researchers in the field of music learning and perception. Here are some highlights of their research.

a.. Gordon: develops a theory of music learning.

b.. Bamberger: believes that there are different ways of representing musical knowledge, and they interact with each other in an ongoing multidimensional manner.

c.. Gardner: claims that music intelligence is not influenced by brain impairment.

d.. Gromko: also looks into the way and development of children's invented music notation.

e.. Cutietta: focuses on the categories used by children and adult when classifying music, and the features used to classify one piece of music into some category.

f.. Regelski: believes that children understand music from experience

Andy (Ming-Chang) LEE

This article is a summary for music learning theories in three decades. In the beginning, Ruttenberg gave music learning a definition: a process from sensation to perception, to cognition, to creativity. Then, Edwin Gordon proposed the different stages for music learning. He began his research from a search for a basic key word vocabulary of music. Gordon identified pitch and rhythmic pattern as the basic vocabulary of music. This was also part of his idea about "music thinking" and musician used music language for thinking. According to Gordon, children experienced three periods for music learning: acculturation, imitation, and assimilation.

Jeanne Bamberger's research was focused on observing the music reproducing behavior by children. For Jeanne, perception and cognition were intertwined and not discrete quantities, and the music learning process was based on the repetition of listening to the same music pieces and each time with different perception. In other word, it's a movement between reflection of experience and reflection on experience. Music learning was a generative and sensorimotor process and these various motion of perception became "felt paths". However, Jeanne didn't propose a theory for this music learning theory. She only gave description of the earliest stages of music cognition. She developed an interactive software that helped beginners to learn music from music chunks.

Howard Gardner worked on musical intelligence, that he believed human possessed 7 original intelligences and 3 additional intelligences. His research was focused on the case studies of brain-impaired subjects. In his viewpoint, human is different from animal with concrete operations and formal knowledge, and implicitly modal-vectoral sensitivity was in his hypothetical theory.

Gardner, Bamberger, and other researchers were involved in Gardner's Harvard Project Zero team. This project was to investigate the deveploment of children's musical symbolic intelligence. Davidson and Scripp worked on Bamberger's direction and suggested that children's invented musical notation moves progressively through five distinct types: pictorial, abstract patterning, rebus, text, and combination/elaboration. Gromko was not part of the Harvard Project Zero team, however, her research was derived from Bamberger's work. She concluded that musical learning was enhanced by sensorimotor experiences. Then Cutietta's research was on music categorization. He declared that music categorization was not based on basic music elements, like pitch, rhythm, timber, harmony, and form, but should be taken in holistic fashion. An interesting issue derived from his research was, how children deal with abstraction of classification without knowledge on basic musical elements.

Regelski's work was not like other researchers that focused on the verbal learning model; instead, he focused on the meaning making by children themselves.

Cindy (Chia-Ying) LEE

This paper reviewed researches of music learning derived from observing musical behaviors. Some scholars share same points of view, such as developmental music learning process, and the relation of sensorimotor experiences and music learning. Also humans percept music in a more holistic view, instead of recognizing each element of music. Therefore, the author proposed that different studies might be partial under a more comprehensive theory. But currently we can still benefit from these researches to enhance music education.

Arpi MARDIROSSIAN

This chapter focuses on reviewing several researchers' works on the topic of music learning. The works of five researchers are highlighted: Edwin Gordon, Jean Bamberger, Howard Gardner, Robert Cutietta, and Regelski.

Edwin Gordon's research began when he determined that individual students seem to begin the music learning process at different stages. His efforts have been to develop a theory of music learning unique to music education. He focuses his attention on aural rather than theoretical aspects of music. He has identified aural pitch and rhythmic patterns as the basic vocabulary of music. Another feature of his approach is the parallels he has drawn to language development. Gordon incorporates 'hearing without sounds the song in our heads'.

Jean Bamberger has studied musical behavior as it occurred in social context. She has focused on what children have learned about music through their own discovery, as well as rhythm patterns and tune building. She believes music learning to be developmental.

Howard Gardner has had an interest artistic expression and musical intelligence. He has conducted studies in which children involved in sensorimotor experiences moved their bodies to music and babbled songs and melodies. His definition of intelligence is 'a bio-psychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture.'

Robert Cutietta has claimed that the mind categorizes musical sounds in a nonelemental, more holistic fashion. He has suggested that the mind perceives and hears music differently from how music theorists presume it does and that in order to produce a change in mental structure, musical practice might need to adopt a nonelemental approach.

Regelski has also focused on observations of children involved in the music learning process. He has advocated that children must be encouraged to construct and create personal meaning from musical experiences in order for learning to occur.

Zhenyao (Sean) MO

This article (part of a book) is a survey on musical learning theories. For example, Prof. Jeanne Bamberger's work (Actually we are quite familiar with her work, for she just did and presentation for us), Howard Gardner's work, and Gromko's work. All of them developed their theory by observing the music learning activities. They believe that human language system has nothing to do here. So most of them developed their own symbol systems to record music and thus learn music.

It's a nice survey, organized by researchers, went through one by one, and also different opinions on their work.

Xumei TAN

This section review the study and theory about music learning.

Based on Ruttenberg(1994)'s definition of music learning, music learning in this section is described as moving from sensation to perception to cognition, including a change in mental structure. Five specific researchers are highlighted. Edwin Gordon identified aural pitch and rhythmic patterns as the basic vocabulary of music. And he draw parallel to language development.

The second researcher is Jeanne Bamberger who gave us a lecture several weeks ago. She describe the children's inclination to hear explain and notate rymthm and pitch pattern figurally or formally. She describes the earliest stages of what summarily tends to be referred to as music cognition.

The third researcher is Howard Gardner. He focuses on musical intelligence and the explaination of how individuals learn music. Like Bamberger, his theory is developmental.

Gromko fucuses on an emerging musical intelligence in young children. Her hypotheses were derived from both Gardner's and Bamberger's investigations in the theory and development of musical intellegence. She believes in studying children in a social experiential context.

The last researcher is Cutietta who gave us the lecture. He suggests that the mind per ceives and hears music differently from how music theorists presume it does and that in order to produce a change in mental structure, musical practice might need to adopt a nonelemental approach. His research focus on the nature of categories used by children and adults when classifying music. There are a lot of researchers working based on Cutietta's research, focusing on categories.

It is important to continue researching the creation of a learning theory unique to music. The prrfession is mutifaced enough to need a variety of diverse theories to explain different phenomena.

Erdem UNAL

This paper makes historical review of works by scholors whose research focuses on music learning education and perception of human beings. These researchers include Ruttenberg, Gordon, Bamberger, Gardner, Cutietta, Gromko and Regelski.

We are familiar with Bamberger's work that she believes musical knowledge is a process of human beings that focuses on intuition. She observed children varrying on age and claimed that the intuition is already existing and this needs to be figured out before engaging in musical education. Also Gromko's work is about children's invention of musical notation and they share the same percpective. Moreover, specifically Regelski's work is also talking about msic understanding with respect to experience and I guess it is relevant to intuition of children that changes by age...

Cutietta claims the perception of music and the actual interpretation may be very different that creates a serious problem in musical education and learning.

Phillip WU

The article mentions some studies based on the observation of musical behaviors.

Ruttenberg (1994) defined music learning as an extended musical activity that is comprised of a progression of musical mental function that go from sensation to perception, to cognition, to creativity. Edwin Gordon began his research in the 1960s, and his research into a theory of music learning derives from a search for a basic bJeanne Bamberger focused her research about development of musical intelligence since 1970s, and based on the observation of primary school children, she believed that it was important to study musical behavior as it occurred in social context. Howard Gardner defined musical intelligence as skills in the performance, composition and appreciation of musical patterns, and he believes that humans possess varying degrees of seven bligences or possibly more additional intelligences. Cutietta suggests that the mind perceives and hears music differently from how music theorists presume it does and that in order to produce a change in mental structure, musical practice might need to adopt a non-elemental approach. And he carried out some experiments to study how humans learn to classify music and what the features we use to identify music.

Shivani YARDI

The paper summarises the various approaches adopted by several researchers in understanding music learning and perception based on experimental observations. Ruttenberg thought music learning to be a sequence of stages ranging from perception and finally resulting in creativity. Gordon thought the process was built on building and understanding music vocabulary. The musical knowlegde trigger the perceptual abilities that lend themselves to music cognition. Bamberger studied how children understood music and the tools they developed for their own learning. Gardner claims that varying degrees of inherent musical intelligence are responsible for music learning. Cutietta's study involved analysing how the mind categorizes musical sounds, thereby saying that the actual perception of music is different from what it is intended to be. This makes music teaching a challenging task.