On Friday, one of my colleagues happened to mention a composer who got up every morning and harmonized a chorale, much like someone doing a crossword puzzle with their morning coffee. Every day he picked a different style in which to harmonize it. One day might be Bach; another, Schoenberg.
Over the weekend, I graded a particularly bad crop of homework assignments. I have a class of sophomores and we were in the midst of talking about secondary dominants. The assignment asked them to harmonize "Jesu, meine Freude." Not only were the secondary dominants used in very strange ways, but there were tonicized diminished chords, ii-i progressions at cadences, doubled leading tones all over the place, and the like.
I can't take every other class period to re-teach the rules of part writing to my students. But it seems to me that if we borrowed this composer's idea, that might be a good way to help the students practice their part writing.
So next week we're going to start theory morning calisthenics. At 8:00, we're going to meet at the coffee shop on campus--faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, etc.--and we're just going to work for 45 minutes on harmonizing a chorale for the day. No pressure, no grade--just something to get the theory juices flowing first thing in the morning. My plan is that everyone gets the same chorale and can work on as much as they are able using whatever vocabulary is available to them. I might suggest the graduate students and composition majors harmonize in the style of _____. Then we can compare notes (pardon the pun) after about 45 minutes and see who did what. I'm hoping that the less experienced will take advantage of the more experienced and look over our shoulders, ask for help, etc.
We're going to pilot this for two weeks, meeting Monday and Wednesday mornings (I doubt anyone--myself included--wants to get up early on Friday and do theory). We might add Tuesday-Thursday if it looks like there's a demand. I think I'll advertise it on Facebook, too, so that it looks cooler than it really is.
Our trumpet professor does 7:00am (I think) trumpet warm-ups every morning and they've been pretty successful, as far as I can tell. Hopefully the theory calisthenics will be equally as helpful.
Over the weekend, I graded a particularly bad crop of homework assignments. I have a class of sophomores and we were in the midst of talking about secondary dominants. The assignment asked them to harmonize "Jesu, meine Freude." Not only were the secondary dominants used in very strange ways, but there were tonicized diminished chords, ii-i progressions at cadences, doubled leading tones all over the place, and the like.
I can't take every other class period to re-teach the rules of part writing to my students. But it seems to me that if we borrowed this composer's idea, that might be a good way to help the students practice their part writing.
So next week we're going to start theory morning calisthenics. At 8:00, we're going to meet at the coffee shop on campus--faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, etc.--and we're just going to work for 45 minutes on harmonizing a chorale for the day. No pressure, no grade--just something to get the theory juices flowing first thing in the morning. My plan is that everyone gets the same chorale and can work on as much as they are able using whatever vocabulary is available to them. I might suggest the graduate students and composition majors harmonize in the style of _____. Then we can compare notes (pardon the pun) after about 45 minutes and see who did what. I'm hoping that the less experienced will take advantage of the more experienced and look over our shoulders, ask for help, etc.
We're going to pilot this for two weeks, meeting Monday and Wednesday mornings (I doubt anyone--myself included--wants to get up early on Friday and do theory). We might add Tuesday-Thursday if it looks like there's a demand. I think I'll advertise it on Facebook, too, so that it looks cooler than it really is.
Our trumpet professor does 7:00am (I think) trumpet warm-ups every morning and they've been pretty successful, as far as I can tell. Hopefully the theory calisthenics will be equally as helpful.