Society for Music Theory

Developing Musical Intuitions: A Project-Based Introduction to Making and Understanding

Music
Review by: MICHAEL CHERLIN
Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Fall 2003), pp. 383-387
Published by: on behalf of the Society for Music Theory
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679-125.MTS.Reviews_pp375-402 8/28/03 2:26 PM Page 383

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inventive approaches toward developing musical notations

as well as the creative aspects of musical hearing—listening
as musical performance. Bamberger applies the principles
Jeanne Bamberger. Developing Musical Intuitions: A Project- derived from her research in her new book. To be sure, De-
Based Introduction to Making and Understanding Music. New veloping Musical Intuitions is yet another variation on the
York: Oxford University Press, 2000. rudiments theme, but one designed to provide alternatives to
some of the assumptions that have become normative in the
reviewed by michael cherlin field.

the materials

The text is designed to be used with interactive software,

Academe seems to have assigned the rudiments course as the as well as with a CD containing recorded musical examples.
standard place in which music theorists are expected to share The software, developed by Bamberger and Armando Her-
their expertise with students who are not music majors. If nandez, is no afterthought or appendage, but integral to the
the faculty is large enough to house specialists, the non- text, which cannot be effectively used without it. This in it-
major normally goes to musicologists (a.k.a. music histori- self has drawbacks as well as benefits. On the positive side,
ans) for lessons in music appreciation or music appreciation the software is fun to use; most students will feel comfort-
in the guise of music history. While musicologists may or able with the playful attitude of the text-software inter-
may not particularly enjoy their work with non-majors, at action, one that encourages creativity and a real sense of
the very least they do get to deal with musical literature. In exploration. On the down side, the interactive CD-ROM is
contrast, the non-major turns to theorists (or music educa- formatted for the Macintosh, so that PC users, such as my-
tion specialists) for instruction in notation, ear training, ba- self, are required to have access to a Mac in order to use the
sics of musical structure, and the like. In such settings, there text. My department was able to set up a Mac for me, but
is often little room for actual music. And let’s face it: note not everyone will have this option. One would hope that fu-
values and key signatures are hardly the stuff dreams are ture editions allow the book to be used with both platforms.
made of. So, theorists who teach non-majors are always in- A second area of potential problems is one that follows from
terested in ways to enliven the task, to make it pertinent to the quirkiness of individual computers as they interface with
real musical experience, and to provide a foundation for lis- the software. The CD-ROM allows the user to operate with
tening that lasts longer than the final exam. or without MIDI interface, by using QuickTimeTM, a fea-
Jeanne Bamberger’s work in the psychology of music, ture standard on recent Macs and which can be downloaded
done over the past several decades, should be familiar to by users (including those with PCs) who do not already have
most professional theorists. Her area of expertise is the de- it on their computers. On the Mac I used (without MIDI),
velopment of musical cognition in children. She has done rhythms were often funkier than the author intended, with
groundbreaking research on the ways that children develop strange, erratic halts and elisions along the way. Although I
musical intuitions and into the changes in musical percep- am no expert in computer programming, I suspect this is not
tion that accrue over time, gauging the role of both informal so much the fault of the programming as it is a fact of life in
experience and formal education. She has studied children’s this stage of computer interactive software. While pianos go

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384 music theory spectrum 25 (2003)

out of tune, computers suffer from far stranger modes of fore the keyboard is described, and only after that are they
technological dyspepsia. encouraged to realize musical examples on the keyboard in
One of the remarkable and potentially controversial fea- order to augment the work done in conjunction with the in-
tures of Bamberger’s interactive software and text is the sec- teractive software, which does not use a keyboard interface.
ondary place given to conventional notation. The software As with the introduction of conventional notation, learning
menus allow the student to choose among a number of nota- and using the keyboard remains set aside from the principal
tional options, which change depending upon the subject. work in the interactive environment of text and software. If
For example, the default notation for discussions of melody feasible, the best solution would be to run a piano lab con-
is a series of dots that show contour and duration by relative currently with the text. Failing that, realization on the piano
placement, higher for high pitches, more separated for is necessarily sidelined; for even with the best of intentions,
longer pitches. Among other choices, the student can also students without prior experience playing the piano will not
opt for a “piano roll” notation—dashes whose length and rel- be able to realize the musical examples. Of course, the side-
ative placement indicate contour and duration. Conventional lining of the piano (or keyboard of choice) is part of a much
notation, however, is not an option in the interactive soft- larger historical picture. Long past its heyday, the readers of
ware. While it is part of the curriculum, conventional nota- this journal do not need me to tell them that the centrality of
tion is first introduced only after the initial units of study are the keyboard for learning and performing music has been
completed, beginning on p. 86 of the text. And so, although waning for a long time now, at least since the introduction of
the student is eventually encouraged to notate exercises in recorded sound and radio transmissions. In recent decades,
conventional notation, it is never an option in the interactive digital technologies of sound production and sound manipu-
software, and conventional notation remains somewhat pe- lation have largely supplanted people-played instruments in
ripheral to the main musical tasks at hand as a result. Bam- many contexts of music making and music reception. And it
berger does not discuss this decision in the text, but it is a fair is within that context that the use of the computer as a peda-
conclusion that the choice to emphasize non-conventional gogical tool—by now, one that has become well established
notations results from her work with children. The nota- —seems natural enough; most students will certainly per-
tional options are designed to be intuitive and presumably to ceive it that way! By being able to manipulate sounds with-
compensate for some of the biases of conventional notation, out overcoming the difficulties of playing an instrument in
which, depending upon context, can obscure as well as reveal real time, students are able to concentrate on cognition, not
structural aspects such as motivic and phrase groupings. technique. But, then again, there is much to be said of that
More importantly, non-conventional notations can and often combination “of challenge and of love,” to use John Hollan-
have stimulated non-conventional musical thought. Yet con- der’s happy phrase, that one confronts in learning an instru-
ventional notation does have its obvious practical advan- ment. What is clear is that in either choice of pedagogical
tages. All in all, it would have been useful to have conven- tool, piano or computer, the subject matter is conditioned by
tional notation as an additional option in the interactive the technology itself. Neither the piano nor the computer is
software. (Of course, an instructor can always augment the a neutral instrument (although computers, still in their in-
text-software with exercises using conventional notation.) fancy, are extendible in ways that I cannot imagine), but each
The use of the traditional piano keyboard is handled in a encourages certain ways of thinking about melody, harmony,
similar way. Students are about halfway through the text be- timbre, and texture, and each can imply ideologies of sound

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production and cognition that lurk unstated behind the cur- Throughout the text, students are prompted to be aware
riculum. (Ear training in most conservatories and universi- of the process of coming to know: they are asked to keep
ties, for example, is clearly biased toward pianists.) a log to record changing perceptions, and are regularly
The musical examples within the interactive text and prompted to think about and record musical choices and
CD-ROM are primarily simple diatonic tunes such as “Oh their rationales.
Susanna,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Ode to Joy,” “My Each interactive environment comprises a number of
Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,” and the like. There are also “blocks”—melodic (pitch and rhythm), rhythmic, pitch, and/
some more adventurous surprises among the examples, some or harmonic depending on the topic—variable cursors that
based on listening assignments from the accompanying CD, allow the student to manipulate the blocks, and a “playroom”
but also including a number of randomly generated pitch where blocks can be variously combined, listened to, and
cells designed to encourage the student to think creatively analyzed.
about grouping. The accompanying CD complements the The first topic is melody, and the blocks are hierarchically
music within the interactive program. Used in conjunction divided into three strata: whole tunes, phrases, and (at the
with discussions within the text, the examples on the CD are smallest level) motives. Students learn to hear the con-
primarily from Western classical music, but also include stituents and their hierarchical relations by listening to the
recordings by John Philip Sousa, Bessie Smith, and Billie tunes as a whole, and then to their parts, first on the phrase
Holiday as well as excerpts of Indian classical music and level, then at the level of motives. The process is reversed in
music for Flamenco guitar. The classical music, derived from the playroom where motives are combined into phrases and
a fairly wide range of styles ranging from the from the late entire tunes. Once students have worked with a number of
Baroque to the twentieth century, provides a good introduc- precomposed tunes in this way, they are asked to construct
tion to art music and can easily be augmented by additional their own tunes out of precomposed motives, any of which
listening assigned by an instructor, or, better yet, pursued by can be modified in both pitch and rhythmic content. The
an interested student. level of individual pitches (identified as scale degrees or note
names) is available through one of the cursors, but hearing
the pedagogy tunes as being built out of motives and phrases rather than
individual notes is emphasized from the start. The first part
Toward the beginning of the introduction, Bamberger closes with a series of guided listenings based on selections
sets the relaxed, even playful tone that will be used through- on the accompanying CD. Here, students are guided toward
out the text. The overriding pedagogical philosophy is clearly hearing the same constituents—motive, phrase, whole—as
based on Bamberger’s research, which shows that to a great they comprise the recorded pieces.
extent our listening habits develop out of initial intuitions, The discussion of rhythm begins with a series of guided
intuitions that become modified over time through experience. listenings designed to exemplify different ways to approach
The creative process of listening is central and fundamental. the consistency or fluidity of musical pulse. Students then go
In listening to music, the sense we seem simply to find, we are in fact
on to build and explore metrical hierarchies comprising mea-
making. Sense making is not in the music alone, it is an active process sures, beats, and various subdivisions, using “rhythm bars”
—a kind of ongoing “conversation” with the listener, performer(s), and (vertical lines denoting attack points) for notation in con-
the piece as participants. (1) junction with a menu of percussion sounds that sonically

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386 music theory spectrum 25 (2003)

differentiate the rhythmic layers. In addition to the “rhythm The approach to modulation is well handled, introduced
bar” notation, students have the option to study pulses in through the symmetrical tetrachords of the major scale, and
terms of duration, where duration is signified by multiples of followed up with musical examples both in the interactive
some subdivision of the beat. For example, the equivalent to software and on the CD. Bamberger avoids any discussion of
4/4 time might be denoted by a hierarchy of durations in in- “tonicization” versus “modulation,” but instructors who want
crements of 2, 4, and 8, analogous to quarter notes, half to make the distinction can easily augment the text in this
notes and whole notes subdivided at the eighth-note level. respect. After exploring a number of basic modulations, stu-
At this point, conventional rhythmic notation is avoided. dents are introduced to tonal instability—exemplified by the
The study of metrical hierarchies is followed by returning to opening of Liszt’s Faust Symphony—and attenuated tonality
the CD for a series of guided listenings focused on the use of (the term “atonal” is avoided), nicely exemplified through the
meter in recorded examples. Only after the preliminary work Robert Helps song Gossamer Noons II.1 The third part of the
on rhythm has been concluded is “conventional rhythm no- text concludes with a return to conventional notation, and a
tation” (CRN) introduced and interrelated with the graphics highly condensed though fairly comprehensive introduction
students have already come to know. The introduction to to conventional scale degrees, enharmonic equivalents, inter-
CRN concludes with some comparisons between metrical vals, melodic and harmonic inversion, and chromaticism, as
groupings and figural groupings, a topic that will be notably well as an introduction to integer notation. Because this part
expanded on later in the text. The discussion of grouping, of the text is so condensed (only eleven pages altogether),
building upon the work with motives and phrases in the first most students will not be able to absorb all of the material
unit, nicely interrelates melody and meter, opening the way without substantial augmentation by the instructor, or re-
toward more sophisticated hearings. The study of rhythm course to another, more conventional secondary text.
continues with a series of topics of increasing sophistication: The ordering of topics—first intuitive notations, then
percussion accompaniments for simple tunes, rhythmic con- conventional notation; first melodies, then scales; first atten-
flict (exemplified by Stravinsky’s setting of a Lanner waltz tiveness to relative durations, then CRN—might have led
from Petrouchka, and by the conflict of duples and triplets in Bamberger to argue for “making theory out of music.” She
Mozart), shifting meters, and steady pulse without meter. reverses the procedure and names the fourth part of her text
Part 3 of the text is entitled Pitch Relations, and it is here “Making Music Out of Theory.” Once again following the
that we begin to explore melodies at the pitch level, learning principle of the hermeneutic circle, Bamberger begins the
to derive scales from melodic constituents. Bamberger has unit by returning to the initial topic of constructing melodies
effectively reversed the order most often used in the presen- out of motivic blocks, now adding new possibilities that fol-
tation of musical rudiments. Instead of building melodies low from all of the discussions to this point. A particularly
out of scales, the student here extrapolates scales out of interesting section is devoted to developing ideas about
melodies. Once the structure of major scales has been dis- “grouping boundaries,” a recurrent topic throughout the text.
cussed, the text moves on to the functions of scale degrees Given a rhythmic cell, which can be altered or left as is, stu-
beginning with the tonic and dominant, all of which leads dents map pitch onto rhythm. The text and interactive soft-
to broaching the topic of tonality, and to the exploration
of transposition—made vivid and easy (too easy?) by the 1 I found some mislabeling of musical examples in the CD; the content
software—key signatures and the circle of fifths, and an of Examples 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 are shifted into Examples 3.2, 3.3, and
introduction to modulation. 3.1 respectively.

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ware emphasize the multiple ways that an identical structure procedures of common-practice tonality. Most important, it
of attack points and durations can grouped perceptually by does what it sets out to do: to develop musical intuitions, and
assigning differing pitch structures. Once the mapping of to make thoughtful listening central to the process.
pitch onto rhythm is explored, the process is inverted, map-
ping rhythm onto pitch. And once again the student consid-
ers the variables in grouping that can be obtained. It is here
that Bamberger includes some randomly generated pitch
blocks, vividly demonstrating the ways in which rhythmic
organization affects our hearing of pitch relations.
The final part of the book begins with the study of basic
harmonic functions, the application of I, IV, and V chords in
diatonic settings. The student is encouraged to experiment
with these three chords, applying them to tunes like those
studied melodically at the outset. The aspects of formal de-
sign studied earlier are now complemented by discussions of
harmonic function, and the text prompts students to con-
sider various harmonic and melodic strategies for shaping
phrases and simple pieces. Once again, work with the
interactive software is complemented by guided listening
assignments.
The book concludes with an introduction to polyphony,
beginning with a discussion and exploration of simple rounds
(canons at the unison). The interactive program allows stu-
dents to control “wait times” as identical voices are piled up
and fanned out into polyphony, and they learn to construct
rounds by manipulating melodies in the playroom. Once the
principle has been explored and discussed, a series of guided
listenings applies it to examples of imitative counterpoint
found on the CD. The guided listenings end with examples
of fugues and a discussion of basic fugal procedures.
I come away from reading and working my way through
Developing Musical Intuitions much impressed by its overall
pedagogical arc. The gradual development of intuitions
about grouping, and the gradual implementation of more
and more sophisticated listenings, is achieved in an engag-
ing, playful environment. It is a book that will be accessible
to undergraduates at any college or university, and yet it goes
further than most rudiments texts in ranging beyond the

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