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Pedagogy Column
Contributions by:
John Covach (Professor of Music Theory, Eastman School of Music)
Jane Piper Clendinning (Professor of Music Theory, Florida State University)
Charles J. Smith (Associate Professor of Music Theory, University at Buffalo, SUNY)

Column Topic: “Undergraduate pedagogy texts are rife with musical examples from what we call the Common Practice Classical
Canon, examples unfamiliar to a surprising majority of students. Inarguably, there is importance and purposefulness in introducing
students to the classical repertoire, but do these excerpts serve as effective examples for teaching unfamiliar concepts if the music is
also entirely unfamiliar to the students’ ears?”

Editor’s Note: At the 2011 Society for Music Theory conference held this past fall in Minneapolis, a question similar to the one above
was posed to the society in the form of a light and lively debate. It was entitled, “The Great Theory Debate: Be It Re-
solved...Common-Practice Period Repertoire No Longer Speaks To Our Students; It’s Time To Fire A Cannon At The Canon.” In
light of this debate, Mosaic would like to continue the discussion and invite our readers to contribute to the conversation. To begin the
discussion, we’ve invited three contributors from the fields of popular music and pedagogy: Prof. John Covach, Professor of Music
Theory at Eastman School of Music, teaches and publishes in pop/rock music; Prof. Jane Piper Clendinning, Professor of Music
Theory at Florida State University, researches the application of music theory in world and popular music, music theory pedagogy,
and theory and analysis of recent twentieth-century music. She is the author of innumerable widely used textbooks; and Prof. Charles
Smith, Associate Professor of Music Theory and Coordinator of Music Theory at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, researches and
publishes on nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century chromaticism, Schenkerian analysis, philosophy of music, and history of
music theory. He is the author of Tonal Models of Music, an undergraduate theory text used at UB.

JOHN COVACH wouldn’t make much sense to slip in a Beethoven

Professor of Music and Chair, College Music Department example—though the comparison might be fascinat-
Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor ing. Similarly, I think of common-practice harmony
University of Rochester as being a kind of “hot harmonic licks of 18th- and
Professor of Theory, Eastman School of Music 19th-centuries.” My goal is to get students composing
progressions that could pass for authentic in that style.
I n my undergraduate theory teaching, I don’t think
of principles and practices of harmony and voice-
In order to build that skill, they need to get familiar
with how harmony works in real pieces from that
leading as existing apart from some collection of
repertory. You can’t teach jazz to students who don’t
actual pieces. If what we want to do is to teach
listen to it, and the same goes for common-practice
common-practice harmony, we ought to use pieces
music.
that are part of the 18th- and 19th-century repertoire as
Since much of what I work on concerns popular
representative examples; those are the works that the
music, it seems like I might support using pop tunes
theory generalizes across, so those are the best models.
to illustrate certain musical points in common-
When teaching traditional jazz improvisation,
practice harmony and voice-leading. But I don’t
most teachers use jazz examples (pieces and solo
support this idea very strongly, mostly because using
transcriptions) to illustrate pedagogical points. Many
pop examples assumes that harmony in that music
books on improv are in fact a collection of “hot licks”
works just as it does in common-practice music.
meant to give the student a sense of the traditional
Sometimes it does, and in such cases there’s not much
jazz style and musical vocabulary. In this context, it
Music Theory & Musicology Pedagogy Column | “Pedagogy and the Classical Canon”
of a problem. But in a significant number of cases,
pop harmony does not work as common-practice
harmony does. Frequently there is not the same level
of contrapuntal coordination in pop, while other
times the coordination works in very different ways.
Using such examples, unless one has taken the time to
develop knowledge of the pop repertory and skill in
analyzing it, can possibly do more harm than good
pedagogically. For those interested in using pop
examples, I would encourage developing a course in
the analysis of pop music. I often use classical exam-
ples in my pop analysis classes, but mostly to high-
light the differences as well as to caution students that
things that seem similar at first may turn out to be
different in important ways.
JANE PIPER CLENDINNING
Professor of Music Theory
Florida State University
C hoosing the musical examples for an under-
graduate textbook is both an exciting and
daunting task, and more time, effort, and careful
consideration goes into the process of selecting each
example than students (and most theory teachers)
could possibly realize. A primary task of the excerpts
from music literature in music theory textbooks is to
illustrate—in a clear, accurate, accessible, and appeal-
ing way—the concepts that students will learn in a
particular course of study. There are many other
considerations to be weighed as well, depending on
the authors’ (or publisher’s) goals for the textbook,
but in general, examples selected tend to reflect the
authors’ values. One pleasure for textbook authors
(and classroom teachers) is to include pieces that are
personal favorites—music that we have performed,
listen to repeatedly, and enjoy teaching—with the
hope of introducing students to music that will
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become a treasured part of their lives. With this goal
in mind, I strongly prefer using musical examples
from quality music literature as opposed to author-
constructed examples (except when showing a basic
voice-leading framework where simplification is the
primary concern), and to select entire works to
include in an anthology and revisit throughout the
course of study so that students come to know the
work well, though that approach requires more effort
because each anthology example must illustrate a
variety of concepts, it should return when students are
ready to learn more about it, and be interesting
enough to reward repeated listening and study. Other
values reflected in my choices of teaching examples
include representing a wide variety of styles of music:
I want students to be exposed to music for different
types of solo instruments, voice, and small and large
ensembles, including band music, orchestral pieces,
choral music, jazz standards, and other repertoire that
is often excluded or underrepresented in textbooks.
Many of my students are preparing to be band or
choral directors, and have played in those ensembles,
allowing for selection of familiar examples or ones
they need to know for future employment. Ideally,
each student will see music featuring his or her
instrument represented in the textbook, even instru-
ments like trombone, flute, harp, guitar, and percus-
sion. Though there are fewer pieces overall in the
standard repertoire composed by women or minority
composers, inclusion of pieces of high merit makes
students aware that such pieces exist and are worthy
of study. I also feel it is essential to include 20th and
21st century musics including popular music, and to
not restrict them to the post-Common Practice
section of the book, but to selectively introduce them
earlier, with tasks such as pitch identification and
intervals. If these materials are not included in the
freshman-sophomore theory sequence, then students
whose degrees does not include music theory beyond
Mosaic: Journal of Music Research 2 (2012)
the core two years will not have an opportunity learn
about them in a theory class. At a point in history
where there is a more diverse selection of music than
ever before available with a point and a click, there is
not a canon of works—including recent popular
music—that all or even most students entering our
classes can be counted upon to know, and there is not
much we can do to change that situation. We can
ensure that students leaving our classrooms have
developed a shared canon consisting of works they
have studied together—works chosen to reflect our
values as musicians and teachers and to pass on the
best of what we know to a new generation.
CHARLES J. SMITH
Associate Professor & Slee Chair of Music Theory
University at Buffalo, SUNY
I am grateful to the editors of Mosaic for the
opportunity to contribute to the discussion of this
issue—a topic that is probably best discussed at
considerable length. For the moment, I will simply
list some separate questions that must be answered if
we want to be able to think about the matter produc-
tively.
! What is meant by “entirely unfamiliar” in this
context—the tonal language as such, or specific
pieces?
! Don’t most native speakers of tonal music,
despite their inability to identify it accurately,
actually recognize a surprising amount of ca-
nonic music?
! Aren’t we really lamenting the fact that stu-
dents don’t care very much about canonic mu-
sic? Or, for that matter, about the “classical”
popular music of our youth?
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! If we decide to expand repertoire horizons to
include more popular music, which of the mul-
titude of current pop styles should we mine for
examples, and how do we set about exploring
these many unfamiliar realms?
! Given that no student listens to (or cares
about) all of these styles, aren’t we inevitably
going to use lots of music that is unfamiliar to
almost everybody?
! How do we deal with the legal difficulty, in
that most (if not all) of this music is still under
copyright?
! Even if a feasible recent-repertoire-based cur-
riculum could be devised and teachers can
manage to avoid invidious comparisons with
“the canon”, would students really appreciate
having such an incorportion of their favourite
music?
! Should curriculum ever be driven by student
preference? How do we reconcile any conflict
of such preferences with what we are convinced
students need to learn?
! What constitutes an effective example in a the-
ory curriculum—one that clearly complements
the theoretical viewpoint being taught, one
that exposes students to some excellent music,
or both?
! How will a theory teacher attempting to ex-
pand the theory curriculum into more popular
realms deal with the inability of standard tonal
theory to account convincingly for a lot of what
is found there?
! What kind of received tonal theory should we
be teaching to today’s students? Doesn’t the in-
vitation to expand the repertoire for theory
teaching provide us with an excellent oppor-
Music Theory & Musicology Pedagogy Column | “Pedagogy and the Classical Canon”
tunity to critique and revise the theory that in-
forms our teaching?
! What sense does it make for example-selection
to be based only on familiarity (i.e. presumably
on global stylistic constraints)? Isn’t musical
quality a much better criterion for picking ex-
amples?
! Isn’t there, in any case, always a role for the
familiar in teaching theory, and also always a
role for the unfamiliar? Is it going to be practi-
cal, or even possible, to avoid either?
CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
John Covach received his B.Mus., M.Mus. and Ph.D.
degrees from the University of Michigan. He was a
Fulbright scholar in Vienna, Austria during 1987–88,
and has done post-doctoral work in philosophy under
Charles Bambach at the University of Texas-Dallas.
Professor Covach has taught at the Interlochen Arts
Academy, The University of North Texas College of
Music, and the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. His students have won a wide variety of
awards, and hold faculty positions at CUNY, the
Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the
University of Surrey, the University of Utah, among
others.
Among Professor Covach's published works are
articles on topics dealing with popular music, twelve-
tone music, and the philosophy and aesthetics of
music and a textbook, What's That Sound? An Intro-
duction to Rock Music. In addition, he co-edited
Understanding Rock (Oxford, 1997), American Rock
and the Classical Tradition (Harwood, 2000), and
Traditions, Institutions, and American Popular Music
(Harwood, 2000). Covach currently serves on the
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Editorial Board of the Cambridge University Press
journal, Twentieth Century Music, and is a General
Editor of Tracking Pop, a monograph series devoted
to topics in popular music to be published by the
University of Michigan Press.
Jane Piper Clendinning is Professor of Music Theory
at Florida State University where she teaches graduate
courses in music theory pedagogy, counterpoint,
music since World War II, and other twentieth-
century music topics, and teaches and supervises
Music Theory III and IV. She is the author of two,
textbooks The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis
and The Musician’s Guide to Aural Skills (both W. W.
Norton, 2005), which have been adopted by many
colleges and universities including FSU for their core
music theory curriculum.
Professor Clendinning’s current research interests
include music theory as applied to world and popular
music, music theory pedagogy, and theory and
analysis of recent twentieth-century music. She has
served in many leadership positions in regional,
national, and international music theory organizations,
including the editorial boards of the journals 20th
Century Music, Music Theory Online, and The Journal
of Music Theory Pedagogy. She is currently a member
of the Society for Music Theory’s Diversity Commit-
tee and is completing a term as Chair of the College
Board’s Test Development Committee for AP Music
Theory. She was the founding director of the Caw-
thon Hall Music Living-Learning Center.
Professor Clendinning received her Ph.D. and
M.Phil. degrees from Yale University as a Yale
University Fellow. She holds an M.M. degree from
North Texas State University and B.M. (music
theory) and B.S. (mathematics) degrees from Sam-
ford University. Prior to coming to The Florida State
University in 1990, Professor Clendinning taught at
Mosaic: Journal of Music Research 2 (2012)

the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford,

and at Yale.

Charles J. Smith is an Associate Professor of Music

Theory at the University at Buffalo, SUNY where he
also serves as the music theory coordinator. He is
presently completing a term as Chair of the Depart-
ment, a post he has held since 2006. Smith’s research
involves nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-
century chromaticism, Schenkerian analysis, philoso-
phy of music, and the history of music theory. He is a
specialist in the teaching of undergraduate theory, and
the author of the 3-volume harmony/counterpoint
text Tonal Models of Music, which is used at UB in the
undergraduate theory program.
Smith has served on the editorial boards of Music
Theory Spectrum and In Theory Only, of which he was
one of the founding editors. He has been a Visiting
Professor of Music Theory at both the Eastman
School of Music and the University of British Co-
lumbia and taught at The University of Connecticut
from 1978 to 1987. Smith received his Ph.D. in
Music Theory from The University of Michigan.

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