—Group Presentation Guidelines—

Background

Rooted in the educational philosophy that learners retain best when they have to know it well enough to teach it, I am again asking you to do group presentations for this course. Six times during the semester, you will teach the class about a specific work from our Norton score anthologies. You all have the right to expect that the information your teachers provide is accurate, so I will carefully follow your presentations while you are presenting. You can expect the format to be somewhat interactive. There are times I might jump in to add a comment amplifying your point, or to ask a clarifying question if I'm not sure what you meant, or (hopefully never!) to provide correct information when you are way off base. The best way to avoid that last possibility is to meet with me a day or two before your presentation to ask questions and run through the important points you plan to make.

Here’s how it will work. At the beginning of the semester, you will join with 2 or 3 other students to form a group, and I will assign you a group number. Your group will give a total of six presentations over the course of the semester, one per Encounter, each about two weeks apart. I have organized the presentation schedule so that every group will do a presentation on at least one orchestral work, one solo or chamber work, one film score, one opera, and one song or other opera. The assigned works for your group presentations can be found both in the Course Schedule and in each individual Encounter. General requirements for your presentations are listed below; specific requirements can be found in each Encounter. To successfully complete your presentations, you will need to constantly refer both to this webpage and to the Encounter.

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Presentation Format

For every Encounter, your group will be assigned a specific work from the Norton Anthology of Western Music (NAWM) (or a film score for Encounter 5). Your group will give a Powerpoint presentation that begins with 10 minutes of talk about your assigned work and ends with an audio or video recording. Ideally, you will start with an overview of the entire work and then provide detailed analysis of your NAWM score. To help you focus on historical background, social context, the form, and important stylistic features, each Encounter will provide a series of general questions appropriate to the era (Classic, Romantic, or 20th Century). To help you focus on unique features of the music, each Encounter will also ask specific questions about your assigned work. Group members will take turns speaking, so each group must decide who is responsible for which of the general and specific questions described above. Use the notes that follow each NAWM score to help you decide what is most important to talk about.

You will always be asked to do a close analysis of your NAWM score. To that end, your presentations must include an analytical chart that lays out the form of your work. Models for these charts can be found in the Norton Anthology of Western Music, Vol. 2, on pp. 161, 216, 218, 219, 331, and 460, among others. (If NAWM doesn’t provide a chart, make one of your own incorporating the information NAWM provides at the end of the score.) It is also crucial that you include brief score excerpts whenever you talk about important themes, phrases, sections, and so on. You can take a photo of passages from your NAWM score or download a score from the IMSLP website and grab a clip from that. The class needs to see what you are talking about; musical analysis can never be just words! Playing short clips from these passages is also extremely helpful.

Your NAWM anthology also includes original text and English translation for each work with words, whether those works are operas, Lieder, oratorios, or whatever. In each of these works, the words are central to the expressive heart of the music. Your analysis for these works must reflect on the ways the music expresses the meaning of the words.

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What to turn in

Each of you will turn in the following:

1. a one-page outline of your presentation notes
2. your own bibliography in MLA format
   • individual bibliographies only, no group bibliographies!

One designated group member will email me the Powerpoint document on the day of the presentation.

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What to include in your bibliography

1. an article from the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Oxford/Grove Music Online)
• you can include more than one Oxford online article, but only one will count towards your eight sources
2. relevant materials from the Readings list for that Encounter
3. a period history (a comprehensive book that tells the history of music in a particular era)
4. a print biography on your composer
• this must be a book devoted entirely to the life and music of your composer, not a biographical dictionary that includes biographies for multiple composers
• in most biographies, roughly half of the book is devoted to description of the composer’s music, with frequent analysis of specific works
5. a scholarly journal article on your topic
6. books/ebooks that deal specifically with your topic

Note: Web pages will not be accepted unless they include information of significant scholarly importance that cannot be found elsewhere. Please also avoid encyclopedia and dictionary articles.

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Am I using the right words?

In your presentations, whether you are describing overall style features or doing a detailed analysis, you must constantly talk about specific elements of music. When you do, it is important to use the right words in each category. For instance, there is really no such thing as “rhythmic texture” or “colorful dynamics.” There might be rhythmic elements in the texture, but you need to talk about aspects of rhythm to identify those - they don’t define the texture type in that passage.

The list below provides a resource you can use to make sure you are on the right track. These are not categories you must cover in every presentation, since most works will focus on only a few of these. Nonetheless, when you decide you need to talk about “melody” or “harmony” or “form” as they relate to your work, here are some things to consider.

• Melody—high or low? moves by step or leap? wide or narrow range? melodic shape and contour? regular or uneven phrase lengths? how are phrases grouped?
• Texture—how many things going on simultaneously? monophonic? polyphonic (with or without imitation?)? homophonic (homorhythmic or melody & accompaniment?)?
• Rhythm—clear beat or not? meter? tempo? rhythmic patterns? syncopation? how does time pass?
• Color—specific instrumental or vocal colors? high, medium, or low register? interesting color combinations? overall color? articulation (legato, staccato, etc.)? attack, sustain, and decay characteristics?
• Harmony—diatonic or chromatic? tonal centers? scale types? stable or unstable? simple (triads) or complex chords? consonant or dissonant? use of modulations or tonicizations?
• Dynamics—loud or soft? accents? sudden or gradual changes?
• Form—repetition? contrast? return? variation? overall shape? specific forms?
• Words—prose? poetry? strophic? modified strophic? through-composed? aria? recitative? chorus? vocal style? text depiction? text expression? what musical elements are used to express the words?

To guide your research:

Library Resources Page for History & Literature II

Email: markh@elmhurst.edu