SED 4330 Article Review

Kim

Mathews
Music Teaching and Music Literacy
1. Bibliographic Information
Asmus, E. P., Jr. (spring 2016). Music Teaching and Music Literacy.
Journal of Music

Teacher Education.

2. Summary
The main statement that this article made is that, more than
ever, many music students cannot read music. While they perform at
acceptable levels, author Edward Asmus stated that it has been
noticed among collegiate music applicants their horrible reading skills,
a skill which is quintessential to succeeding in music. Music literacy
has, unfortunately, fallen to the wayside in school music programs.
While it is true that there are standards present within music, the main
driving forces behind a music program are the performances, both
competition based and none. Since many competitions are dropping
the requirement to sight-read as a judged factor, there is less emphasis
to work towards fluent sight-reading abilities. Additionally, teachers
find less time in school schedules to teach fundamentals during
concert preparation, which is another contributing factor to the rising
issues with music literacy. However, in our rising era of technology, we
have music that is a mouse click away. Asmus points out that for many
traditional band pieces, you can have instant access to several

different versions so in todays society, is there even still a need for

appropriate reading skills? For example, Asmus found that the jazz
piece Luna came up with 73 different recordings, and that Bachs Violin
Concerto in D Minor came up with 7 results. Despite the wonders of
technology, Asmus maintains yes; there still is a need for acceptable
reading skills in our schools music programs. If our programs wish to
operate to the effect that all students, whether they do or not, are
ready for a collegiate musical audition, we must reaffirm our
commitment to content rather than performances and reintroduce the
importance of sight-reading in the music classroom. Asmus calls for
action to higher-order thinking to promote a profession that can hold
its own and will be looked at more favorably by other content areas.
3. Reaction
I personally found myself agreeing with this article on a very
deep level. Being an active component of the music department here
at Eastern Illinois University, I know many poor and excellent readers.
It is surprising to think that there are music students who have
difficulty reading music. I understand that there is no standardized
curriculum for music, which presents challenges, but I still find the lack
of consistency worrisome. To further the issue, as programs are being
consolidated, music teachers find themselves burdened by more and
more until eventually, in some areas, there are music teachers
teaching the entire k-12 program for vocal and instrumental. This

consolidation presents more challenges as teachers are forced to

spread their abilities too thinly as opposed to applying their expertise
more evenly to fewer areas.
I have also found that, among musicians, vocalists seem to have
more trouble with musical literacy than instrumentalists do. For
vocalists, they train more by ear than perhaps instrumentalists do
which is possibly a contributing factor. It is easy to sing a melody to a
song without the music if youve heard the piece before, but it is more
difficult to play the melody on an instrument without music. For myself,
who is not a vocalist, I can sing rudimentary melodies and harmonies
with relative ease by ear, but it takes me longer to do the same on my
saxophone without music.
For instrumentalists and vocalists both, there is a need for more
musical literacy. In an ideal music program, I would have our concert
dates arranged based on the preparation level of the piece rather than
based on a time frame of fall, spring, and contests. That way, we would
have more time to focus on music literacy. That might be time taken
away from concert material preparation, but the time spent on such
fundamentals will be greatly invested when you arrive back at your
concert materials and students can apply what theyve learned about
musical literacy. When the energy is taken to master the basics, youll
often find the rest will fall into place with ease.