There are really too many things I\u2019ve learned over the semester to discuss in one blog-post. I think I\u2019ve developed as a writer by refining my thesis and argumentation style. I\u2019ve also become a better reader simply by necessity: I\u2019ve learned to parse long, dense readings for a thesis statement and other key points. However, both reading and writing are skills that I\u2019ve honed through my other coursework and are certainly not unique to this class. For me, the main takeaway that is unique to this course is learning to think like a musicologist.<\/p>\n
At first, I was certainly skeptical of musicology, especially during my anti-SJW phase. I thought musicology would reduce the music I held sacred to the political trends or the racial, gender or sexual identity of a musician. To me, the music I cherished had to transcend what I thought of as arbitrary categories and events.<\/p>\n
While Musicology 141 opened my mind from these narrow assumptions, Music 345 actually taught me that these modes of analysis can be incredibly useful in research. When I would read Herbie Hancock or Miles Davis\u2019s autobiography for fun, I did not realize this was analogous to primary source research on a particular composer. In other words, the research process we did for each paper is actually very applicable to my own personal studies of jazz musicians.<\/p>\n
Through our research on the papers I\u2019ve also learned to diversify the applications with which I mine for information. I had no idea that famous composers like Ravel and Debussy had written letters discussing their music to the public. What absolute gems of information! If only there was this information for Jazz musicians. The closest I could find was interviews on YouTube, and this probably made up 80% of my previous search. Now I know to look for other sources of information like dissertations on JSTOR, the library of congress, or any other database. While this may seem obvious in hindsight, at the time this was a revelation. I had been thinking like a musicologist the whole time, but I just didn\u2019t realize it.<\/p>\n
Aside from research, I\u2019ve also learned the value in analyzing music in conjunction with historical and cultural events. Our discussions of nationalism were particularly illuminating on this point. I had never considered that Nationalism in the 1920\u2019s could have such a profound impact on the stylistic choices of French composers. It simply didn\u2019t occur to me that groups like Les Six<\/em> were reactionary movements against the German influence of Wagner. This interplay between music and culture is of course also relevant to Jazz music. Perhaps this provides new insight into the frantic Bebop tempos of WWII or the free jazz movement during the civil rights era of the 60\u2019s.<\/p>\n Ultimately thinking like a musicologist has helped me realize that music and life are very interconnected. Music doesn\u2019t happen in a vacuum and neither does culture. So, it doesn\u2019t make sense to study them that way either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are really too many things I\u2019ve learned over the semester to discuss in one blog-post. I think I\u2019ve developed as a writer by refining my thesis and argumentation style. I\u2019ve also become a better reader simply by necessity: I\u2019ve learned to parse long, dense readings for a thesis statement and other key points. However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}