Using History to Teach Stylistic Playing

Great music is more than a combination of beautiful tone and good technique. It is also stylistically accurate. I help my students develop stylistic playing through the study of music history. Music of each of the eras of Western Art Music (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th/21st Century) was performed and composed differently because of the influence of each era’s contemporary society and visual art.

My students start studying music history in Suzuki Flute Book Five by answering questions that guide them in tracing the evolution of music through time and linking these changes to events and ideas in history. I choose this book to start because my students are typically in middle or high school at the time, making it possible for them to do independent research on the days between lessons. I also chose Book Five because its repertoire is from three of the four style periods: 

• Baroque: Rondeau, Sarabande, Bourree I and II from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suite in B Minor
• Classical: Movements II and III from Domenico Cimarosa’s Concerto for Two Flutes in G Major, G. 2077
• Romantic: Allegretto from Benjamin Godard’s Suite de Trois Morceaux and the Swiss Air Variations by Theobald Boehm

This article outlines the process we follow, which I hope will provide inspiration and a template for other teachers to use with their students.

Starting with the Bach and the Baroque era, my students answer some basic questions: What are the dates of the style period, the major historical events and figures, and how did people dress? What was the flute like during this time and what was the size and instrumentation of the orchestra? I also have students listen to period instruments and supplemental composers. 

To further their understanding of the specific piece they are studying, they answer some basic questions about its composer: When and where were they born, and when and where did they die? What did they look like? What were their primary jobs and who were their contemporary composers? What instruments did they play and what were their major works and genres? 

Finally, I ask students questions specific to the time period about topics that distinguish the style of that era. For example, while studying the Baroque era, students answer questions about the harpsichord and basso continuo.

Students eventually answer these questions or questions like them for each of the style periods and composers of the pieces in Book Five. Then they choose a supplemental piece composed during the 20th or 21st Century era piece, the only period not already represented.

Students primarily use internet resources to answer their research questions. Wikipedia and the International Music Score Library Project are good starting places. Google image search, YouTube, and Spotify can help students find examples of period dress, period instruments, and supplemental listening. 

Students share their new information with me at lessons and we process it together. I help them think critically about what they find on the internet and recommend additional resources. I provide musical context by identifying distinctive characteristics in the melody, harmony, form, texture, and timbre of each period’s music, and I point out ways in which the aspects reflect the events and values of the time. I also include composers that are women and people of color. We spend weeks and sometimes months gathering and discussing student research. Sometimes students want to go beyond the fundamentals and I’m happy to follow where students lead. 

I have included below lists of topics for each time period, some of which I always cover, and some of which I only cover when a student is very interested. There is no limit to how detailed we could get in a deep dive of music history; this is just a jumping-off point. 

Baroque Era

Vocabulary: suite, Baroque dances, definition of the titles/form of the movements, harpsichord, opera, Baroque orchestra, virtuosity

YouTube: Baroque dances, Bach’s Orchestral Suite in B Minor on period instruments, how a harpsichord works 

Societal Structure: divine right of kings, development of instrumental music after dominant vocal music of the Renaissance, sacred v. secular, Indigenous people and colonialism, motivation of artists and composers in terms of patronage, employment and education of musicians

Elements of Music: development of harmonic progression, use of vibrato, counterpoint, realized and figured bass, polyphony

Supplemental Composers: Anna Bon, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi

Supplemental Listening: any Bach and Handel Flute Sonata, any Telemann Fantasias for Solo Flute, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and/or a piccolo concerto, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas

Classical Era

Vocabulary: concerto, rondo, binary and ternary form, sonata-allegro form, paired winds, homophony, pianoforte, string quartet, symphony

YouTube: period instruments, how a piano works

Societal Structure: The Enlightenment, patronage, employment, American and French Revolutions, industrialization and centralization into cities, economic improvements, public concerts, the printing press

Elements of Music: symmetrical phrases, call and response/ antecedent and consequent, harmonic progressions found in music theory textbooks

Supplemental Composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-Georges

Supplemental Listening: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Flute Sonata in A Minor, H. 562, Gluck’s “Menuet and Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from* Orpheo ed Euridice*, Mozart’s concerti for flute or another instrument, symphonic works by Beethoven, Haydn, or Mozart 

Romantic Era

Vocabulary: romanticism, chromaticism, nationalism, exoticism, the Boehm system, program music

Societal Structure: modern idea of art and artist, program music, Paris Conservatory and concors 

Elements of Music: extremes in melody, harmony, and timbre

Supplemental Composers: Cécile Chaminade, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy, Antonín Dvořàk, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Pyotr Ilytich Tchaikovsky

Supplemental Listening: Chaminade’s Concertino pour Flûte, Op. 107, Franz Doppler’s Fantaisie Pastorale Hongroise, Op. 26, Gabriel Fauré’s Fantasie, Op. 79, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Felix Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, Dvořàk’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”

20th/ 21st Century

Vocabulary: avante-garde, non-traditional sonorities, impressionism, minimalism, serialism, atonalism, chance music, neoclassicism, neo-romanticism

YouTube: many different genres, especially non-traditional

Societal Structure: popular vs. art music, World Wars, the effect of technology on life and music, experimental instruments, the idea that any sound can be music, modern dance, and visual art

Elements of Music: aspects of musical style are extremely extreme or not, each aspect can be new or similar to style periods of the past

Supplemental Composers: Natalie Boulanger, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Valerie Coleman

Supplemental Listening: Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I, Charles Griffes’s Poem for Flute and Orchestra, A. 93, Katherine Hoover’s Kokopeli for Solo Flute, Edgard Varèse’s Density 21.5, Jacques Ibert’s Flute Concerto

Potential Pieces for Book Five Students: Robert Dick’s Lookout, Sun Showers, or Dorset Street; Paul Hindemith’s Acht Stücke für Flöte Allein, Ian Clarke’s Deep Blue, Maya (duet), Jennifer Higdon’s Song, Dona Gilliam and Mizzy McCaskill’s Petite Suite, Ernest Bloch’s Suite Modale, Valerie Coleman’s Legends for Flute

To wrap up this course of study, my students create a music history poster that visually represents the evolution of the aspects of music style. This poster can be as detailed as the student wishes with pictures, arrows, or any visuals that resonate with them. By the time they’re finished, my students understand that stylistic playing is important because it reflects the way music evolved and why it did so. 

Moving forward, we continue the practice of historical research as we review pieces and learn new ones. This leads students to change how they play their review pieces, using their newly found information to play trills, vibrato, rubato, ornaments, and dynamics differently. With new pieces, they begin considering expressive and stylistic decisions that didn’t exist for them before. They develop ownership of and autonomy in their music study, having become the active researchers and knowers of things.

I see great results from this process, most recently during the 2021 pandemic year with my student, Paige. She dove into the research, which was especially meaningful because of the time during which the project took place. She told me, “It was a good personal experience and grew my knowledge of the music world. I use this knowledge when I practice and put forth the composer’s intention generations after the composer has died.” I love that the composers and their pieces came alive to her in the process of learning about them. It was a fun project for both of us. 

The enthusiasm that came out of Paige’s study, the fostering of independence, and the stylistic playing that results are huge motivators for me to continue devoting the time necessary to this extended course. There are other important, further-reaching benefits too. A basic comprehension of European history is helpful in understanding world history, and this style of independent research lays the groundwork for future collegiate study. Ultimately though, I hope to cultivate in my students an interest in history itself through this unique approach. Divorced from grades and the formal school setting, we apply the lessons from history in a tangible, immediate way. I hope my students learn that history affects them directly by experiencing it personally and that music is only one thing we share with people from the past. They were real and alive, just like we are, and we are part of the same history.