When teaching basic music theory, I use a carefully curated listening list to provide students with an idea of some of the major names and trends in 20th and 21st century music in the Western art music tradition while also prioritizing inclusivity.
I have music playing as students come into the classroom, and we spend the first five or so minutes contextualizing it and discussing what we heard. Developing Big Ears. This isn't a big time investment per class, but lets us see ideas evolve over the course of the semester.
Students respond to listening assignments on Canvas, so they can see how others responded to the music and, if desired, try on another set of ears for a re-listen/re-hearing.
So here goes: this is the listening list for the first of a two-semester music theory track I designed and taught at Georgetown University for three years. While not comprehensive, it gets names and ideas across to someone taking just one music class. I revise it every time I teach, so consider this a snapshot rather than something definitive.
Week 1
Warmup:
Vivaldi Four Seasons (Autumn)
Assignment:
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring
Week 2
Warmup:
Stravinsky via Joffrey Ballet
Mahler 9
Assignment:
Beach's Gaelic Symphony
Week 3
Warmup:
Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensities
Lutyen's 5 Bagatelles
Assignment:
Webern Symphony Op 21
Schoenberg Quartet No. 2
Week 4
Warmup:
Bonds's Troubled Water
Crawford's String Quartet
Assignment:
Price's Symphony 1
Week 5
Warmup:
Brown's Twenty-Five Pages
Barkin's String Trio
Assignment:
Cage's Sonatas and Interludes
Week 6
Warmup:
Oliveros's Lear
Cage's 4'33" (performed by me)
Assignment:
Feldman's Rothko Chapel
Week 7
Warmup:
Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man
Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman
Assignment:
Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms
Week 8
Warmup:
Xenakis's Mesastatis
Assignment:
Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano
Week 9
Warmup:
Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
Gorecki's Symphony 3
Assignment:
Shosty's Symphony 5
Week 10
Warmup:
Stockhausen's Stimmung
Spiegel's Drums
Assignment:
Subotnick's Silver Apples
Eichelberger-Ivey's Cortege-For Charles Kent
Radigue's Adnos 1
Week 11
Warmup:
Anderson's Oh Superman
Riley's In C
Assignment
Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk
Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room
Week 12
Warmup:
Eastman's Stay On It
Assignment:
Reich's Music for 18 Musicians
Week 13
Warmup:
Benary's Aural Shoehorning
Week 14
Warmup:
Murail's Desintegrations
Saariaho's Lichtbogen
Assignment:
Grisey's Les Spaces Acoustiques
Although I designed this for a liberal arts music program (Georgetown), I strongly believe that conservatory students would likewise benefit from being exposed to music beyond the white male canon and yet still within the Western art music tradition. This music and the composers who created it shouldn’t require advocacy to be heard, and yet too often it and they are erased.
Some of these are lesser known pieces within a composer’s catalog—this often occurred because I selected something either in response to a classroom activities, or to facilitate comparison across styles (having students listen to a series of piano solos, for instance). Maybe the piece is just that good and merits more attention.
To contextualize this Western art music-heavy list: most of the music we analyzed, listened to, and made in the classroom and on assignments/tests was rock/pop/hip-hop/electronic, rather than out of the traditional pedagogic model that teaches music theory via WAM. I played this music for students to help them develop their ears, to open doors, and to enable them to participate in dialogues about WAM with their peers in more traditional theory classes.