Category Archives: Teaching

In my large lecture courses, I often introduce musical examples by displaying a portrait of the composer in question. For composers who lived up through the early nineteenth century, I show paintings. For the more recent composers, I show photographs. The oldest of these photographs are (unavoidably) grainy, black-and-white affairs. They are an excellent meansContinue reading “Is That You, Mr. Berlioz?”

The University at Buffalo is the first institution at which I’ve encountered the undergraduate music history survey being delivered across only two semesters. Brandeis University offers a sequence of five courses, as I recall, but with the requirement that students take just three of them. The music history faculty here at UB have recently beenContinue reading “Music History Anthologies”

While participating in Maggie O’Rourke’s recent “Designing Experiences” faculty academy at the UB Center for Educational Innovation, we were asked to dig out our teaching statements and transform them into “teaching and learning philosophies.” Mine still sounds a bit stuffy, but here’s what I came up with: My purpose as a teacher is to exposeContinue reading “Teaching and Learning Philosophy”