Journal of Research in Music Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher intensity, the global attributes of enthusiasm combined with an astute sense of timing in relation to classroom management and effective subject presentation and delivery. The authors also tried to ascertain whether high and low contrasts in teacher intensity could be taught to and then demonstrated by prospective music education student teachers (n = 20) and whether other music education majors untrained in the concept of intensity could recognize these contrasts (freshmen, n = 23; seniors, n = 22; and graduate students, n = 29). Results of the study indicated that intensity as a concept could be operationally defined, easily taught to prospective student teachers, ably demonstrated, and recognized with an extremely high degree of reliability across levels of sophistication within the music education major.

The authors of this study sought to determine whether there is an age-related, common level of logic underlying responses to musical and spatial analogical tasks and to characterize these levels of logic in terms of similar intellectual strategies. Children (N = 128) ranging in age from 6.5 to 12.5 years old were individually tested using author-designed Spatial Analogy Tasks (SANTs) and Musical Analogy Tasks (MANTs). Analyses of results indicated that (a) a sequential nature exists in a child's development of musical intellectual strategies; (b) this sequential development in music seems to parallel an age-related sequence in other areas of understanding (i.e., spatial concepts); and (c) a parallel, rather than identical, sequence between musical analogical reasoning and spatial analogical reasoning may be due to the complexity of musical concepts. That is, the musical tasks may have created a conceptual “overload” for this population of subjects.

The purpose of this study was to observe string instrumentalists' intonational performances within the duration of selected pitches. Additional aspects of the study included the effects of directionality of performed pitch sets, intonational tendencies associated with vibrato versus no vibrato, and differences in intonational performance among specific instrument groups. Forty-eight string players were randomly selected as subjects. Each subject performed pitch sets ascending and descending with vibrato and without vibrato. Performance tones were tape-recorded and analyzed for the highest and lowest points (pitch location 1 and pitch location 2) in order of occurrence within each tone according to cents sharp or flat relative to equal temperament. Results indicated that pitch location 2 was performed significantly sharper than pitch location 1; however, a significant interaction was found among pitch location, pitch set direction, and individual tones. Descending pitch sets were performed significantly sharper than ascending pitch sets, which were also sharp. All stringed instrument groups performed sharp relative to equal temperament.

Many factors contributed to the dramatic nationwide increase in instrumental music instruction in American public schools from approximately 1915 to 1935, a period commonly referred to as the school band movement era. Band contests, the instrument manufacturing industry, and a trend toward broadening school curricula all contributed to this development This study traces the history of the Wisconsin School Music Association (WSMA) from its early days in 1920 through the height of school music contest activity in the early 1930s and up to the outbreak of World War II. In addition to being the first known association of and for school bands in this country, the WSMA sponsored for many years the largest school band tournaments in the United States. The WSMA also seems to have contributed a portion of its constitution to that of the National School Band Association and spearheaded the move from competitive ranking of bands to festival ratings—developments that have remained with the field to this day.

This study reports two experiments investigating the effect of three pretraining conditions on the discrimination of select pitch patterns. Condition 1 was based on the principles of differentiation theory, Condition 2 was based on the principles of mediation theory, and Condition 3 served as a control group. Ninety subjects, aged 3, 4, and 5 years, participated in Experiment 1. The dependent variable was an investigator-designed aural discrimination measure, Trials to Criterion, in which subjects had to identify paired pitch patterns as the same or different. Results revealed no significant differences among condition groups but indicated a significant age effect, with 5-year-olds performing better than 3- and 4-year-olds. Experiment 2 was a replication of the same study following a 10-day aural readiness procedure that provided an informal, nonparticipatory exposure for all subjects to the four tonal patterns used in the study. Ninety different subjects, aged 3, 4, and 5 years, participated. Results revealed no significant differences among condition groups but yielded significant differences among all age-groups. An interaction effect revealed that the age 5, Condition 1 and 2 groups scored significantly higher than all other groups.