Creation, interpretation and audition. Strategical integration for learming harmony in musical interpretation students

Abstract

Nine students of musical interpretation belonging to the last year of a course of Solfeggio and Auditory Practice carried out the didactic activity of creating a piece of music in small groups, with the purpose of putting into practice harmonic subjects present in the program of studies of the course. Orienting themselves according to a work pattern, they elaborated these pieces for their respective specialty instruments. Subsequently, the creations were interpreted by each group to the rest of the course, so that they would discover aurally the harmonic links used in them.

The students were very motivated to take on the challenge of creating, an unusual activity for the majority. The instrumental pieces were listened to and commented on by the course and each group was able to describe their work demonstrating theoretical mastery over the pedagogical unit in question. As for the auditory recognition of the harmony used in them, the students achieved very good results, although previously the majority manifested difficulties in this matter.

In this communication, I propose some hypotheses that emerged during the course of my teaching, taking as a reference the experience with this group of students, who presented unusually low performances in the resolution of harmonic auditory exercises. I present in a critical way the way in which some of the didactic activities oriented to the development of the harmonic ear are carried out and I propose some ideas to contribute to improve these pedagogical practices.