Battles with Babbitt

In my Music Theory III class, we have been discussing atonal music.  I don't know the depth of your knowledge about theory, so I'm just going to say that atonal music (especially serial atonal music) sounds awful.  It is basically music without any of the pleasant aesthetic qualities that music usually possesses.  Serial atonal music is very mathematical.  The composer is required to use all twelve tones of the chromatic scale without repetition in a single line of music.  A matrix (that's right, a matrix) is made based on this "tone row", and the entire composition must be created out of the matrix.

Most of our class times have revolved around us sitting and listening to different examples of atonal music, our gigantic, spiral-bound Burkhart Anthology of Music books open in our laps, small lines of drool slipping from our mouths.  As we sit in class and the strange noises are blaring through the large speakers in the choir room, I cannot help but imagine dozens of students--poor, innocent bystanders just lounging around J-Nobes--running out of the building screaming and covering their ears.  Many students in our class would probably be doing the same thing if they weren't concerned with their grades or their reputation. ("Have you seen that crazy, screaming girl running laps around Jensen wearing earmuffs?  What a weirdo...")  In class, some students talk about the beauty of the mathematics of the music and some of them say that atonal music isn't really music at all.  This leads to some interesting in-class "debates", which the rest of us watch eagerly.  As I sit there, watching the steam roll out of the Bach-Lovers' ears and trying to tune out the sounds of a boys choir singing diminished triads, I often wonder, "How does our professer deal with this?"

I mean, come on.  No matter how much our professor loves atonal music, it can't be fun trying to force-feed sassy students information.  How does she deal with the constant negativity?  And am I ever going to run into this while teaching choir?

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I probably won't have to force-feed my students songs very often.  If my students really, unanimously hate a song, I won't make them sing it.  However, for every song, there are probably going to be a couple of students who grumble and roll their eyes when I tell them to pull it out of their folders.  What I have learned from my professor is that you just have to explain the value of the music and hope that, even if they don't end up loving it, they can at least understand the merit of it.  In our theory class, even the kids who hate the music can realize that a lot of time and planning goes into the mathematics of the music.  When I have my own class, I will make sure my students always know why we are doing the music we're doing.   Hopefully, they will become more tolerant of it through their understanding of it.  Maybe I'll even make them sing something atonal, just to drill this whole "tolerance" thing into their brains.
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Just kidding.

Seriously, though.  If you ever find out that I am making my choirs sing atonal music, come find me and slap me up a bit.