Objectives

 

The mission of MSBSD K-12 Music is to provide research and standards based music instruction for all students. Our students will receive a developmentally appropriate and sequential curriculum which encompasses all facets of music, taught by a teacher certified in Music Education. With this strong foundation in music literacy, students will listen, perform, and create.

 

It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor’s full score is a chart, a graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmonies all at once with the most exact control of time.

It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions that must inspire instantaneous reaction without time to solve on paper.

Most of the terms are Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English, but highly developed shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music are the most complete and universal language.

Music can reflect the environment and time of its creation, as well as country and culture.

It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles; in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets. Music is all of this, and art. It allows a human being to take all of these techniques and use them to express emotion.

 

The process of making music epitomizes creative problem solving at its highest level. This skill is a major resource for the success of all students. Performing, creating, and responding to music are fundamental processes in which humans engage. Students learn by doing. Singing, playing instruments, moving to and creating music enables them to acquire skills and knowledge that can be developed in no other way. Learning to read and notate music gives them a skill with which to explore music independently and with others. Listening to, analyzing and evaluating music involves higher level thinking skills that are important building blocks of learning and enhance the learning in other disciplines as well.

 

The goal of the MSBSD’s K-12 Music Curriculum Framework is to provide students with a balanced, comprehensive, sequential program of study in music, rooted in elementary level, growing in middle school and expressed in excellence at the high school level.