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Sample Proposal: Writing

College of Fine Arts

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MUS 259W Chamber Music: Woodwinds

Department of Music

Please describe how students will engage in independent investigation and presentation of their own work through the course. Please explain specifically how your course engages students in the process of inquiry in your discipline.

Students in the chamber music course are charged with finding collaborating students with whom to rehearse and perform art music repertoire ranging from 3 to 8 players. The students propose repertoire, and rehearse as a group on their own several hours per week in preparation for their weekly lesson with a faculty coach. Each student is expected to listen to several recordings of the pieces they are playing, study different editions of a score, read about composers’ lives, and use their discoveries to shape their interpretations of the music, and their verbal presentations to audience members in their community outreach concerts.

What kinds of projects, artifacts, presentations, or performances do your students produce as a result of engaging in this process of inquiry?

All groups in the course are required to present one performance on-campus in a formal concert setting, and an additional performance/verbal presentation either for their non-music major peers on campus in a History of Western Music class, or for community members in a school, museum, retirement home, etc.

Please explain what independent work students will do in this course. If students are engaged in collaborative or team-based projects, explain how every student will exercise responsibility for and independence with some portion of the project.

The whole course is geared towards team work. Every member of every group must be engaged in the logistical side of scheduling rehearsal times and spaces, and scheduling performances. Critical to any group’s success is that every member be equally prepared for every rehearsal with the ability to play their own part well, and to be verbally engaged in the rehearsal process of identifying musical problems and offering diplomatic, effective solutions through rehearsal techniques. Essential to this preparation is knowledge of the full score, the historical context in which a piece of music was composed, and stylistic characteristics of the composer, gained through listening to recordings of the repertoire and reading about the composers and time period in which the piece was written.

What pedagogical strategies do you use to prepare students to undertake the inquiry process in your course? If applicable, how does the work that students produce in this course build upon skills or knowledge they have developed in previous coursework?

In weekly coachings, groups are challenged by faculty to communicate musically and verbally on more sophisticated levels. In addition to receiving instruction on the interpersonal and musical skills required of chamber musicians, each group attends an outreach seminar early in the semester, which cultivates each student’s ability to connect with audiences by speaking about their experiences as musicians, the instruments, the music and its historical context, and the composers. This course builds upon the performance skills that students have developed in their lower division instrumental lessons, and in their large ensemble courses, and demands that they take those skills to new levels of critical thinking and interpersonal engagement.

Please specify what percentage of the students’ grade is based on the process of inquiry described above. Note that for a 3-hour course, at least one-third of the course grade must be based on the students’ independent investigation and presentation of their own work. (Students’ independent work must constitute one-half of the grade for 2-hour courses and all of the grade for 1-hour courses.)

Grades in this course are based 100% on the individual and collective contributions to independent inquiry: knowledge of the score prior to each rehearsal, knowledge of the composer and historical contexts of the repertoire, preparation of playing one’s own part, punctuality, collegiality, improvement of chamber music skills, and attendance at rehearsals, coachings, master classes and performances.