Summer is winding down and a new semester is just around the corner! As you prepare for your fall courses, this is the perfect time to take another look at the A-R Music Anthology’s large collection of beautifully engraved scores, insightful commentaries, and thought-provoking articles. If you haven’t spent a lot of time perusing the Anthology’s contents, you may not know exactly where to start. It can especially be overwhelming if you are trying to figure out how ARMA’s rich offerings may enhance your teaching for the first time.
With the recent introduction of our Content Guides for Instructors, it has never been easier to explore the resources available in ARMA. Back in May, we released a series of fourteen Content Guides covering the Middle Ages through the Twentieth Century. Each one has been compiled by authors who specialize in the covered era, so you can be assured that its contents are thorough, relevant, and up to date.
- The Middle Ages – I & II: Karen Cook (University of Hartford)
- The Renaissance – I & II: Allen Scott (Oklahoma State University)
- The Baroque – I, II, & III: Jonathan Rhodes Lee (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
- The Classical Era – I & II: Nancy November (University of Auckland)
- The Nineteenth Century – I, II, & III: Joseph E. Jones and Sarah Marie Lucas (Texas A&M University, Kingsville)
- *The Twentieth Century – I & II: Nathan Shields (Brooklyn Institute)
These Guides serve as excellent introductions and navigation tools to the various materials available in the A-R Music Anthology, and they can be used in different ways. You can use them to familiarize yourself with the Anthology’s offerings, as a blueprint or syllabus for a new course using ARMA as the textbook, or you can even share them with your Teaching Assistants or graduate students. The choice is yours!
Each Content Guide is structured in the same manner and include readings, summary lists, scores, recordings, and exercises. Click here for a more in-depth introduction to Content Guides.
Assigned Readings: The Guide opens with links to assigned readings from the Anthology covering a range of focuses, such as general survey articles, commentaries, and biographies. Additionally, some Guides also feature supplementary source readings from resources beyond the Anthology.
Summary Lists: Following the readings, each Content Guide contains summary lists of important concepts, genres, musical terms, figures, and events.
Scores and Recordings: The next section of the Guide provides links to scores found in the Anthology. You will also find links to other important scores and recordings available through public domain.
Exercises: Each guide concludes with a set of exercises (with key) to test your students’ mastery of the covered material. How you choose to use these exercises is entirely up to you! You can use them as a weekly quiz, as study tools for students, or incorporate them into your unit exams.
It can be daunting when you set out to adopt a new textbook, change your method of instruction delivery, or teach a new course. We hope that these Content Guides will aid and inspire our instructors, whether they are new or veteran users, as they explore and experience the A-R Music Anthology!
*Content Guides for the Twentieth Century are forthcoming.