Retired Chinese Workers, Musical Education, and Participant-Observation in The Beijing Sunshine Wind Band Art Troupe

The Beijing Sunshine Wind Band performs in community concerts in Beijing year round. The band began in 2007, founded by Lin Yi and her husband Zhao Yinglin. Lin Yi underwent cancer surgery in 1995 and recovered to form the band of around 100 retirees. Members begin musical training in retirement, and as adult learners practice hours gaining musical profi ciency. The music is Chinese and in jianpu numerical notation, but all of their instruments are Western woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The band performs at national events, museums and libraries, and toured Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau. Concert bands are civilian versions of military bands. Their marches include “The People’s Liberation Army March,” and lyrical songs such as “My Country” from a 1956 fi lm. Their performances draw revolutionary sentiments in suites such as The Red Detachment of Women, and the band performs songs from post-Mao decades, such as “Dare to Ask the Way,” from the television series Journey to the West. Trevor Herbert stated that concert bands serve communities as “rational recreation.” The goal of this article is show how a Chinese national concert band reached and created healthy lifestyles for retired workers recovering from cancer and other disabilities.

Effects of Ensemble Size and Repertoire Difficulty on Ratings of Concert Band Performances

The purpose of this study was to examine effects of ensemble size and repertoire difficulty on listeners’ perceptions of concert band performances. Undergraduate music majors ( N = 210) viewed an audiovisual stimulus consisting of various images of large and small concert bands paired with identical audio performances of either an easy or difficult composition. Participants rated each ensemble’s tone quality/intonation, musicianship/expression, and rhythm/articulation using a 10-point Likert-type scale. Results indicated no main effects for ensemble size or order. There was a significant main effect for repertoire difficulty, with difficult repertoire being evaluated more positively than easier repertoire. We also found a significant Ensemble Size × Repertoire Difficulty × Order interaction, indicating that results were moderated based on order. Within the four orders, the largest mean difference in scores occurred in Order 3 (small/difficult, large/easy, small/easy, large/difficult), with the smallest mean differences occurring in Order 2 (large/difficult, small/easy, large/easy, small/difficult). The small/easy and large/easy videos and the small/difficult and large/difficult videos resulted in positive changes in ratings only when seen first and last, respectively. We recommend blind evaluation and the use of required “test pieces” in concert band festivals as ways to possibly mitigate effects of repertoire difficulty and ensemble size.

A Grounded Theory of Musical Independence in the Concert Band

Defined as the ability to engage in music activities on one’s own, musical independence is a frequent goal of music education. This yearlong study investigated musical independence within concert bands through interviews and observations of participants of secondary programs that included musical independence as a primary objective. Constructivist grounded theory analyses of the participants’ experiences led to a model of musical independence that included three interrelated outcomes: student agency, critical decision making, and lifewide/lifelong musicianship. These outcomes were the result of specific instructional practices that utilized cognitive modeling, scaffolded instruction, and authentic, regular, student-led music-making in curricular ensembles to promote student agency and decision making. These instructional practices relied upon preconditions for independence, including musical, social, and 21st-century skills foundations frequently found in large-ensemble classrooms. This study provides a model that can be situated within current large-ensemble practices to support the development of musical independence.

Double Bass

The double bass (contrabass, upright bass, string bass, violone) is a large string instrument of three, four, or five strings, made of wood, and played with a bow (arco) or plucked with the fingers (pizzicato). Unique among orchestral string instruments, it shares a history with both viol and violin instrument families. Today it is commonly tuned in fourths with four (E’-A’-D-G) or five (B’/C’-E’-A’-D-G) strings. Other historical tunings include a three-string instrument tuned in fifths (A’-D-G), a four- or five-string “Viennese tuning” (typically F’-A’-D-F#-A, with lowest string optional), and five- and six-string violone tunings: in G (G’-C-F-a-d-g), in A (A’-D-G-b-e-a), or in D (D’-G’-C-E-A-d). It is the only orchestral string instrument with two types of bows—the “overhand” French bow (violin family) and the “underhand” German bow (viol family)—and is the only transposing orchestral string instrument: music is usually notated an octave above sounding pitch (hence the name, double bass, for the instrument’s role in orchestral textures of doubling the violoncello part an octave lower than written). Violones began as the bass voice in viol consorts and realized continuo lines in church, orchestral, and operatic genres. A rich culture of solo and chamber music for a double bass instrument, known today as the Viennese violone, reached a peak of technical virtuosity throughout territories influenced by the Habsburgs between approximately 1750 and the first decade of the 19th century. Other virtuosi, like Domenico Dragonetti and Giovanni Bottesini, both of whom played three-string instruments tuned in fourths, followed in the 19th century. National schools of orchestral playing emerged across Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries alongside the development of the modern orchestra and conservatories. Double bass sections serve essential functions in the orchestra: they add weight, provide dynamic power, reinforce the rhythmic foundation, and shape musical phrases. The 20th century saw a renaissance of double bass virtuosi who inspired the composition of new chamber and solo works for the instrument. In the late 19th century, the double bass also became a common fixture in American ragtime and string bands. The string bass has always served in a supporting role in military and concert bands. It has also maintained a central role in jazz styles since the 1920s, and from the 1940s to the 1960s it was common in American popular musical genres such as country, bluegrass, western swing, rock ’n’ roll, and rockabilly.

The Effect of Implied Performer Age and Group Membership on Evaluations of Music Performances

This study examined the effects of implied performer age and group membership on listeners’ evaluations of music performances. Undergraduate music majors ( n = 23), nonmusic majors ( n = 17), and members of a New Horizons ensemble ( n = 16) were presented with six 30-second excerpts of concert band performances. Excerpts were presented to all respondents in three implied performer age conditions: audio-only (no implied age), audiovisual presentations that featured digital images of middle school concert bands, and audiovisual presentations that featured digital images of older adult concert bands. Respondents ( N = 56) used 10-point scales to rate each performance on tone, rhythmic precision, and dynamic contrast. Results of a repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that audio-only presentations were rated significantly lower than audiovisual presentations, and music majors rated performances significantly lower than other respondents.

Relationships Among Music Sight-Reading and Technical Proficiency, Spatial Visualization, and Aural Discrimination

The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of music sight-reading ability. The authors hypothesized that speed and accuracy of music sight-reading would be predicted by a combination of aural pattern discrimination, spatial-temporal reasoning, and technical proficiency. Participants ( N = 70) were wind players in concert bands at a medium-sized university in the Midwest. In a regression analysis with music sight-reading as the criterion variable, aural-spatial patterning and technical proficiency explained 51% of the variance, F = 37.34, p < .0001. These results support previous research that suggested that auditory, visual, spatial, and kinesthetic activations occur in coordination when wind players sight-read music notation. The results of the regression analysis suggested that although aural-spatial skills and technical proficiency skills were orthogonal, or separate, they both were essential to the complex task of sight-reading.

The Effects of Music Literature in Developing Aesthetic Sensitivity to Music

The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of stage band versus concert band music literature on the development of musicality and aesthetic sensitivity. Accordingly, pre-instruction and post-instruction tests were administered to approximately 600 band students in six Contra Costa County, California, high schools during the 1971–1972 academic year. There was no significant difference in musicality between the band organizations as evidenced by test scores on the Gaston Test of Musicality. There was, however, a pervasive superiority in favor of the concert bands on the California Test of Aesthetic Judgments in Music. An important observation drawn from the data is that individuals exposed exclusively or partially to concert band literature attained the primary goal of music education—the development of aesthetic sensitivity to music. In this area, they did better than the stage band students.