Remaking the Canon in their Own Images

Creative Writing Projects in the Music History Classroom

Abstract

This article explores three creative writing projects that I have designed and implemented in music history courses open to non-majors. All three ask students to develop original reinterpretations of canonic musical works. In one, students write original programmatic narratives for the first movement of Beethoven’s “Eroica†Symphony. In the other two, students develop alternative, even revisionist productions of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Bizet’s Carmen, changing setting, characterization, and even plot, in part to engage with the works’ representations of race and/or gender. In all cases, creative writing builds upon historical and analytical readings and discussions, asking students to engage in a creative dialogue both with the music at hand and with musicological scholarship.

            By situating these assignments within the broader literature on using creative writing in courses across the disciplines, and by considering some of the work my students have produced, I argue that creative reinterpretation assignments not only enrich students’ engagement with particular topics, but contribute to some of our broader objectives as teachers of music history. Creative writing based on a preexisting musical work fosters close reading and listening skills, encouraging students to articulate subtle insights about structure, style, and cultural resonance. Moreover, allowing students to share their work in a class discussion provides them with a vivid illustration of how performers and listeners play an important role in the construction of musical meaning. Through the assignments and follow-up decisions, students start to understand how audience members bring their particular cultural and historical filters to bear on the music they encounter, and they contemplate performance decisions that can subtly or fundamentally shape an audience’s experience with a musical work. Creative writing additionally offers students a safe, moderated forum for expressing opinions, or even critique, of canonic musical works. Ultimately, I propose, creative writing can nudge students along longer intellectual journeys that bridge the music history classroom with their broader lives as musicians and/or listeners.