Towards Integrating Music Theory and Piano Instruction in the Royal Conservatory of Music's Pedagogical Materials

Abstract

The pedagogical materials published by the Royal Conservatory of Music are some of the most widely used by teachers in North America. This thesis focuses on the latest published edition of their Celebrate Theory (2016) and Celebration Series (2022) collections for music theory and piano, respectively. Based on the educational values of the Embodied Learning philosophy presented by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson at the end of the 1990s, and the movement from the middle of the 20th century associated with the Comprehensive Musicianship philosophy, the main objectives of this project are 1) to study the degree to which the piano and music theory materials published by the Royal Conservatory (RCM) are connected by analyzing and evaluating the strategies they implement in the selected publications to help teachers and students make those connections; and 2) to propose practical tools or solutions firmly rooted in those materials that could support music teachers in guiding their students to interconnect both musical areas.

The main research question asks, what strategies does the RCM implement to actively make correlations between the music theory concepts being taught in the Celebrate Theory collection and the piano pieces from the Celebration Series collection, and what are the expected effects on the musicianship of students using their books? To answer it and fulfill the first objective, I examined the piano and music theory curriculums. First, this thesis describes the general structure of the current edition of the RCM piano and music theory curriculums, as well as other relevant RCM resources beyond the books. Then, the thesis cross-references the analysis sections in the music theory books from the Preparatory Levels to Level 8 with the piano pieces included in the Repertoire and Etude books and the expanded lists in the Piano Syllabus from the Preparatory Levels to Level 8. Thirdly, the thesis describes the content of the analysis sections. Lastly, grounded in the findings from the previous steps, it discusses the challenges for teachers related to the current strategies for interconnecting piano and music theory and for allowing students to understand the relationship between conceptual knowledge and musical performance and interpretation. It demonstrates how the structure of the analysis sections and the discrepancy caused by the different publication dates of the music theory versus the piano collections complicate the process of repertoire selection for educators that attempt to teach both musical areas in active connection.

To fulfill the second objective, the study's two secondary research questions investigate how music teachers can connect piano repertoire with music theory more easily and practically using the RCM materials. The final chapter introduces three practical tools intended to foster a more meaningful integration between these two areas of music learning.