Nothing Ordinary About It: The Mass Proper as Early Music Jigsaw Puzzle

  • Douglas Shadle University of Louisville

Abstract

The Mass Proper too often plays a subsidiary role to the Mass Ordinary in the music history classroom, a consequence of the Proper’s virtual absence in contemporary Roman Catholic worship and its elusiveness within historical liturgical practice. A detailed treatment of music written for the Proper may nevertheless enrich the undergraduate music history survey, particularly the segments covering the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This article explains how the Jigsaw Classroom, a cooperative learning technique developed by social psychologists, can provide teachers with a creative and practical strategy for incorporating this repertory into the survey. Jigsaw exercises are especially effective for the stylistic analysis of plainchant Propers and of later settings found in Henricus Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus. Finally, this article offers further suggestions for carrying a detailed treatment of the Mass Proper into later sections of the undergraduate survey, as well as for incorporating jigsaw exercises into other classroom contexts.

 

Author Biography

Douglas Shadle, University of Louisville
Douglas Shadle is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Louisville School of Music, where he teaches courses that range from music appreciation for non-music students to graduate music history seminars. His principal areas of research expertise are nineteenth-century music in the U.S. and the history of Roman Catholic sacred music. His writings on these subjects have appeared in American Music, a collection of essays entitled Messiaen the Theologian, and elsewhere.
Published
2012-07-12
Issue
Vol 3 No 1: (Fall 2012)
Section
Reports and Practices

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).