Review of Evan Jones, Matthew Shaftel, and Juan Chattah, Aural Skills in Context: A Comprehensive Approach to Sight Singing, Ear Training, Harmony, and Improvisation (Oxford, 2014)

[1] The 846-page wire-bound tome that is Aural Skills in Context, with its lightweight paperboard covers, does not seem likely to physically survive the four semesters of extensive use for which authors Evan Jones and Matthew Shaftel, with Juan Chattah, planned its contents. In its breadth as well as its purposes and aspirations, the project-the book and its computer-based peripherals-is clearly modeled on other richly contextualized and integrated scholarship that characterizes many of the recent texts designed for written-theory curricula.(1) This essay will review the authors' strategy for creating a similarly "comprehensive approach" to several of the salient components of aural skills, and will consider their success in doing so.Overview[2] The subtitle of this book-A Comprehensive Approach to Sight-Singing, Ear-Training, Harmony, and Improvisation-also serves as a clear and succinct summary of its goals.(2) The pedagogical strategy behind the subtitle is most clearly stated early in the Preface: "The consistent goal is to help students become fluent in musical patterning while providing them the freedom and opportunity to manipulate those patterns in a creative and real-time manner" (xiv). As "creative" and "manipulation" imply, improvisation is embraced throughout this book; it is both a teaching agent and "an important vehicle for musical expression, which demonstrates a synthesis of theoretical understanding and musicianship" (xiv). Methods and materials are brought together to provide a "programmed arrangement of musical extracts and exercises. . . designed to foster a heightened awareness of melodic function, rhythmic patterning, and the harmonic-contrapuntal structure of tonal music" (xiv). But the authors recognize that drills and exercises alone will not lead to real fluency; rather, skills need to be made relevant through their incorporation into other parts of a growing musician's musical life. Two of the book's foundational elements play especially significant roles in encouraging this sort of integrated practice. One is the decision to use "real" musical examples throughout the book, an element I will consider later.[3] The other is the determination that "every melodic extract [be] consistently retained in its harmonic and/or contrapuntal context. . . allow[ing] an overall organization along harmonic lines, paralleling a written theory curriculum" (xiii). For this reason the book is laid out in three units of seven chapters and one unit (IV) of six, preceded by an unnumbered chapter, "The Foundations of Aural Skills" (hereafter, "Foundations"). The unit titles indicate a fairly standard harmony sequence; Unit I is purely diatonic (this includes some work with pentatonic scales), to which Unit II adds chromatic embellishments. The second year of study begins with "Advanced Melodies, Modulation, and Introduction to Musical Form" in Unit III, and ends with "Advanced Chromaticism and Larger Forms" in Unit IV, tracking common-practice harmony up to the edges of tonality. While a generic harmonic design like this will not satisfy all needs or align well with all harmony curricula, part of the authors' intent here is to enable flexibility in the book's usage, another aspect to be considered in later discussions.Materials[4] Aside from the Preface and part of the "Foundations" chapter, the book has little prose beyond a brief overview at the beginning of each chapter and occasional commentary about a particular musical example or set of exercises. That allows most of the book's great heft to be devoted to the nine to fifteen or more musical excerpts that constitute the subject matter of each chapter, and to the pages of focused studies that follow. While "Foundations" gives an overview of the book's practices and procedures, the book's actual instruction is accomplished almost entirely through these exercises.[5] A typical chapter offers plentiful exercises of various types. …