Third-Stream Music Education

Constructive Critique

March 24th, 2009

Your academic standards (objectives, benchmarks, goals, curriculum) most likely calls for students to demonstrate some level of proficiency in describing, analyzing and evaluating music and musical performances. This is a very important standard in a young person’s growth as an artist and as a member of civilized society. The cocktail party, for example, is founded on the principle of intelligent discussion between worldly people. And considering how many business deals in the world are made or lost at cocktail parties, I consider constructive musical critiques to be part of the holistic education our schools strives to provide.

However, adolescents often focus on negativity, and often approach the “conversational tone” of a diplomatic critique a little too conversationally. The paragraph below is real feedback to a real student following a real self-evaluation of a real playing quiz.

Dear (Student): The self-evaluations on this blog are intended to be academic in nature. As such, the success of your blog would be augmented by retaining words of an academic character during the thesis and conclusion statements of each blog entry, for example “poor”, “mediocre” and “need to improve”, while simultaneously excluding words of a vulgar and unconstructive nature, for example “sucks”, “blows”, and all references to bathrooms. Furthermore, you can improve your overall critique by focusing on specific elements of music such as intonation, rhythmic accuracy and timbre rather than broad generalizations. In the future, please compose your self-evaluations in a more productive, academic tone. Thank you.

Entry Filed under: Music Curriculum