We’re pleased to announce that Andrew Malilay White has been chosen as winner of the 2018-19 American Musicological Society-Midwest’s Indiana University Press Award for his paper, “Teaching by Example: Changing Pedagogies of the Postclassical Thoroughbass.” The Indiana University Press Award is given in recognition of an outstanding student paper delivered at the spring meeting of the AMS Midwest Chapter.
Read an abstract from White’s paper below.
White's paper argues that bodily skill can constitute a complex form of music theory. He uses the improvisatory practice of thoroughbass as a case study, examining two nineteenth-century Viennese thoroughbass treatises that lack any written rules or bass figures. (Rules and figures are normally an essential part of thoroughbass pedagogy.) He then outlines a model of skill acquisition to show how a piano student would learn from these exceptional treatises.