Musicianship Program

Musicianship training is essential to a comprehensive music education and critical to continued growth with instrument and voice study. The study of music theory and development of ear training is a core component of instrument and voice study across all levels of study. As students progress through the School’s sequential and leveled curriculum, they develop music literacy and an understanding of the elements and structure of music. Multiple class formats include experiences in listening, singing, movement, conducting, playing, reading, and notating music, which lead to analyses of repertoire masterpieces, as well as work in improvisation and composition.

Download the 2024-2025 Musicianship Course Listing by Age and Level or please see below for class details.

Chorus

Diller-Quaile's Choruses provide sequential study of choral literature for young voices and teach the fundamentals of vocal technique. Through choral repertoire spanning various periods and styles, students develop ensemble skills, sight-singing skills, comfort with score reading, and music literacy. Diller-Quaile choruses perform in the School’s large ensemble concerts each semester.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Dalcroze Eurhythmics

The Dalcroze approach integrates the ear, mind, and body through natural movement, singing, and improvisation. Through kinesthetic experiences students show what they hear in music. As students walk, run, and gallop, elements of music are identified, such as a regular beat, rhythm patterns, articulation, and nuances. When singing, students use their hands and arms to show the shape of a melody or a phrase. These movements help students feel and internalize the relationship of pitches while tuning the voice and ear to each other. Through improvisation, students explore timbres of rhythm instruments, accompany songs explored in class, and deepen their understanding of music concepts. These experiences lead naturally into music notation. More experienced students are further challenged with exercises in form, meter, and polyrhythms. Students move through an experiential mode to a symbolic mode of understanding music concepts. A minimum of two years of Dalcroze Eurhythmics is required of all students in first grade or older.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Great Composers

Students encounter the great works of musical canon, not only for their intrinsic artistic value, but also as textbooks. Students work music concepts and ideas through direct contact with and application to the masterworks of the repertoire. Active listening, score reading, group singing, playing, and conducting are among the experiences that guide students through the material, as they come to place composers, their works, and the musical styles they represent in an historical context. Classes study music of the Renaissance through the Modern Era.

2024-2025 Course listing

High School Comprehensive

The High School Comprehensive curriculum is a robust course of musicianship study that provides the advancing high school student with sophisticated musical understanding. Through experiences including sight-singing, ear training, dictation, and keyboard harmony, students analyze the rhythm, melody, harmony, phrasing, and form of selected works. Students’ repertoire serves as a springboard for group discussion and analysis, as well as for examples of critical concepts.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Improvisation Ensemble

2024-2025 Course Listing

Music Theory & Ear Training

These Kodály based classes develop the complete musician in each student through active listening, group singing, movement, conducting, dictation, sight-singing with solfège, and score analysis. Through the study of folk and composed music appropriate to their level of experience, students build music literacy and an understanding of the elements and structure of music. Individual, partnered, and group improvisations support and deepen their musical understanding. These experiences with improvisation lead naturally to individual and group compositions.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Musicianship for Young Learners

In these Kodály based classes, young students explore music through active listening, group singing, movement, musical games, and conducting. Through the study of folk and traditional music appropriate to their level of experience, students begin to build music literacy and an understanding of the elements and structure of music. The curriculum is shaped to the needs, interests, and skills of each individual class.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Orff Ensemble

Through speech, group singing, movement, and instrument playing, students explore music concepts, build music literacy, and come to understand the elements and structure of music. The Orff Ensemble plays recorders and non-pitched and pitched percussion instruments, such as drums, wood xylophones and metal glockenspiels. Students read, improvise, and compose ostinati and varied accompaniments to music from diverse cultures in a creative classroom setting.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Piano Improvisation

Piano Improvisation focuses on the development of keyboard skills necessary to utilize the piano as a tool for a comprehensive understanding of a range of genres. Students learn how to harmonize melodies and improvise, using different accompaniments and chord progressions. In addition, students are introduced to jazz progressions, chord structures, and jazz theory.

2024-2025 Course Listing

Reading Between Lines

It is nothing short of miraculous that seven musical sounds can be combined in an almost infinite number of ways to create so many unique musical works. What is behind this process? How does a composer select and arrange these elements to achieve a desired effect? When we look at a music score, what do we see? Whatever it is that one sees, there is Always much more to be uncovered. The beauty and mystery of music can be found between the lines, in the subtle interplay of all the musical elements, of which the music score is the scaffolding and the template. To be intrigued by this musical scaffolding is the first step toward uncovering the secrets of musical expression. The course will focus on several musical works each month that will be analyzed in all their details and nuances, in preparation for a more informed and rewarding appreciation of these works.

2024-2025 Course Listing