Howard Goodall & Music Education

Posted in: In the Classroom

Howard Goodall has been a great find and inspiration for me as a music educator.

How long have you (if you are a classroom or private music teacher) looked for resources of the visual kind that cover classical music or music theory in an engaging and imaginative way?  How long have you searched for footage and explanations of the pentatonic scale, equal temperament or how a bass line works in various compositions?  If you are like me there is not much out there that does so in a way that creatively puts across concepts for students.  That is, unless you own the DVD set of Howard Goodall’s documentaries.  Some of which are:

• Big Bangs – A 5 documentary set covering the history of The Piano, Opera, Notation, Recorded Sound & Equal Temperament
• Great Dates – A series covering important dates in musical history such as 1564 Palestrina, 1791 Mozart, 1894 Wagner & 1937 Shostakovitch
• 20th Century Greats – A musical investigation of Cole Porter, Bernard Herrmann, The Beatles & Leonard Bernstein
• Choir Works – Howard visits and investigates the choir music of Africa, Bulgaria, America & England
• How Music Works – A highly creative way to show the elements of music to students (melody, bass, harmony & rhythm)

The following videos are clips from his series “How Music Works” judge for yourself.

Howard Goodall is also a well noted British Composer who has undertaken many projects – notably this one to create a more modern ‘Peter & The Wolf’ based upon Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant.

If you would like a copy of these DVD’s you can contact his extremely helpful P.A. Pru Bourverie at his website and purchase each set of documentaries for around £20 or £40 depending on the series.  But wait – they are also on region free discs so they can be used worldwide.

Now some of them can be purchased online via Amazon or via Maxwell Videos (as seen in the brochure below) but not all of Howard Goodall’s documentaries are available – or sent to you on region free discs.

If you like what you see in these videos and think you or your students could benefit from Howard Goodall’s musical investigations I highly recommend all of his documentaries.

Lastly, I am in the process of making worksheets to accompany the various DVD’s put out by Mr Goodall.  If you know of any that are online let me know and watch this space for when I publish mine via ISSUU.com.

I almost forgot!  Howard Goodall has a series of Podcasts available for free on iTunes.  Search for Howard Goodall in the iTunes store interface and listen to them yourself.  They are great for hearing different works, for students to research various musical aspects, or just for fun as you are driving home from work.