Experience as a music lecturer in higher/further education and as an instrumental teacher suggests that instrumental pedagogy – focused on strings – and music analysis could usefully be brought closer together to enhance performance. The benefits of linkage include stimulating intellectual enquiry and creative interpretation, as well as honing improvisatory skills; voice-leading analysis, particularly, may even aid technical issues of pitching, fingering, shifting and bowing. This article details an experimental curriculum, entitled ‘Voice-leading for Strings’, which combines voice-leading principles with approaches to string teaching developed from Nelson, Rolland and Suzuki, supplemented by Kodály's hand-signs. Findings from informal trials at Lancaster University (1995–7), which also adapted material for other melody instruments and keyboard, strongly support this perceived symbiotic relationship.

This is a sister article to one that appeared in this journal in 1999, which established benefits in coupling instrumental study and voice-leading analysis, primarily for performers but also for analysts. That analytical students too were more receptive to study when connected with their instrument was the cue for the present article; performance has much to offer the teaching/learning of non-tonal analytical techniques founded on the basic tenets of set theory. This article details an experimental curriculum, ‘Practising set theory’, tested at Lancaster University across 2001–2, in comparison with more traditional methods employed across 1995–2002, and in relation to the new ‘Music benchmark statement’ (2002). Beyond the specifics, it is hoped this research may interest other practitioners seeking alternative pedagogical approaches to parts of the Music curriculum perceived as difficult or especially demanding.

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