A new concept of teaching and learning ABBA's songs in the university solfeggio classroom

Abstract

A new interdisciplinary approach of teaching ABBA's songs in university solfeggio classes involves: graphical representation of melodic contours and harmonic progressions; embodied tension and relaxation caused by the (un)expected harmonic patterns/progressions, form and rhythm; aural and visual music analysis of ostinato and drone, as the elemental characteristics of popular music, and Dorian mode, PEN-tatonic and blue tones, as the main Orff-Schulwerk teaching strategies; emotions, experienced in relation to the gradual addition of voices and the chain of dominants; verbality, respecting the use of rhymes in verse translations, and the prosodic stress, musical meter and melodic contour alignment.