What would an alien know if they saw a group of people playing cards? And what does the answer tell us about teaching music?
They wouldn’t know if the people were playing poker or canasta or euchre, and if you told them what the game was, the alien would assume that all games of cards followed the same rules. Same cards = same rules. The malleability of a deck of cards is a feature, but it’s not without challenges – the greatest being that wildly different games can be played using the same 52 cards.
That’s why Hoyle’s Book of Cards has long been so valuable – it is the perfect reference for how to play a game. Not necessarily the best way to learn a game, but the best way to make sure the rules are agreed by all, and to understand the differences between games.
When we have young musicians, they are also going to assume that the rules are always the same. Renaissance, Romantic, jazz – all can be sung the same. Just as the deck of cards stays constant across different games, so the idea of group music-making stays constant.
I don’t want to ask my students to read a “Hoyle’s Rules of Music.” But I do want them to leave understanding the differences between styles, and to be able to at least “play a hand” in lots of different styles.