Lesson Objectives:
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
- Analyze how our concept of musical talent was shaped by eugenicists.
- Critique cultural ideas around civilization, refinement, and perfection in relation to music.
- Identify how eugenics excluded or devalued certain groups of people and their musical traditions.
- Reflect on how digital storytelling can challenge inherited ideas about skills, ability, and talent.
Source Needed:
Seashore, Carl Emil, The Psychology of Musical Talent, (Boston: Silver, Burdett and Co., 1919) Available free online: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Psychology_of_Musical_Talent/REMpkP7q7uQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover.
Warm-Up Activity: (15 min.)
Students complete a short writing prompt:
- What kind of music comes to mind when you think of “civilized” or “refined?” What genres or qualities of a musician do you associate with those terms? Where do you think these ideas come from?
The teacher may want to display definitions of terms to guide student brainstorming.
- Refined: elegant and cultured in appearance, manner, or taste.
- Civilized: at an advanced stage of social and cultural development.
The teacher facilitates a class discussion, and students share out their ideas gathered from the writing prompt.
Mini-Lecture: Carl Seashore and Eugenics in Music (10-15 min.)
Be sure to touch upon the following information:
- Carl Seashore developed tests in the early 20th century to attempt to measure musical ability (pitch, rhythm, tone, memory).
- His ideas aligned with eugenics, believing that talent and intelligence were inherited or measurable.
- His psychological tests shaped education policy, conservatories and college admissions, gifted and talented programs, and established cultural hierarchies for decades.
- Seashore framed non-Western, improvised, or intuitive musical traditions as less than, reinforcing white racial superiority.
- Teacher can use pages 136-141 of Seashore’s The Psychology of Musical Talent, to display charts and statistics. These graphs illustrate percentile distributions and help show how eugenic logics are constructed.
Primary Source Analysis: Carl Seashore, The Psychology of Musical Talent (55-60 min.)
Selected excerpts from The Psychology of Musical Talent, this activity can be done as a jigsaw with students reading in pairs and/or groups.
Excerpts to use:
- Pages 1-6 (CH I: The Point of View)
- 27-29 (CH I: The Value of a Talent Inventor)
- 65-71 (CH II: Capacity Elemental)
- 180-185 (CH IX: Serial Action)
As students are reading their assigned passages, they should answer the following analysis questions:
- What is Seashore’s definition of musical talent?
- What values are embedded in his frameworks of analysis?
- What assumptions are made about who is musically talented?
- How might Seashore’s ideas be used to exclude people based on culture, race, class, or learning style?
Students share out their findings with one another and record their notes either on a graphic organizer or a concept map displayed on the board.
Closing Activity (10-15 min.)
Ask students to discuss or write an exit ticket in response to the following reflection questions:
- What surprised you about Seashore’s ideas?
- Why do ideas like “refinement” and “natural talent” carry so much weight in today’s society?
- How might digital storytelling allow us to rewrite these narratives and expand the definition of music and ability?
