Guide for writing a contextual essay

NB This guide I used in the past for the course contextual studies, is directed to students and refers to the program in the past.

Introduction

In this document we discuss the writing of a contextual essay, one of the types of assessment used with contextual studies, a product with which you demonstrate your ability to do research on a topic of your own choice.

Contextual studies: to know, to understand, to apply, to connect and to integrate

In the course Contextual Studies we study (musical) subjects from different viewpoints or perspectives: analysis, harmonic/contrapuntal aspects, music history, cultural history, general history. The topics or subjects can be general but also specific. For example a person, a work, an oeuvre, a period,  a style and so on.

A contextual essay

In writing a contextual you demonstrate your research attitude and your ability to:

• delve into a subject of your own choice,
• formulate focused questions of which the focus question is the most important.
• infer from this focus question several subquestions 
• search for and find information from reliable sources with a good quality
• starting from focus question and subquestions you make an inventory of the most important concepts/topics related to your subject. These concepts have to be arranged, ranked  and connected with a clear goal: formulating an answer to your focus question. During this process you create an ordered view on your concepts/topics that can be used as a basis for the table of contents of your essay. 

Choosing a subject

Let’s start with the most important thing:

You have a great freedom of choice, but: your subject has to be connected with music in connection with the areas of knowledge that were mentioned in the beginning of this document. Moreover it has to contribute to your development as an upcoming musician.

Examples of ideas for subjects:

• The waltz: a comparison between waltzes by Strauss (Johann jr and sr.), Chopin, Schubert and Brahms.
• The art song (Lied): the use of symbols in art songs 
• One etude is music, and another isn't: comparing etudes by Liszt, Czerny and Chopin
• An anthology of tuba concertos: how can they be placed in the tradition of the solo concerto?
• The penomenon prelude in piano music
• In search for the origin and manifestation of the phenomenon "Nachtmusik"
• In search for the hidden treasure: Making implicit harmony and counterpoint perceptible in unaccompanied solo works (like cello suites by Bach)
• "Behind the comma": Understanding tuning and temperaments and their influence on the euphony of harmony
• The tritone in art music: Friend or foe?
• The use of sequences in contrapuntal music of J.S. Bach
• Comparing old styles and neo-styles
• …

Formulating a focus question and subquestions

The most important question of all is the central question or focus question.

This is the question you want to answer: the questions that points to the core of your study or research; the things you want to know or to learn.

From this focus question all kinds of subquestions can be inferred that can help you with finding answers and the final structuring and presentation of your answers and results in the form of a contextual essay.

NB Use the working model asking contextual questions.

Diffences between contextual essays in year 1, 2 and 3: complexity and depth

In each year you write a contextual essay on a subject of your own choice. The complexity and depth of these essays should increase when you are progressing in your study.

In year 1 it's ok to write a descriptive contextual essay. This means that you write an essay for which you collect information of good quality, make connections, and present your findings in such a way that you answer your fosuc question and subquestions in a clear way. In year 2 and 3 there has to be more complexity and depth; focus questions have to deal with "how"- and "why"-questions. The contextual essay becomes more a research with which you try to explain things.

In year 3 you are asked (if possible) to make a connection with your own future: maybe you want to do a master after your bachelor. In that case it makes sense to improve your (technical and methodological) research skills in order to be prepared for research activities on a more academic level.

Brainstorming and visualizing

During the phase of brainstorming and collecting information visualizing can be very helpful. This is sometimes called Mindmapping or Concept Mapping. You can do this with Post-Its and markers (don’t forget to take some pictures with your cell phone …), but nowadays there are clever (FREE) software-tools available on the internet:

CMaptools    http://ftp.ihmc.us/ is the best one because you are not forced into hierarchies at the beginning. The making of information rich sentences is an important principle of this approach.

Freemind     http://freemind.nl.softonic.com/

Xmind           http://www.xmind.net/

And many others.

Making connections, ordering, structuring

To obtain a clear view and overview during the phase of brainstorming it’s important to arrange/order the concepts you found.

NB Use the working model making a concept map. It can be found in the category working models. Put your focus question and general concepts at the top, group subconcepts around general concepts. On the internet you can find many examples of concept maps.

For example take a look at

http://www.inspiration.com/inspiration-science-examples

Sources

There is an important difference between the first exploration of a subject and studying a subject. A first global search with Google is ok, in order to get a global view on your subject. Searching with Google is very easy, but finding something relevant is not. Using scholar.google.com instead of “just Google”  is a step in the right direction. The same goes for the use of Wikipedia: Wikipedia is fine for a first orientation or exploration, but you always have to check the quality of the information against (preferably) academic sources. The French, German and English Wikipedia are a lot better than de Dutch one.The Oxford Music Online, Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (available in the library) and academic journals should be your first choice.

List of sources / bibliography / references

When you use existing sources you should be transparant about the way you use them. If you don't: plagiarism is on your doorstep. We use the APA-system as a guideline for citations, references, quotes, etc. Use the (free) software for managing your searches and sources. I use Zotero myself, but another tool is also ok. From within these application you can generate title-information in APA-format and copy-paste it into your bibliography.

Documenting your searches

Document your searches for each search location (portal, database)

• which search terms
• in which fields
• used filters
• used operators

In most cases you can import your results into your source tool. These applications can also generate bibliographies in the desired format, that you can export and paste in your essay.

Dutch National Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) www.kb.nl

For only € 7,50 a year you can get a digital subscription for the Dutch National Library. What they offer in relation to the humanities has dramatically declined unfortunately. But with a subscription you get access to many volumes of Cambridge Histories Online. Only that source is already worth your money.

Then you have full access to hundreds of cultural and academic journals and many reference works. It's just too much: take a look at www.kb.nl.

Of course the Hanze Media Centre also provides high quality digital resources. For example: there are 21 journals with the word music in the title. You als have access to several collection of ebooks.

For sound examples Spotify is great, with a big variety in recordings (also historical recordings). It's a music streaming service. If you use the free version you will be bombed with ads in a very very nasty way. For only € 9,99 a month you can evade that crap and enjoy a music paradise with very acceptable quality. Unfortunately the data model behind Spotify is almost useless for classical music: there is no difference between composer, performer, arranger, conductor, etc. All are subsumed under the field "artist"... and the complete Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner (4 evenings of music drama) is called  a "song"...

Imslp.org is the place to be for really free scores and sheet music from the historical repertoire. For only $ 1.80 a month (year subscription) you don't have to wait with each download and you get access to the NAXOS soundtrack library... (1.8 million tracks) AND CD booklets in PDF format. Keep in mind that free scores are often not top quality. Just nice to have the notes.

From concept map to table of contents

If you have a good concept map, you can use it to structure your essay.  Make a table of contents based on your concept map. 

Writing and illustrating

When the time has come to start writing and formulating it is very important to keep on track and have focus.

The next scheme can be helpful.

Probably the most important sentences are key sentences: sentences by which you make a statement, make a proposition, ask a question, and so on. Of course a key sentence has to be followed by some kind of elaboration in the following sentences. You will discover that good key sentences will result from connections you discovered earlier in your concept map. In good books you find key sentences at the beginning of chapters, subsections, and paragraphs, 

Size of the essay

Deciding on the scope and size of a contextual essay is a little bit arbitrary. Not the amount of pages or words count, more important is that you have to say something relevant on your focus question and how you do that. Because students don't stop asking the least important question "How many words should it be?" I surrendered and gave an indication below.

To give an indication of certain boundaries we have made the choice for a certain amount of words.

Normally 1 average A4 consists of 350-400 words.A focus question with a reasonable amount of complexity generates easily some text. So we decided upon a minimum of 5000 words (12 pages of text) and a maximum of 7000 (15 pages of text). This is just a guide. If you come out with less than 5000 words, it’s probable you treated your subject too superficially. Of course everybody knows it's perfectly possible to say absolutely nothing with even 15.000 words.

Assessment criteria for a contextual essay (checklist)

CONTENT

• Music is in the center of attention
• Analysis is a substantial part of the essay, including harmonic contrapuntal aspects
• The treatment of the dubject is contextual; connections are made to extramusical domains
• The knowledge domains of contextual studies are used: historical (general, cultural, musical), analysis, aspects of harmony and counterpoint. 

PRODUCT

• There is a title page
• The title (and subtitle if present) point to the chosen subject
• There is a correct table of contents with correct page numbers
• The used level in the table of contents are meaningful and contribute to the orientation of the reader
• There is an introduction in which the choice of the subject is motivated and the focus question and subquestions are crlearly presented
• The essay ends with a conclusion/discussio/summary and a critical reflection on the performed research
• There is a list of sources in APA-format
• In the main text references are made in an adequate and correct way.
• Only sources are present to which the main text is referring

 PROCESS

• The orientation on the subjects is clearly documented
• The search for sources is clearly documented
• The choice of sources is motivated
• There has been contact with the teacher about content and progress.