School of Rock: Brodbeck teaches a new course based on The Beatles

Standing in front of his class last Thursday, music professor David Brodbeck played two… Standing in front of his class last Thursday, music professor David Brodbeck played two renditions of the same piece for students to compare.

“Oh yes, wait a minute, Mr. Postman/Please, Mr. Postman/Look and see/If there’s a letter in your bag for me,” a female R’B singer crooned. It was The Marvelettes’ 1961 hit “Please Mr. Postman”

After about 60 seconds, Brodbeck cued the second track

“Oh yes, wait a minute Mr. Postman….” a gruffer, male voice sang. It was The Beatles’ 1963 cover of the song.

Brodbeck asked the class to identify which member of the band was singing lead.

Uncertain, the class gave a few guesses.

“We’ve had votes for John, Paul and George. How about Ringo?” Brodbeck joked.

He said the lead singer was John Lennon and that, by the end of the semester, the class should be able to distinguish between each Beatle’s vocal styling.

Welcome to Music 0844: The Music of The Beatles, a bona fide, three-credit course dedicated to the legendary rock ‘n’ roll band.

“This is a way for us in the music department to provide what we hope is a good, solid introduction to listening to music through a repertoire that will have an immediate appeal [to students] and is very rich and worth exploring, in any case,” Brodbeck said.

This is the first semester Pitt has offered the course, although Brodbeck has taught about The Beatles in Major Composer, a class that studies a different composer each semester, and has led an undergraduate seminar about the group.

The Music of The Beatles explores the “life and works” of the band.

The “life” aspect includes the band’s history, their formative influences (such as R’B “girl groups,” including the Marvelettes), and the group’s impact on 1960s youth culture.

The “works” aspect includes an examination of the structures and melodies of their songs, how their music evolved during the course of their career, and distinctions between the band’s three songwriters, Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

Although many students will have fun learning about popular music, they will not escape evaluations. Brodbeck expects students to complete a final and a midterm exam as well as to write summaries of readings from a course packet and be able to identify the name, composer and year of a song, as well as what Beatles’ album it originally appeared on, in six “listening quizzes.”

The class fulfills the music or art general education requirement for the School of Arts and Sciences’ students. Because of this, Brodbeck has ensured that it teaches basic music appreciation.

“Students are getting an introduction on to how to approach art meaningfully,” he said. “In a music course, this means ‘How can we go beyond having music be something we enjoy as an ambient noise, but rather something we can listen to carefully and understand how it is put together.'”

“I teach a lot of basic music-listening skills, skills that I hope will be useful to students whether they are listening to The Beatles or other rock ‘n’ roll, or whether they find themselves in Heinz Hall, listening to classical music,” he said.

This semester, every seat in the class, of which there were more than 100, was filled.

“It sounded a lot more interesting than the other options,” said Chrissy Hedge, who took the class to fulfill her music or art requirement.

Hedge said she was not a Beatles fan before this semester, but the class has taught her to appreciate their music.

Another student, Kelly Markel, said she enjoys the class and that it has taught her music-listening skills.

“There’s a lot of listening to things you don’t pay attention to normally — details on form and stuff like that,” she said.

Brodbeck expects the course to return next semester and said he is planning a class on the broader history of rock ‘n’ roll. He said that these courses represent a trend in Pitt’s music department.

“We are increasingly trying to enlarge the kinds of music we offer in the university setting, beyond narrowly defined classical traditions and world music traditions, but American popular music traditions as well,” he said.

Brodbeck’s love of The Beatles began in 1964, when his older sister brought home the single “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Since then, Brodbeck has earned a doctorate in historical musicology and has written extensively about the composers Johannes Brahms and Franz Peter Schubert, but he finds The Beatles just as timeless and fascinating.

“At the end of the day, what draws me back to The Beatles is that so many of the songs just hold up so well,” Brodbeck said. “They bear repeated hearings because they are just so rich.”

“To this day, I will listen to a song I have heard dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of times and hear something I hadn’t noticed before,” he said. “That’s always a good sign for a piece of music that is going to stand up well.”