Musical literacy development in a unison children's choir

The thesis analyses the possibilities which the Slovenian educational system presents for developing musical literacy through singing. I have approached the topic from the point of view of reading music as well as improving other segments of musical literacy. By means of analysis and comparison of various curricula I have tried to establish the presuppositions for teaching musical literacy within Slovenian general as well as musical education systems. I have presented the key points with regard to conducting, aimed at helping the conductors to advance musical literacy in the broader sense of the word. This can be achieved by carefully cultivating one’s attitude towards music and towards singers; by thoughtfully selecting the repertoire; as well as by well-considered preparation of the choir practice. This analysis of broader musical literacy allowed me to further analyse its various representations. Presented in this thesis are the method of Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly as well as the method of American musician Justine Ward. Presented in the empirical part of the thesis is a case study of an original method for fostering musical literacy, developed by Franc Pohajač while working with his choirs at the town of Opčine near Trieste. Mr. Pohajač used his time with the choirs for systematically building musical literacy in both broader and narrower sense of the word. He has developed his own method of teaching, which allowed the singers to be completely autonomous with regard to reading music — after only five years of singing in his choirs. Using a non-structured interview, a questionnaire, and a qualitative analysis of the documents in the archive of his »Slovenian youth choir Joyful Spring«, I was able to study the possibilities of efficiently establishing musical literacy in youth choirs. The results have been interpreted with regard to the current national curriculum for the singing choirs. The results of this analysis show that the repertoire of the »Joyful Spring« choir supports all of the teaching objectives as defined by the current national curriculum for the singing choirs. This type of work could foster both musical literacy in the elementary-school choirs as well as a holistic musical education of the students