Today's music theory instructors face a changing environment, one where the traditional lecture format is in decline. The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy addresses this change head-on, featuring battle-tested lesson plans alongside theoretical discussions of music theory curriculum and course design.

Leigh VanHandel is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of British Columbia.

PART I: Fundamentals / 1. Music theory and working memory (Leigh VanHandel) / 2. Putting the music in "music fundamentals" (Melissa Hoag) / 3. A cornucopia of accidentals (Paula J. Telesco) / 4. Contouring as a powerful tool for pitch awareness (Jan Miyake) / 5. Incorporating melodicas into the music theory classroom (Chelsey L. Hamm) / 6. Music fundamentals games (Stefanie Dickinson) / PART II: Rhythm and Meter / 7. Introducing musical meter through perception (Stanley V. Kleppinger) / 8. Starting from scratch: Representing meter using simple programming tools (Daniel B. Stevens) / 9. 'Computer programmed with just one finger': Transcribing rap beats with the Roland TR-808 (Michael Berry) / 10. Rebeaming rhythms: Helping students 'feel' the need for correct beaming (Gene S. Trantham) / 11. Clapping for credit: A pedagogical application of Reich's Clapping Music (Jon Kochavi) / 12. Hindustani Tal: Non-Western explorations of meter (Anjni H. Amin) / PART III: Core Curriculum / Diatonic Harmony / 13. Small-scale improvisation in the music theory classroom (Nancy Rogers) / 14. The cognitive and communicative constraints of part-writing (Daniel Shanahan) / 15. Voice-leading detectives (Meghan Naxer) / 16. Harmonic sequences simplified: The first week of instruction (Brent Auerbach) / 17. Grading the song (Michael Baker) / 18. Finding the implied polyphony in the Minuet II from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major (Edward Klorman) / Chromatic Harmony / 19. Using tendency tones to teach the morphology and syntax of chromatic harmony (Stacey Davis) / 20. Apply yourself! An active learning lesson plan for introducing secondary dominants (Patricia Burt) / 21. Plot twists: Narrative pivots and the enharmonic augmented sixth chord (Jena Root) / 22. Chromatic mediants through the context of film music (Erik Heine) / 23.How to analyze chromatic lament-bass harmonizations (without tears) (Jason Britton) / 24. Introduction to common-tone diminished-seventh chords (Nicole Biamonte) / 25. 'It's an N, bro': Teaching enharmonic reinterpretation of fully diminished seventh chords by ear (David Heetderks) / PART IV: Aural Skills / 26. Defending the straw man: Modulation, solmization, and what to do with a brain (Gary S. Karpinski) / 27. Speaking Music (Justin Mariner/Peter Schubert) / 28. Finding your way home: Methods for finding tonic (Tim Chenette) / 29. Error detection in aural skills classes (Alexandrea Jonker) / 30. In search of hidden treasures: An exercise in symphonic hearing (Daniel B. Stevens) / 31. An aural skills introduction to twelve tone music: Dallapiccola's 'Vespro, Tutto Riporti' (David Geary) / PART V: Post-Tonal Theory / 32. Setting sets aside: Prioritizing motive, text, and diversity in post-tonal analysis courses (Michael Buchler) / 33. Teaching and learning early twentieth century techniques at the keyboard (Lynnsey J. Lambrecht) / 34. Starting the twentieth century with a bang! A lesson plan for whole-tone scales in Tosca (Christopher Doll) / 35. 20th-century Polymodality: Scalar Layering, Chromatic Mismatch, and Symmetry (José Antonio Martins) / 36. Twelve-tone study using symbols in Dallapiccola's 'Fregi,' from Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera (Joe Argentino) / 37. Integral serialism - analysis of Gerhard, String Quartet No. 1, mvt. 3 (Rachel Mann) / 38. Mapping symmetry and form in George Crumb's "A Prophecy of Nostradamus" (Natalie Williams) / PART VI: Form / 39. Principles of form (Áine Heneghan) / 40. Recomposing phrase structure (Eric Hogrefe) / 41. Teaching musical structure through Disney songs (Andrew Vagts/Douglas Donley) / 42. From theory to practice: How to compose a sentence (Andrew Schartmann) / 43. Incorporating Latin-American popular music in the study of musical form (Gabriel Navia and Gabriel Ferrão Moreira) / 44. Binary form through the music of underrepresented composers (Victoria Malawey) / 45. A form-functional approach to binary form analysis (Andreas Metz) / 46. Exploring ternary form through the lens of analysis-performance in a Mozart aria (Betsy Marvin) / 47. Sonata-allegro form: Understanding the drama (Tom Childs) / 48. Concerto form: Transforming a sonata into a concerto (Patrick Johnson) / PART VII: Popular Music / 49. Popular music in the classroom (John Covach) / 50. The Beatles' 'Day Tripper': A tortured stretching of the twelve-bar blues (Walter Everett) / 51. Making borrowed chords pop: teaching modal mixture through popular music (Josh Albrecht) / 52. Chromatic mediants in popular music (Victoria Malawey) / PART VIII: Who, What, and How We Teach / 53. Challenges and opportunities of teaching music theory at community colleges (and elsewhere) (Nathan Baker) / 54. More than just four chords: teaching music theory/aural skills to music industry majors (Jennifer Snodgrass) / 55. Instructing a range of experience within the music theory classroom (Cora S. Palfy) / 56. Music theory pedagogy and public music theory (J. Daniel Jenkins) / 57. Analytical podcasting (William O'Hara) / 58. Designing for access in the classroom and beyond (Jennifer Iverson) / 59. Music analysis and accessibility in the music theory classroom (Shersten Johnson) / 60. Accommodating dyslexia in aural skills: A case study (Charlene Romano) / 61. Writing exams cooperatively with students (Jan Miyake) / 62. What should an undergraduate music theory curriculum teach? (And, alas, what most of the time we don't) (Justin London) / 63. Strategies for revising music curricula for the 21st century: a case study (Deborah Rifkin) / 64. Putting it together: Rethinking the theory curriculum (Matthew Heap) / 65. Adapting the aural skills curriculum: a move away from 'the' right answer (Susan M. Piagentini) / 66. Cultivating creativity: Questions, relevance, and focus in the theory classroom (Philip Duker) / 67. Using video technology in music theory assignments (Marcelle Pierson) / 68. Incorporating improvisation in a theory class on contemporary music (Cynthia Folio)