A Cautionary Tale of the Health and Well-Being of College Music Students

• In Event: Reflexivity in Arts-Based Research Through Performative Autoethnography

Abstract

Presenter 3 (P3) departs from the premise that the experience of singing in a college choir can reflect the stresses and pressures faced by its members in consequence of their studies and of college life in general. Drawing on Arts-Based Educational Research as well as the practices of previous autoethnographic productions and scholarly studies, P3 sets out the story of a choral performance as a musical autoethnodrama in which the narrative is presented as a written script. Dramatizing a college Christmas concert of Handel’s Messiah, the script, with stage directions written in the second person, incorporates sung lines from the chorus “For unto us a child is born” interleaved with an unfolding story in which the protagonist slowly comes to the realization that one of his fellow choir members is inebriated onstage. It thereby reflects the thoughts that might run silently through one’s head during a choral performance, illustrating some of the non-musical challenges presented by that performance, and, by extension, other issues of well-being arising from living within student culture. The inclusion of a layer of music in the autoethnodrama facilitates the audience’s imagination of its performance context as well as enabling the author to set the scene appropriately. In doing so, it brings to light the emotions typically felt by students grappling with the anxieties and frustrations of college life, revealing the vulnerability inherent in musical performance in addition to highlighting the need for greater emphasis on developing positive well-being in music students.

Author

• Matthew Yanko, University of British Columbia