The effect of practices based on counterpointal and homophonal pieces on students' musical listening, reading and writing achievements

In this research, it was observed whether having voice training course in the accompaniment of a counterpointal and homophonal polyphonic chorus would have a positive contribution to students' musical listening, reading and writing levels or not. The research was applied to two groups. The pieces from the chorus repertoire having a counterpointal structure were performed for ten weeks in the first group and those from the homophonal formation in the second one. The distribution was made taking the pre-test data into account to ensure the homogeneity of both groups. The listening levels of both groups were measured by experts via the pre-test and chorus practices were carried out for ten weeks. Then, it was tested whether there were significant differences in musical listening, reading and writing achievement levels through the post-test. Two different tests devised by other researchers to measure positive or negative abilities in musical listening, reading and writing skills. Sight reading skills were measured with one of them and musical listening and writing skills with the other. All data were converted to percent system and analyzed using SPSS 25 program. Moreover, the participants' feedback on the process was recorded using semi-structured interview form from developed by the researcher and prepared by making content analysis through Maxqda 12 Qualitative Data Analysis Package Program. At the end of the research, it was seen that the test means of the group performing counterpointal choir pieces were higher than those of the group performing homophonal choir pieces. Furthermore, the means of post-test scores of both groups increased in comparison with the pre-test for two-tone writing, total of two, three and four-tone writing, chord identification, dictation, grand, sight reading and overall achievement benchmarks. The program has a dramatic impact on enhancing skills of the group performing counterpointal chorus works according to the dictation, grand total and sight-reading benchmarks. Besides, it has a substantial effect on the skills of the group performing homophonal chorus works as per four-tone writing, grand total and sight-reading benchmarks. According to semi-structured interview form data, after the experimental process, the participants stated that there was a positive teacher-student relationship in their musical literacy, group interaction skills and feedback on the process. Key Words: Choir Training, Musical Listening, Musical Reading, Musical Writing, Counterpoint, Harmony