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THE AMERICAN MUSICIANSHIP SUITE™
The American Musicianship Suite™ is an American music education organization offering a comprehensive musicianship program for pre-collegiate study that is lauded by leading American music theorists and composers. The program is intended for systematic cultivation of strong critical thinking and historical awareness through study of music and for systematic cultivation of the skills and awareness that comprise musicianship and musical literacy. The curriculum and program are organized into ten sequential volumes, which are divided into two equal parts: Part One: Beginning Musicianship™ in five levels and Part Two: Advanced Musicianship™ in five levels.

Part One
The American Musicianship Suite Part One: Beginning Musicianship™ is comprised of five levels integrating ear-training, music theory, music history, and music appreciation. The program is designed to cultivate critical thinking, historical awareness, and balanced basic musicianship in children and adolescents aged approximately six years to eighteen years. The musical curriculum approximates robust equivalence to undergraduate music-minor study—excluding applied instrumental and ensemble instruction—typical at mid- to upper-tier American universities. Beginning Musicianship™ may be used as a complete musicianship program for children and adolescents and regarded as a terminal course of study. It also may be used and regarded as a preparatory program for The American Musicianship Suite Part Two: Advanced Musicianship™. Successful completion of Beginning Musicianship, or demonstrative equivalency, is prerequisite for participation in Advanced Musicianship™.

Part Two
The American Musicianship Suite Part Two: Advanced Musicianship™ is comprised of five levels integrating ear-training, music theory, music history, and music appreciation. The program is designed to cultivate critical thinking, historical awareness, and balanced advanced musicianship in adolescents and adults approximately thirteen years and up. Advanced Musicianship™ is intended for use with pre-professional music students and with adolescents and adults with exceptional vocational and/or avocational musical interest. The musical curriculum approximates robust equivalence to freshman and sophomore music-major theory and ear-training sequences—excluding applied instrumental and ensemble instruction—typical at mid- to upper-tier American universities. The curriculum exceeds requirements for the American College Board Advanced Placement Music Theory curriculum (the “AP Music Theory Test”).

The American Musicianship Suite Part One: Beginning Musicianship and The American Musicianship Suite Part Two: Advanced Musicianship together form an in-depth, comprehensive, rigorously graduated course of study for enriched critical thinking and historical awareness and for cultivating strong, well-balanced musicianship. Notably, the program provides exceptionally seamless and robust transition from introductory, elementary musical materials to sophisticated skill with, and awareness of, Western musical art.

Distinguishing Attributes
Salient distinguishing characteristics of The American Musicianship Suite include:


 * Non-Profit Status The American Musicianship Suite employs a not-for-profit business model, which is consonant with its mission of public service and commitment to support the American general public education system.


 * Public Service Charter The first directive of The American Musicianship Suite charter is “to serve the public and greater civic good.” This directive reinforces the organization’s mission of public service and guards against evolution of organizational and bureaucratic self-fulfillment and “mission drift.”


 * De-emphasis of Adjudication The American Musicianship Suite curriculum and program are rigorously graduated and provide precise, quantitative tools for evaluating students’ progress; however, the spirit of the curriculum and the tenor of materials strongly emphasize the joy of participation and understanding. These elements are formally valued above progression through levels and competitive advancement.


 * Pre Common Practice Period Study The American Musicianship Suite regards the Renaissance Period (c. 1450–1600) as fully equal to all musical and historical periods following. Thus, students gain uncharacteristically thorough introduction to the modal system and the evolution of tonal harmony, as well as an overview of the context of Western musical art and history during the Renaissance.


 * Emphasis on Cognitive Musicianship The American Musicianship Suite systematically cultivates the fundamental constituents of musicianship: ear-training, music theory, music history, and music appreciation. The curriculum and program are intended for use in tandem with applied instrumental training, but instrumental study is not legislated by the program.


 * Express Design for American Pedagogy The American Musicianship Suite is designed expressly for American educational systems. As such, America’s role, perspective, and experience in the tradition of Western art music—and its place in Western history as congruent with Western music history—are included in The American Musicianship Suite program and curriculum.

Didactic Philosophy
The didactic philosophy of The American Musicianship Suite is non-ideological. The work neither adheres nor subscribes to a particular school, method, or methodology and eschews affiliation with all figureheads and personalities. Rather, the curriculum optimizes an amalgam of philosophies and methods that are historically proven successful. Thus, the collective philosophical essence of numerous eminent musicians, teachers, scientists, and scholars—Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, Carl Orff, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Adele Diamond, and Mike Rose—figures prominently in the architecture and pedagogy of The American Musicianship Suite. Primary principles governing the work are: 1.)	Emphasis on play-centric, active, participatory learning 2.)	Emphasis on synergy in design, organization, presentation, and reinforcement of material 3.)	Graduated accumulation of skill and awareness methodically accreted over time 4.)	Presentation and learning within dimensional historical context incorporating the Big History didactic model.

History
Genesis of The American Musicianship Suite™ was sparked by commonly acknowledged general deficiency in pre-collegiate musicianship in The United States by the American music-education community; by need for a domestic, comprehensive alternative to use of foreign programs and curricula for pre-collegiate musicianship training in The United States, and; by acknowledgement of substantive new research in cognition, learning, and pedagogy.

Formal literature review for the work began in 2005 with an exhaustive research study of national and international music programs and curricula. Ongoing research included in-depth study of Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) curriculum and “The Music Development Program” (The Canadian Royal Conservatory of Music enterprise in The United States); the Carnegie Hall Achievement Program (TAP) (an outgrowth of initial work between Carnegie and RCM); The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in England (ABRSM); The National Conservatory of Music of America (NCMA); The Music Teachers National Association (MTNA); The National Association for Music Education (MENC); and the American College Board Advanced Placement Curriculum. Literature review also included a number of ideologically based, for-prophit enterprises in childhood music education: Music Together, and Kindermusik, among others. Formal curriculum development began in 2009, and the first edition of The American Musicianship Suite Part One: Beginning Musicianship was published in the spring of 2012. The first edition of The American Musicianship Suite Part Two: Advanced Musicianship is slated for release in the spring of 2019.

Application
The American Musicianship Suite program and curriculum are available only to authorized educational organizations and institutions and only through formal annual licensing. The program is ideally suited for use in community music schools, college preparatory programs, specialized arts- and humanities-based schools, and certain charter and specialized educational programs. The American Musicianship Suite is unsuitable for use as general music curriculum in typical American public school systems, as the curriculum exceeds the scope and focus of general music education in the United States.