In an effort to learn more about effective teaching, faculty members, graduate students and scholars came together Saturday at the third annual Teaching Music History Day in the Moore Musical Arts Center.

The conference, hosted by the College of Musical Arts, ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and included a panel discussion, a keynote address and talks by professors and scholars from various colleges and universities.

Mary Natvig, associate professor of music composition and history, was in charge of hosting the conference at the University. The purpose of the conference, Natvig said, was to get faculty and graduate students thinking about teaching in the field of music history, exchanging ideas and learning from each other.

The conference, which was inspired by a book Natvig wrote, “Teaching Music History,” originated at Michigan State University to discuss the teaching issues brought up in the book.

“There were some of the best scholars in musicology there and yet they are still extremely concerned about being effective teachers,” Natvig said. “I think it’s important that the students know the faculty are very interested in issues about teaching, improving their teaching and communicating to students.”

In the conference’s keynote address, “Rewriting ‘A History of Western Music,'” J. Peter Burkholder, professor at Indiana University and president of American Musicological Society, shared his experiences while preparing a new edition of the popular college textbook.

Burkholder said one of the main problems with the textbook is that it assumed that the reader had extensive historical knowledge.

“The problem I started with is that students don’t know as much history as they did in 1960,” Burkholder said. “I wanted to make sure the writing and content in the text relates to the student that has little historical background.”

To help, Burkholder put relevant cultural background at the beginning of each chapter and historical significance at the end of every chapter.

Burkholder said his main goal was to make the text easier for students to understand and clarify what is important.

“Ultimately, I wanted to make this the most readable, usable, enjoyable and accurate version I could write,” Burkholder said.

Another speaker at the conference, Rob Haskins, professor at University of New Hampshire, spoke on the works of John Cage. In his talk, he encouraged people to expand their horizons and to listen to other works of John Cage besides what he is famous for.

Haskins added that he enjoyed the rest of the conference and considered it beneficial because it gave him a chance to get other people’s perspective on teaching and music history.

“In the classroom we never get to go very in depth on certain topics,” Haskins said. “But here, there are people sharing their area of expertise and, for me, I go back to my teaching very energized.”