Learning Music Theory Through Musical Theatre During a Pandemic

This research focuses on the application of Musical Theatre in the subject of Music Theory, in specialized Music Education. The issue to be explored is related to the development of new creative approaches in Music Theory Education, showing how Musical Theatre, through song, movement and performance, can contribute, as a pedagogic resource, to the implementation of strategies to promote musical, conceptual, attitudinal and motivation skills in musical learning. The methodology applied was action research, taking a first-grade Music Theory class as the target population with five students, aged between ten and twelve years, at the Castelo Branco Regional Conservatory (CRCB), Proença-a-Nova branch, during the 2019/2020 school year, and lasted 10 sessions. Surveys through questionnaires (applied at the beginning and end of the research), reflective summaries of classes and observation grids were used as research instruments. According to the evidence presented in the course of the study, the strategies adopted reveal a significant improvement in students’ musical skills and knowledge, despite the limitations caused by Covid-19, positively contributing to their motivation and interest in the exploitation of musical content. In this sense, we conclude that the results obtained throughout the study reveal that the practical application of Musical Theatre in Music Theory classes can be a very significant pedagogical resource, substantially improving knowledge acquisition, interest and motivation for musical learning.