What are unbarred sentences?
This is another thorough way that Mrs. Curwen tests the knowledge of time notation.
I see over and over in her method her varied means of approaching the same subject manner from multiple angles. She leaves no room for misunderstanding.
Unbarred sentences are simply lines of music without bar lines.
The child has the responsibility to fill in the bar lines. If a child has any misunderstanding of time notation, this is yet another exercise put in place to bring that misunderstanding to light.
To bar the sentence pictured above, the child must understand the concept of a measure. They also must understand that measures consistently have the same number of pulses (or beats.) They also need to the time value of each note presented.
Think for a moment beyond unbarred sentences. Here’s an example of the thoroughness of Mrs. Curwen’s method. For time and rhythm concepts, a beginner piano student is asked to play a written line of rhythm, they are asked to dictate (write out) a line of rhythm that the teacher plays, and they are asked to bar musical sentences.
Each step in Mrs. Curwen’s series of method books contain unbarred sentences corresponding the teaching of that step.
In the early steps, the child is told how many pulses per measure. In the later steps, the pupil is expected to come to that conclusion based upon observation of the passage of music. (Mrs. Curwen talks much of accented beats and learning to feel them through her method.)
She goes on to say that the child is supposed to copy the unbarred sentences onto their own staff paper. Every pupil should be able to write music easily and rapidly.
She also details out how handwriting and drawing notes differs from print to manuscript music to engraved plate. She mentions digging a round hole in the paper and filling it with ink. I guess we can be thankful for our modern means of printing and writing. 😉
We won’t be digging holes in our papers any time soon.