Has anybody taught this course? I have taught three students this course but find the curriculum and exams tedious. They have exams from former years that ask the time signatures of particular movements. They have only one Canadian composer, Alexina Louie. Also they cover far too much in one course. I liked it better when they only covered Romantic music instead of Baroque through Twentieth Century as a survey. The kids have to know too much in detail to get a good mark.

Does anybody have thoughts to share on this?

I took the exam a couple of years ago, and did really well, my husband taught me the components. (I got close to a 90 on it). I found reading the supplementary material listed for the History requirements works, taking notes on the reading material, composer flashcards (there's a nice set for about ten bucks), studying the scores of the works you need to know, listening to recordings to the required pieces, watching the required operas (you can get them on DVD, often from a public library where I am), and doing the online quizzes that are part of the Machlis books.

Meri

To be honest, I resent the RCM History curriculum. I haven't had a student who is in grade 9 RCM yet, but I myself had to sit through all those dreading history exams before I got my ARCT diplomas.
Candidates have to memorize too many stuff, even in the very first level! It's nothing but memorization, thank god I was good at memorizing, so I did well. But it is not so easy for some, people even come close to failing or actually failing (according to RCM, 29% of the candidates score 70 or lower in Grade 3 History). But hey, you can do nothing about it.

I still have to take this, and I've done the ARCT. I just had such a bad experience with the grade 4 history exam that I wanted to take a break for a year or two from it all :P

Medieval vocal music isn't my forte, let me leave it at that :P

The grade 3 history actually looks pretty good, but I'm going to wait to take it at the end of this year (I have two music history classes in university this year that will probably cover 90% of it anyways).

My music history teacher in college...lo those many years ago...was a nun who studied Gregorian Chant at Oxford.

(feel my pain)

Guess how much time was devoted to "anything newer than Beethoven" in that class?