Month: March 2018

Posted on

Jorgensen – Pictures of Music Education

In reading the final chapter of Jorgensen’s Pictures of Music Education, I was most drawn to the metaphor of the garden. Especially the part where Jorgensen explained how the cultivating of the garden is accomplished. “It accomplishes these aims through emphasizing aesthetic and artistic values and transforming musical traditions by fostering new and divergent musical expressions.” My final paper, which will center around a reaction against Randall Allsup’s book Remixing the Classroom and his paper The Problems of Band, will attempt to explore the ways that large ensembles (in my case the wind band) is uniquely positioned to provide opportunities for artistic values while being a strong vessel for new music.

Like Jorgensen suggested in the first chapter, it is perhaps better to avoid “one all-encompassing grand narrative” and instead “see the work of music education in ways that defy reduction to a single universal principle or set of principles.” Throughout this semester I haves often times found myself struggling to understand the main arguments that writers such as Elliot or Reimer make it their philosophies of music education. What I’m starting to wonder now is if my struggle to understand is linked to these authors attempting to see music education through a single lens.

It could also be because my own ideas behind why we should be teaching music are too dependent on a single principle. That mixed with a personal philosophy that isn’t entirely fleshed out or understood, results in myself feeling more lost as to why we’re teaching than before I started this course.

I know I enjoy music making, both the process of rehearsal and the public performance that allows for the sharing of the art; and I know that an emphasis on great music is important to me. But beyond that, when considering other aspects of music education – such as Jorgenson’s village, factory, or web – I haven’t yet been able to make a personal connection or establish a specific philosophy.

Perhaps the question I need to answer consider is, does the why of music education matter more for the teacher or the student. If the student comes in with their own why, does the teacher need to consider it? We already arrived at the same art form, why not just spend our time creating art instead of trying to rationalize our choice for doing it?

Obviously, I am posing more questions that I’m answering. Hopefully with time (and the looming deadline of a philosophical paper) I’ll be able to arrive at some conclusions.

Posted on

(more) Music Matters & Elliott

In Chapter 8 of Music Matters, David Elliott attempts to describe the different parts and aspects of a Musical Product. These Musical Products, or as Elliott later calls them Musical Process-Products, are comprised of performance-interpretation, design-syntax, praxis-specific style characteristics, musical-emotional expressions, musical representations, cultural-ideological dimensions, narrative dimensions, autobiographical dimensions, and ethical dimensions.

All told I feel like Elliott is effective in describing the multiple dimensions of Musical Products and while none of the assertions made in the chapter are especially groundbreaking, it does provide a solid foundation for Elliott to argue against the principles of aesthetic music education.

For me, the most important claim Elliott makes comes at the end of the chapter on page 303.

“For now, it’s important to emphasize that it’s not a teacher’s job to assign emotional descriptions to pieces or passages in music without students’ participation in discussions and musical interpretations. The teacher’s responsibility is to open spaces where students can feel and develop their own emotive descriptors of musical experiences and meanings.”

In this sense, music’s abstract nature (a nature that Elliott seems to run from at times) can provide students a unique opportunity to experience art on an emotional level. Yes, a Elliott points out, these emotional inferences are shaped by society and experience; but it’s important for teachers to remember that their students’ experiences are different from their own and that students are capable of developing unique interpretations of music. This is not something that is easily assessed in classrooms but it is an important and vital part of the arts.

One issue I take with this chapter is how Elliott, through a focus on the process of listening and interpreting music, doesn’t give enough space to discuss composers and composition. Running through most of this chapter is a focus on how listeners gather meaning from music through different means (the dimensions of Musical Products) but what about the composer who truly is composing abstract music? Take for example composer James Syler, a composer who while known for composing pieces with programmatic titles, decided to write a Sinfonietta for Wind Ensemble. The piece opens with a 12-tone fugue at the minor 7th. In talking with James he said it took him several weeks to figure out how to get the fugue to work, mathematically. Here is a composition that is not emotionally based, it’s abstract in the truest sense. That is not to say that it can’t elicit an emotional response from a listener but if Elliott is working to a establish a philosophy of music education that encompasses all aspects of musicing, then he should keep in mind all the ways in which music can be created, not just the ones that align with his argument at the time.