Showing papers in "Music Educators Journal in 1967"

The Musical Aptitude Profile

Abstract: * For more than fifty years, music educators and psychologists have debated the nature of musical aptitude. Regardless of the fact that philosophical opinion has been more abundant than experimental research, music educators generally tend to think that musical aptitude is best understood as a product of environmental influences and inherited potential. All aptitude tests are, to some degree, achievement tests. At any particular time in a person's life, his aptitude for accomplishing a given goal, whether it be completing a course in algebra, graduating from medical school, or learning to play a musical instrument, depends not only upon innate qualities, but also upon characteristics acquired through generalized environmental influence and direct teaching. An aptitude test may be distinguished from an achievement test only to the extent that the generalized function of aptitude is relatively maximized, and specifically taught course-content material is relatively minimized. The Musical Aptitude Profile is designed to minimize musical

The Museum of Music: A History of Mechanical Instruments:

Abstract: II At what may have been the first educational media conference ever held in the field of music, Percy A. Scholes, in 1925, expounded the virtues of the player-piano and the reproducing piano for music education. In a demonstration of the many educational possibilities of these \"extraordinary mechanical contrivances,\" he concurred with Alexander MacKenzie, chairman of the Committee on the Educational Use of Piano-Player Rolls, that \"All musical educationists of standing are today agreed as to the high value of the ordinary 'Pianola' Roll, and 'Duo-Art' Roll, and the Gramophone Record.\"! Few music educators will recall that forty years ago the Pianola held as much educational promise as the phonograph recording. Mechanical aids for storing and reproducing musical sounds have come and gone during the last thousand years. As a means of bringing music to a broader audience, mechanical instruments have a history that is inseparable from developments in music education. Perhaps the most effective and far-reaching \"music educator\" at the present time is the

A Short History of Keyboard Music

Abstract: Oscar Bie was born in Breslau in 1864. He received his doctorate in 1886 from the University of Leipzig, his major fields of study being the history of art and the history of philology. This book, Bie's first, was published in Germany in 1898 and was brought out in its first English edition the following year. The book begins with a study of early English keyboard music and proceeds chronologically to the time at which Bie was writing. The first two chapters deal with England of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and with France of the seventeenth century. Then follow chapters which deal with Italian Baroque composers, Scarlatti, Bach, the \"galant\" school, and Beethoven, with the final three chapters being devoted to the music literature and performers of the nineteenth century. To seek in Bie's outlook the objective detachment which one comes to expect in much of today's scholarship would be a mistake. To do so would be to miss the point that, for his age, Bie might very well be considered the height of objectivity. His style of writing is warm, personal, and at the same time quite perceptive. He often lapses into rapturous description, but he also gives us sensitive observations of significance. Perhaps the greatest value of the book comes with Bie's discussion of the music and musicians of the nineteenth century. In dealing with his own age, the author takes on the role of a music journalist and critic to a much greater extent than he did in the earlier portions of the book. He includes enthusiastic reports of performers and composers, some of whom have dropped into oblivion with the passing years. He writes with the ardor of a man who is discussing newly-discovered literature and exciting performances heard first-hand. Thus, with Oscar Bie as a guide, the reader may easily find himself completely submerged in the atmosphere of the nineteenth century, all the while gaining enormous insights into the literature and the performance practices of that age. Until the past decade, books dealYou'll never guess the strength of a RICO REED.

The Contribution of Music Education to the Understanding of Foreign Cultures, Past and Present

Abstract: The author, Secretary-General of the International Society for Music Education, is Professor at the Oldenburg Teachers College, Oldenburg, Germany, Vice-President of the International Music Council, and President of the German Music Educators Association. He presented this speech at the ISME meeting, Interlochen, Michigan, on Thursday, August 25, 1966. gone further development from country to country, and created an autonomous cultural realm. It has

American Musical Theater

Abstract: vocal literature can justifiably omit the quantity and quality of works written for the American musical theater. These works are widely performed today not only in school, university, and community theaters across the fifty states, but also on stages meant for the presentation of serious music throughout the world. The American musical theater attracts the talents of vocal artists formerly associated exclusively with the opera house and concert hall, and has provided some of its own well-trained practitioners, in return, to those \"higher\" pursuits. The influence has been mutual and mutually enriching. As the American nation has been a nationalistic melting-pot, American musical theater has been a musical one. Seventeenth-century ballad opera provided many of the simple closed forms, such as popular street and folk songs, that are its standard fare. Useful elements have been assimilated from pantomime and ballet, Viennese and English light opera. French operabouffe, vaudeville, music hall, and minstrelsy. With few exceptions, its melodies and harmonies remain firmly rooted in the late nineteenth century, but its rhythms of late owe something more to the freedom of twentieth-century jazz practices. From the pattern established by the minstrel troupes of the midnineteenth century, from the timing and movement of the Tony Pastor variety shows of the late 1860's and 1870's, the commonplace subject matter of Ned Harrigan's \"Mulligan Guard\" series during the 1880's, the accidental interpolation of one hundred French ballet girls into the melodramatic extravaganza, The Black Crook, in 1886; from the quick wit of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company appearances during that same decade, and the melodic emphasis of Viennese operettas; from the mechanical effects and realistic stage settings of the Hungarian Kiralfy Brothers; from the spacious Moorish design of Rudolf Aronson's Casino in 1881, and its Garden Roof for summer productions; from all these and many, many more sources grew and flourished American \"musical com-

Amateurs and Music

Abstract: The author (b. September 15, 1880-d. March 9, 1965), an attorney-at-law by profession, was a widely known pianist, composer, and author. He translated into English all the texts of the Bach cantatas as well as the complete vocal works of Brahms and Schumann. This article, based on an address presented by Mr. Drinker at the North Central Music Educators Conference meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, March 19, 1935, is reprinted from the 1935 Conference Yearbook. one who earns his livelihood by music, he may be also an amator, if his guiding motive is his love for music and his desire to share his better understanding of it with his fellowmen—if he be one of those rare souls who truly serve music, instead of expecting music to serve him. No one, on the other hand, is, in my opinion, a genuine amateur whose primary urge to music is the exhibition of his beautiful voice or his vocal or digital dexterity; nor, indeed, does such gymnastic proficiency constitute him a musician. The word "amateur" is the Latin amator, a lover, and is similar to the Italian dilettante, he who "delights" in music. As originally applied to the fine arts, these words did not carry their present connotation of superficiality. Dr. Burney, on his Italian trip of 1771, speaks of "Count Brühl, a great dilettante . . . who plays in a very masterly manner upon several instruments," and of the "famous dilettante, Count Benevento, a great performer on the violin and a good composer." In 1768, Boccherini dedicated his first string quartet: At Veri Cognoscitori e Dilettanti di Musica—"To Those Who Truly Understand and Delight in Music," an apt definition of a musician, whether professional or amateur. In our day, however, most musical

Non-Performance Music Classes in Secondary Schools

Abstract: have the purpose of learning music for performance, but rather concentrate on the hearing of music and the study of music history, literature, and theory. There is frequently, it is true, some singing and playing of music by the pupils in these academic classes, but such performance is only for the purpose of increasing the understanding of the music being studied or helping the boys and girls to learn how to play and sing together in-

Conversation with the Blues.

Abstract: three hundred notes of the \"Fourth Movement\" of Dvorak's Fifth Symphony, we found that certain patterns of notes appeared to dominate the music. We therefore took as our hypothesis the idea that these dominant patterns tied the music together and, in fact, represented the original theme of the composer. With this idea in mind we wrote a program which would have the computer find the series of notes in the music which would best represent the dominant patterns. The results on the Dvorak were excellent; the computer extracted the familiar theme of the \"Fourth Movement.\" We then turned to music which would be a little more rigorous to analyze: the sonata movement of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 1 in F Major. Analyzing all four voices using the programs which we had developed, we achieved a near-perfect result. The computer gave the following notes as the theme (1st violin):

Education for The Aesthetic Experience

Abstract: Aesthetic education presents unique problems that have not been encountered by the traditional subjects. In aesthetic education the material to be manipulated is not a learned technique, a set of facts and theories, or sets of easily measured achievements. It is an education of feeling, of taste, of sensitivity, and of all those experiences which lie just beyond linguistic description. hiany aspects of an aesthetic nature seem to defy definition, description, and explanation. Although everyone is at least vaguely aware of what is hewn as the aesthetic experience, it seems to remain more intangible than the most abstract of mathcmatical concepts. In this enigma the major problem of aesthetic education is found. I t creates difficulties not only for the teachcr, but also for. those who recognize its value and have the responsibility for convincing others of that value. It is not a wholly new problem, but is new in the form of a popular notion. In Problems of Art, Susanne Langer reasons that, . . . a wide neglect of artistic education is a neglect in the education of feeling. Most people are so imbued with the idea that feeling is a firmless total orgnnic excitement in human beings . . . that the idea of educatin feeling, developing its scope and qua ity, seems odd to them, if not absurd.

Musical Socialization and the Schools

Abstract: is no doubt about the fact that the school constitutes an important factor in creating a new musical audience and in shaping musical taste in contemporary society. The school, however, is not the only institution which exerts this influence upon people. It might be interesting to consider influences on musical behavior-taste, interest, and activity-which come from outside the school but, nevertheless, affect music teaching at school. The school is not entirely divorced from the rest of society; it recruits its students from society and they enter the school with certainlargely socially determined attitudes, aspirations, and expectations, as well as certain skills which predispose them to a larger or smaller extent to the school music program. Here the primary concern is with social factors. This means, among other things, not much interest is

Music in American Society the MENC Tanglewood Symposium Project

Abstract: Center, Erich Leinsdorf, Director, the Theodore Presser Foundation, and the Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts. Louis G. Wersen of Philadelphia, MENC President, is Chairman ex officio of the Project; Robert A. Choate of Boston University is Director, and Alvin C. Eurich, President of the Aspen Institute is serving as Project Advisor. are reflected at international, federal, state, and local levels more forcefully than ever in our nation's history; -The increase in knowledge in all fields, the continuing revolution in science and technology, changing patterns of social and economic life, the conflict of ideologies, the impacts of technology and mass media, and the expanding roles of government are affecting all levels of education; -Within educational systems, emphases on scientific and technological areas or subjects, college entrance requirements, and expanded curriculums tend to create imbalances in education of students. The fine arts and humanities often are relegated to

Improving Student-Teacher Supervision

Abstract: The author is Assistant Professor of Music, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. This article was the outgrowth of seminars on student teaching directed by the author at East Carolina University and The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. intent, supervision in practice is usually of the \"do as you please\" or \"do as I say\" variety. While the fallibility of the former is self-evident, the well-intentioned nature of the latter and more predominant, autocratic type of supervision does little to prepare the student teacher for the multitude of difficulties he will encounter in the demanding and ever-changing career field of music education.

The Seventh International Conference of ISME

Abstract: by Frank Callaway * In 1953 Charles Seeger of the United States-a scholar-musician whose leadership was responsible for the first steps that eventually led to the founding of ISME-wrote that the quandary of music education was deciding which should predominate, the view of the professional musician or that of the professional educator. He drew attention to the then prevalent opposing viewpoints of the musician who traditionally emphasized subject matter and the educator who tended to be more concerned with

Preparation for Music Administration in Higher Education

Abstract: * Educators assume academic administrative tasks for a variety of reasons, ranging from departmental seniority to a personal desire to deal with the larger problems of a discipline. Certain types of positions in college and university music departments require, and indeed develop, a talent for organizing and administering programs. For example, the director of bands, because he frequently organizes and directs the activities of the wind-

The Humanistic Curriculum

Abstract: cessful internalized, and upon which the students' entry into what they, too, are now internalizing, so heavily depends. We are becoming acutely aware of at least the materialistic consequences of lack of success in the system. Yet we have thought scarcely at all about some possibly alarming human consequences of complete adjustment to and success in the system. The societal commitment to non-