Music in education
The modern teaching of music centres around four main ideas.
The pupils must be trained to appreciate the beauties of music. To enable
the pupil to feel and experience the beauty of music is the natural
starting point for musical education and remains its essential feature.
Purely theoretical lessons no longer serve any useful purpose. If
certain theories have to be taught, this should be done as occasion
offers, during some actual musical experience; they will then make
the pupil more aware of music itself, which must be the pivot of all
our teaching.
Our curricula must follow a psychological and not a logical order. In the old
days, the teaching of music followed a logical sequence. Modern peda-
gogy has replaced this by a psychological sequence, which takes into
account the origin and processes of the human faculties. In all branches
of instruction-sense of melody, rhythm, harmony and polyphony,
sensitivity to form, and so on-the modern teaching of music tries to
discover the methods most in keeping with the natural development
of the child's mind. Though much research remains to be done, the
results already obtained are amply sufficient for guidance in drawing
up a curriculum.
Emphasis should be laid on giving priori0 to the musical activities of
the pupils tbemselves. In trying to create a firm psychological basis for
music education, the closest attention should be paid to methods
likely to stimulate the various psychological elements which play
their part in the musical activity of the pupils. More than any other,
the creative method helps them to develop individual expression and
attracts general attention. Improvisation, indeed, is the ideal way of
stimulating the various musical faculties. OrfYs system is a striking
example of this.
Listeners must be given systematic training. In educating listeners, what
matters most is the systematic and harmonious training of all their
musical faculties. The only way to increase their musical sensitivity is
by actual daily contact with music in all its aspects. The listener's sen-
sitivity must be cultivated if he is to learn to appreciate any musical
work in its entirety-form, harmony, melody, rhythm, etc. This is
possible only to the extent that the active response to music has been
awakened. Only when great musical sensitivity has been developed in
the pupil will he experience the purifying joy that has made music the
great education force in every generation.
In our musical pedagogy classes we have tried to defhe these prin-
ciples from the methodological standpoint. The best way of explaining