The professional musician and music teacher were thus in the way of
losing much of their normal control of the tradition of the fine art that they
had exercised around 1900. They have tried to offset or compensate for this
loss in a number of ways, of which I shall mention three.
First, many competent, individual musicians and music teachers entered
into the service of government agencies, business organizations and educa-
tional institutions, in administrative capacities.
Second, the knowledge of music has been deepened by specialization and
broadened by correlation with many other specialized fields.
Both of these trends have led to a greater tolerance of the diversities of
musical experience and to a breaking down of the barriers that had existed
up to 1900 between the three main idioms of music-the fine, popular and
folk arts. Governmental, business and institutional use of music also brought
about a levelling of taste preferences for one idiom or another. Increased
specialization in one idiom very often led into another.
At the same time, the numbers of professional, semi-professional and
even amateur musicians and teachers have been vastly increased by the rapid
development of mass communications. Conflicts of interest, on the one hand,
and of opportunities for livelihood, on the other, have led to a third way in
which musicians and music teachers have reacted to the era of mass com-
munications, namely, professional organization.
Organization of music activity has usually been undertaken for pursuit
of two main ends-interest or protection. A musicological society is
organized primarily-perhaps we should say exclusively-for interest :
musicians’ unions, for protection. We all know of the benefits that
have accrued, not only to the individuals concerned, but to society at
large, from both of these types of organization, both in Europe and in
the Americas.
In between these extremes, some organizations pursue both ends, though
to varying extents, as, for instance, when the Music Teachers National Asso-
ciation of the United States of America, primarily an interest group, under-
takes to secure legislation leading to establishment of certification of private
music teachers by a state before they may Iegally teach in that state.
Inevitably, both organization for interest and organization for protection
find that a third end comes into view, development of planned, concerted
action to build, promote and finally to assure administrative and public
approval and support of a programme of work under virtual control of the
organization. The most conspicuous example of this trend known to me is
shown by the Music Educators National Conference of the United States of
America, which has come to be the national planning body for music in the
public schools and teacher-training institutions of that country. The result
is that instead of government control of materials, methods, personnel
training, and of music instruction, the teachers themselves, in co-operation
with the agencies of mass communications, administrative officers, and
leaders of the communities in which they work, determine the nature of,
singke
(singke)
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