INTRODUCTION
The International Conference on the Role and Place of Music in the
Education of Youth and Adults, held in Brussels from 29 June to
9 July 1953, was the result of close collaboration between Unesco,
which was responsible for its organization, and the International Music
Council, which drew up its plan of work. It forms part of an extensive
programme undertaken from 1949 onwards, in order to determine the
place of the arts in general education and their importance in the for-
mation of personality. For that purpose, Unesco organized in 1951 at
Bristol (U.K.) a seminar on the teaching of the plastic arts, and helped
the International Theatre Institute to prepare the programme of two
international conferences on the theatre and youth which were held
in Paris in 1951 and at The Hague in 1953. The Brussels Conference
on music education completed this cycle of work dealing with the
teaching of the arts in schools and in the community.
The aim of this conference was to study in their entirety problems
connected with non-specialized music education, the purpose of which
is not to form professional musicians, but to develop the appreciation,
taste and critical judgment of the listener from his earliest youth, so as
to train him and enable him to appreciate the beauty and wealth of
musical masterpieces.
The conference also set out to define the methods best suited to
school education, adult education, and the training of music teachers.
International exchanges of information, persons and teaching ma-
terial; the activities of national or international governmental insti-
tutions, and the role of music education as a means to international
understanding, were also the subject of special study.
Another very important purpose of the conference was to bring
together for the first time, at least in such large numbers, specialists
in music education, composers, music teachers, students and perfor-
mers ; in short, representatives of all branches of musical activity, drawn
from all parts of the world. The conference hoped to provide these