Historical Overview of Musical Philosophy

For nearly one hundred years after the first settlers in America, there was no formal music education in the public schools. To the early settlers, music in an educational setting was not an important issue. American musical culture throughout the seventeenth century was on the decline.⁽¹⁾ Public school music in the United States began in 1720 for the purpose of improving singing in the church service. However, music's inherent power to give pleasure made it an object of suspicion and well nigh prohibited for a long period of time.⁽²⁾

Around 1723, the better singers in the churches began to sit together in a group. This group gained prominence in the church and out of this grew the idea of a choir. With the choir in place, the congregational singing improved, but this still did not meet the desired results. This state of affairs and the urgent need for instruction in the rudiments of music produced the singing school.⁽³⁾

Over time, the singing school justified its existence and became a popular institution. Beginning in Boston, its popularity grew widely throughout New England and the other colonies. The singing schools began to meet the educational aims of the study of choral music and acquiring the skill of music reading,⁽⁴⁾ thus laying the foundations for musical culture and appreciation for generations to come.

The singing school had demonstrated its value as a means of popular education, and the times were ripe for musical advancement. Public concerts were becoming numerous in all the larger cities, and opera was heard in New York and other large centers of culture. European musicians were beginning to come to America as teachers and performers. In Boston, public opinion, as represented by leading citizens, was ready to give music a more important place in the social culture. All that was needed was a successful demonstration and proven leadership. The man that emerged to fill these expectations was Lowell Mason.

Mason was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, in 1792. At an early age it was evident that he had a gift for music and he began teaching singing while a youth. In 1812 he was sent by his family to Savannah, Georgia, where he was employed in the local bank, in a job that he would hold for fifteen years. However, Mason devoted all of his leisure time teaching singing classes, composing music, and leading church choirs. Due to his success as a choir leader, he was called to Boston in 1827, to take charge of the music in the churches of Boston.

When Mason came to Boston, he immediately set out to do two things: (1) to raise the standard of singing school teaching, and (2) to improve the quality of church music material and of choir singing.⁽⁵⁾ He held large singing classes in which he demonstrated his methods of teaching. Mason soon gathered around himself several admiring students, who later became his assistants.

The people of Boston soon became impressed with the importance of Mason's work, which had grown beyond early expectations. His classes grew to include adults as well as the children of the town. Mason became convinced of the soundness of the Pestalozzian principles of learning through the senses, and their practicability of teaching singing. He was convinced that any child who could read could sing. Mason also felt that it was educators' responsibility to make a musical heritage available to all children.

Music contributed to the well-being of the individual, Mason believed, and it united him with his God. To him and his followers, music brought comfort and solace. He felt that music created better homes, better citizens, and happier human beings. In Mason's estimate, everyone could enjoy music. All that was needed, according to Mason, was proper education and proper training.⁽⁶⁾

In 1836, Mason petitioned the Boston school board to include vocal music in the elementary schools. There was a special committee appointed to review Mason's proposal, and they in turn recommended it to the Boston school board in 1837. In the early months of 1838, to promote his plan of teaching music to the Boston public schools, Mason worked without pay. He was so effective, that a demand was created to warrant the school system employing him in August as the nation's first public school music teacher.

Music was the first of the expressive subjects to take its place in the curriculum of the public schools. This occurred at a time when the value of a subject was judged on its importance to the lives of the community and society as a whole. Early advocates of music education based their arguments on the practical value of music rather than aesthetic value. This is not to say that they did not believe in the aesthetic values, but rather they needed to give justification for music in the schools based on its usefulness to society.

One of the most striking characteristics of public school music developed in the twentieth century is its versatility. No longer a vocally oriented discipline as it was at its inception, it covered a variety of areas. Also, the goals of music teaching had shifted considerably. In the beginning the goal was to have every child learn to sing, with the use of music for recreation following mental fatigue from other studies.⁽⁷⁾ In the next generation, however, the objective was to have every child learn to read music because it aided in rounding out the whole child.

Instrumental music was a late addition to the school curriculum for a variety of causes. One of these was that most of the music supervisors were not instrumentalists, but singers, and, therefore, were reluctant to venture outside of vocal music education. The introduction of vocal music into the public schools was largely influenced by the Europeans. This, however, was not true with instrumental music. Its entrance into the schools was due to conditions inherent in the growth of democracy in education. This developed an elective system of giving the student a choice of a variety of studies.

The few instrumental groups that existed practiced after school hours. First efforts to organize an instrumental program in the schools were those of Will Earhart in Richmond, Indiana, around 1900.⁽⁸⁾ The instrumental music movement was beginning to lay claim to a place in the school curriculum, and rapidly gathered momentum. At the same time Albert Austin Harding began his work at the University of Illinois. He refurbished the informal college band at the university into a model organization.

World War I helped to propel bands to the forefront with veteran band musicians returning home after the war. Band activity began to grow rapidly around the country, but nowhere was this more greatly felt than in the mid-west. The preliminary framework for school bands had been built prior to the war by outstanding instrumental educators such as A. R. McAllister in Joliet, Illinois. His work gave the band movement a great thrust. McAllister began his work with the Joliet Band as far back as 1912. For many years the Joliet Band was synonymous with the most remarkable accolades obtained in public school music.

In 1918, George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, purchased 300 instruments for the Rochester public schools. Joseph E. Maddy, who later founded the National Music Camp at Interlochen, was appointed supervisor of instrumental music in the Rochester, New York, school system. Maddy was the first educator to hold this type position. Maddy made tremendous contributions to the advancement of instrumental music education. Due to the work of Joseph Maddy and others, instruction in music was becoming an accepted part of the school curriculum.

With the end of World War I in 1918, the flourishing interest in the band movement continued. Returning army bandsmen were employed by public schools to build band programs in the schools. These directors (with military backgrounds) brought to the schools organizational and teaching skills needed to run an efficient music program. School bands were on the rise and in great demand. However, along with the rise of instrumental music programs in the public schools came the dilemma that still concerns music educators today: the choice between an activity-oriented program and an aesthetic-oriented program.⁽⁹⁾

Another war caused changes in music education and also in the philosophy of music education. As America entered World War II in 1941, manpower became a main concern, and the schools found themselves with a shortage of trained male teachers. In order to cope with this situation, it was necessary for the schools to provide new techniques and skills to enable the classroom teachers to run their own music classes. The programs developed were so successful that after the war ended in 1945 (and the male teachers returned), the prevailing philosophy was that the classroom teachers conduct the music lesson on a daily basis with a music specialist acting as a consultant or appearing once or twice a week to introduce certain skills.

Instrumental music continued to flourish using methods taught in the past with professional music educators. Following World War II bands increased in popularity, created by the need for entertainment at sporting events. These events used the bands for "show-business"⁽¹⁰⁾ types of entertainment. It was during this time that the first halftime show was performed by the University of Illinois Band, under the direction of A. A. Harding.

Music education in the early 1950's had changed little since the 1930's in terms of content and method.⁽¹¹⁾ Music had been an important part of the progressive education curriculum. But when the progressive movement stalled in the 1940's, music education lost an important base of support. Because no one had developed a comprehensive philosophy on which to base the importance of music education in the school curriculum, music educators remained static in their curriculum development. With the rapid societal changes taking place, it became apparent that music educators needed to change their approach to teaching if they were to survive in the school curriculum.

In 1957 the Soviet Union sent Sputnik, the first satellite, into space. This caused great concern among the scientific leaders and educators in the United States. These leaders felt the educational system was lacking in the technology needed to remain competitive in the future. As a result, the educational systems focused on science and science-related subjects. There came a public outcry for "the pursuit of excellence,"⁽¹²⁾ which was the prevailing issue in all subjects, including the arts. It was during this period that the aesthetic education movement became a viable force in the forming of a philosophical framework to meet the fundamental concerns of the educational system. Proponents of aesthetic education proposed a fundamental approach to music education. These people were concerned with the artistic values of music more so than with the traditional "performance for performance's sake."⁽¹³⁾

In the summer of 1967, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) convened a symposium to consider major issues related to the theme "Music in American Society."⁽¹⁴⁾ The sight of this symposium was Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The MENC invited not only music educators but also performers, labor leaders, sociologists, educators, scientists, and representatives from the areas of business and government. This symposium met to dispel some of the negative criticisms and attacks made on music education as well as to discuss issues of an urgent nature confronting the arts and music.

The prime focus of the Tanglewood Symposium was to discuss the role of music education as an integral part of American society. The end result was presented in the Documentary Report of the Tanglewood Symposium,⁽¹⁵⁾ which is a culmination of all the lectures, papers, and adaptations presented during the symposium. In its final declaration, the symposium stated,

"Education must accept the responsibility for developing opportunities which meet man's individual needs and the needs of a society plagued by the consequences of changing values, alienation, hostility between generations, racial and international tensions, and the challenges of the new leisure."⁽¹⁶⁾

The results of the symposium caused unification and provided a philosophical guide much needed by the music education profession. For the first time topics dealing with music in special education, electronic music, music in urban education, youth music, and music in other related arts, were discussed and suggestions for improvements were made. This was music educators' effort to bring a much needed "face-lift" to a sagging music education program.

As the population decreased in the 1970's, fewer teachers were needed, and more often than not, the music positions were the first to be deleted. School boards began to cut costs by reducing the number of class periods in the school day, reducing the number of electives for each student. This caused a reduction in music teaching positions and the ability to provide enough music courses as electives.

In the early 1970's there began to grow an accountability movement. A variety of accountability programs were used by the schools to evaluate student and teacher performance. Calls for education reform began to surface and a "back-to-basics" movement flourished in an attempt to eliminate the "frills" and raise the standards of students and teachers. Unfortunately, this movement caused a deterioration of one of music education's basic principles, "music for every child."

Music education has undergone many changes since the middle of the twentieth century. The debate continues as to the role of music in the educational system. Bennett Reimer, noted music educator and philosopher of aesthetics states:

"There is almost a desperate need for a better understanding of the value of music and of the teaching and learning of music. An uncomfortable amount of defensiveness, of self-doubt, of grasping at straws which seem to offer bits and pieces of self-justification, exists now in music education and has always seemed to exist. It would be difficult to find a field so active, so apparently healthy, so venerable in age and widespread in practice, which is at the same time so worried about its inherent value."⁽¹⁷⁾

The current trend is a return to the utilitarian point of view, where music education is justified as essential to the future of the learner, while at the same time maintaining the value of aesthetic education. Fundamental goals that are applicable to all areas of music are what the public is asking. As long as there are different personalities, there will be different philosophical views.

1. Edward Bailey Birge, History of Public School Music in the United States (Washington, D. C.: Music Educators National Conference, 1966), 2.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., 7.

4. Ibid., 11.

5. Ibid., 25.

6. Harold F. Abeles, Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman, Foundations of Music Education (New York: Schirmer Books, 1994), 13.

7. Birge, History of Public School Music in the United States, 163.

8. Richard Franco Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1961), 94.

9. J. Terry Gates, ed., Music Education in the United States: Contemporary Issues (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1988), 260.

10. Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman, Foundations of Music Education, 20.

11. Michael L. Mark, Contemporary Music Education (New York: Schirmer Books, 1986), 28.

12. Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman, Foundations of Music Education, 20.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 22.

15. R. A. Choate, ed., Documentary Report of the Tanglewood Symposium (Washington, D. C., Music Educators National Conference, 1968), 23.

16. Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman, Foundations of Music Education, 23.

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