Philosophy of Music Education — Final Paper
April 30, 2024
Personal Philosophy of Music Education
Music is a vital human activity; a form of individual and societal expression and communication; a tradition defined differently by each culture and group that practices it. Since the late 1700s, many Western musicians, musicologists, and cultural institutions have defined “music” in terms of musical products alone, qualifying it as a purely sonic experience, an intersection of silence and sound. I disagree: I believe that music is not about the sounds themselves, but rather about the vital connections we make with and by way of those sounds. To me, a musical event is a moment of synchrony between an artistic person or group, the art they create, the audience who perceives the art, and the social, cultural, historical, and political contexts in which the artist, art, and audience exist.
Emotions and semiotics are necessarily wrapped up in music. To interact with an object or event is to respond to it; experience and reaction are one and the same. Music is no exception to this rule. But while a musical event can certainly cause us to experience emotions, music is not some secret code or universal language directly signifying ideas or feelings. Instead, interacting with music is an act of world-making, of drawing connections between a musical event and one’s own life experience and cultural background. It would be reductive, for example, to say that plagal cadences sound happy to me, but it is true that in my background as an Episcopal church musician, plagal cadences often accompany the “amen” at the end of a sung prayer or hymn, signaling a call for peace and a comfortable end to a musical journey. In using a plagal cadence in my own composition practice, even subconsciously, I assign the chord progression this symbolic meaning.
This is not to say, though, that every performer or listener of my music will find the same meaning a given moment. In line with Jean-Jaques Nattiez’ musicological interpretation of Jean Molino’s tripartition model, I believe that every symbol contains multitudes of meanings within it, each one dictated by the context in which it is interpreted. Beyond the meaning I assigned to it, my plagal cadence can be analyzed on its own, within the context of Western concert music — a major-to-major resolution of only a small amount of tension — and then further interpreted by the receiver of my musical message, who brings their own life experiences and cultural backgrounds to the conversation. Every musical event contains this exchange of meaning between creator and witness, composer and performer, performer and audience. In this way, music is inherently a social art form, a vehicle for communication and relationship-building.
It is music’s social nature that makes it so essential to the lives of children. Music-making is a process by which humans imagine, construct, and enact their own visions of their roles in their communities and the greater world; no one needs this experience more than children. From the very first moments of their lives, children are gathering information about the world and their position in it. As music educators, we have the opportunity to facilitate and even shape some of that positioning. We can and should organize a great deal of joyful, communal music-making, allowing our students access to the ritualistic communication and satisfaction that pushed humans towards music in the first place. We can and should also provide occasions for our students to lead, to compromise, to trust each other, to express themselves, and to interpret the expressions of others.
Music educators are tasked with introducing young people to one of humanity’s most ancient communal practices. The socializing capacity of music is so powerful, in fact, that it would be a disservice to teach it without careful reflection. Every music teacher should constantly consider and reconsider their pedagogy; question the ways in which they speak about and model interactions with music; and ensure that their classroom remains a curious, supportive, and welcoming space. We must continually and intentionally signal to them the deep appreciation that we ourselves have for music, and guide them into the discovery of their own musical joy. In doing so, we ensure that we are doing our very best to mold these children into inquisitive, passionate, respectful musicians and members of the world.