History of Music Education

● SOMETHING TO REMEMBER: The only music you could hear or experience was
that that you heard yourself or heard others perform live.
○ Up until 1910, this was the only way to experience music
● 1607 was the first attempt to settle Jamestown
○ King James 1 followed Elizabeth 1 (The virgin queen, the namesake of Virginia)
● 1605: the first part of Don Quixote was written
● 1606: Macbeth was written
● 1607: L’Orfeo (first surviving opera) was written
● 1620: pilgrims show up at Plymouth, Massachusetts
○ Brought Ainsworth Psalter, a collection of songs put together by Henry
Ainsworth
○ The psalms were iambic
○ Texts were not with notes
● 1630: the puritans arrived
○ Were not anti-music
○ Music was in the church and the home, and some tunes could be used in both
church and home, just with different words
● 1640: 1,700 copies of psalm books were translated into English from Hebrew
○ Became known as “The Bay Psalm Book” because it was accepted by everyone in
the Bay Port Colony in Massachusetts
○ This was the first book printed in the Americas
○ The 9th edition was the first one to include notated music
■ Previous editions only had reminders of how the melody should go
● 1642: Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the School Law
○ Required every town to compel parents to provide their children with an
elementary education
○ it did not set up schools
● 1644: Lining out, deaconing
○ The deacon in the church would sing a line and the congregation would sing it
back
● 1647: New Massachusetts School Law
○ towns of 50 or fewer families must hire a teacher to provide an education to
students, including reading
○ Towns of 50-100 families had to establish a grammar school to educate
students
○ It also made teacher pay coming from taxes a thing
● 1648: Revision to the School Law
 ○ Teach children knowledge of reading, language, writing, but it also taught labor
that children may have to do in the future.
● People at this time could not read music but learned everything by rote, and as time went
n the quality of musicianship went down because the singing got less precise
○ The answer to helping fix the singing problem in America was The Singing
School
■ Taught by an experienced and trained musician
■ Held in a public building to teach music
■ This was a private enterprise
■ The teacher set up the classes, charged a fee, and they were commonly at
night
■ Did not learn how to read music, but rather just learned how to sing
● 1699: Williamsburg became the capital of Virginia
○ Music was frequently performed at the governor’s mansion
○ Instruments would be shipped over from Europe
● 1700: first pipe organ brought to America from Europe in Port Royal, VA
● 1709: first piano-forte built in Europe
● 1721: a book was published with various songs written in it for anyone of any ability
to read the music
○ Written by John Tufts
○ The book was used until 1881
● 1721: Reverend Thomas Walton published a book to help improve the singing
● 1742: musical instrument manufacturing began in America
● 1745: Father Schneider established singing in the schools
● 1746: Birth of William Billings, America’s first composer
● 1759: The earliest singing society, The Orpheus Club, established in Philadelphia
● 1761: boys were used for singing at Trinity Church in NYC
● 1765: community orchestra established it Pennsylvania
● 1773: 70th and last edition of the Bay Psalms Book published
● 1792: Birth of Lowell Mason
● 1815: Handel and Haydn Society formed
● 1821: Mason visited Boston hoping to get his music collection published
● 1827: Mason moved to Boston to teach singing classes
● 1829: Mason published “The Juvenile Psalmist,” a psalm book geared towards young
students
● 1829: William Woodbridge went to Europe to study Pestalozzian Principles.
Although not a musician, he wrote articles and advocated for teaching music in the
schools
● 1830: Mason began using the Pestalozzian principles of pedagogy
● 1834: Mason published his manual of the Boston Academy of Music for the
Instruction and elements of vocal music using Pestalozzian principles
● 1837: Boston academy of music presented to the Boston school board reasons for music
to be a part of the school curriculum
○ Three things benefited from the study of music
■ Head: Intellectually
■ Hands: Physically
■ Heart: morally
○ Develop man’s whole nature
● 1838: Vocal music (teaching students how to sing) brought into the schools by Lowell
Mason.
● 1869: First tour of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra
○ Focused on the surface level of just being able to perform music
● 1881: W.S.B Matthews: Published a book called “How to Understand Music”
○ A beginning piano book that taught the music theory behind the music which
other books did not do
● 1896: Henry Krehbiel published “How to Listen to Music”
○ Teach people that love music how to listen to music
○ Focus shifts from just being able to play music to being able to know what is
going on with music
● 1889: More than 10,000 adult and juvenile community bands in the USA
● The 1920s: school bands became more popular
● 1910: the invention of the victrola
● Discussion ongoing: what is music education? What is the purpose of music education?
● 1915: Carl Gehgeraens had a meeting with supervisors in Pittsburgh and they spoke
about the purpose of music education
● 1920: the invention of the radio
● 1950: Serious questioning about the purpose of music education came into the public
consciousness
● 1957: the launch by the soviet union of a satellite; sputnik
● 1958: Basic concepts in music education
○ Several chapters written by the top music educators and they wrote about what
they think the purpose of music education in, philosophy of music education, how
to teach music in the schools, etc
● 1959: “Foundations and Principles of Music Education” book published that first
lays out the outcomes of music education after each school level involved in music.
● 1961: Kennedy’s white education commission came up with Three goals:
○ Address the issue of urban education
○ Improve instruction with new and enduring curricula
○ Solve the problem caused by the lack of understanding with learning
● 1959: the young composer’s project was developed
○ A way for composers to get into the schools so students could actually work with
and see composers
● Contemporary music project: band directors didn’t know how to deal with and teach new
music, so this project was developed to help that
○ 16 seminars held around the country
○ The yale seminar
■ 1963
■ Funding came from the national science foundation
● Felt a need to balance science and the arts
■ Claude Pliska
■ Music education was not involved in this seminar
○ The Tanglewood symposium
■ Legendary musicians came to this symposium
■ Spoke on various topics
■ Goals and objectives project
■ Improve the literature students are listening to
■ Expand the repertoire for students to play
● Series of books written for music education majors to teach the ins and outs of music
education
○ One of which was a philosophy of music education written by Bennett Reimer
○ This is the only book that survived of this set and was sent out in a second and
third edition
● Music education as aesthetic education
○ How we gain meaning
○ How to doesn’t affect our emotions, but deeper than that, our feelings
● With the rise of recording music came out, teachers didn’t have to teach students how to
just play music and learn an instrument. It raised the question “what is our job?”
● Richard Colwell: Music ed specialist
○ Evaluation and testing
○ Achievement tests in music education
■ The Colwell Achievement Tests
● Edwin Gordon: all about learning theory
○ How do students gain music understanding
○ Musical aptitude tests
● Charles Leonard: important in establishment of music education as a discipline
● 1994: the national standards for music education were published
○ Singing alone/with others with Varied repertoire
○ Playing instruments with a varied repertoire
○ Improvising melodies
 ○ Composing and arranging
○ Reading and notating music
○ Listening to, analyzing, and describing music
○ Evaluating music
○ Understanding relationships between music and other sarts
○ Understanding music in relation to history and culture
● “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” by Howard Gardner
○ Everyone has these different intelligences, but the amount each person has is
different
● 2014: the latest rendering of the national standards of music
○ Creating
○ Responding
○ Performing
○ Connecting