Transthought

Music Education

Music is important in my life, as I suppose, and should hope, is in many, if not most, people's lives. The problem, of course, is what kind of music. I am stuck in the classical/baroque period and choose that almost always. My wife is a fine pianist and had been into my kind of music for many years, but lately has begun playing show tunes regularity and with increasing skill. So our tastes may change through the years it seems.

Why is music so important? I once attended a seminar of some kind at which we were asked to name what we would do if we had just three weeks left to live. I found myself saying I would listen to music. I think I would give the same answer today. My wife, however, cannot listen to music casually. She actually has to listen to it, to analyze it, study it, dissect it, or whatever musicians do when they listen to music. I just let it play. She calls mine background music and does not relish it. She want to concentrate on the music and does nothing else while she does that.

I see my college students driving their cars with their music playing. I do not think they are consciously listening to it, but they are responding to it, by beating the time with their heads, hands or feet. When you watch a children's program on television, they are always jumping around to the music (witness Barney). I see this as a threat to music education, and do not like it. Music causes us to react to it in some way. My way, I guess, is to let it drift into my nerves and soothe them. My wife's way is to let it drift into our mind and stimulate it. The students' way is to let it drift into their muscles and activate them.

I fear that the popular culture has worked its way into church music as well, and lowering standards there. The craze for praise songs eliminates the rich heritage we have from hymns, anthems, cantatas, oratorios, masses, et al. Church people do not read music and do not sing as well as they once did, I believe. Fewer of them play instruments, particularly piano, and not many accompany singing well. It will have a lasting effect on theology, to be sure!

Music does things to us. I do not understand school boards that cut the music budget when they have a money crunch. Music students do better in all academic fields than others. It teaches math, grammar, reading, thinking, discipline, philosophy, and almost every other subject. I do wish the schools and music teachers would spend less time on the popular culture and more on the classics, but that is clearly a losing battle what with all the show choirs being developed. Performance seems to be the emphasis rather than the appreciation. I think we should teach music in order to make us better, more noble, people, not to make us television stars.

Wayne's Words for August 20, 2006.

posted by Wayne Olson @ 11:04 AM