The Great Depression is typically taught through history textbooks, but the music of this time allows students to learn about this era through different perspectives. The Great Depression witnessed many musical styles--from the light heartedness of popular music to the sadness of the blues, gospel, which offered inspiration, to the tension between…

Author stressed the point that music educators must pay attention to the oft neglected percussionist and make certain he has a fulfilling education and experience with music. (Author/RK)

Explains a scheme for teaching a history of music to secondary school students in France. Nineteenth and twentieth century composers, such as Schumann, Berlioz, Stravinsky, and Liszt, and their works are treated. (DS)

Voices of female alto singers may be permanently damaged by prolonged singing in the male tenor range. Music teachers' rationales for using altos in tenor parts are refuted and alternative solutions to choral music teaching problems are suggested. (AM)

This article considers some ways in which the school classroom enters into, changes and complicates musical meanings, focusing particularly on the role of popular music and how it relates to classical music. I suggest that in bringing popular music into the curriculum, educators have largely ignored the informal learning practices of popular…

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to discover the manner in which two Irish musicians, Loretto Reid and Brian Taheny, taught/and or transmitted traditional music at the Celtic College Summer School in Goderich, Ontario. Two central questions, each followed by several sub-questions, served to focus the study: "How did you learn…

When selecting literature to study and perform in band, opportunities for enhancing students' understanding of the music may inadvertantly be missed. One such opportunity involves collaboration with other disciplines. The other disciplines inform the study of the music and, in turn, the association with music enhances study of the other…

Those who had the honor of meeting or studying with Leonard Bernstein (1918-90) will never forget his passion and his dedication to teaching. He communicated through physical expression, enthusiasm, and a gift for making the most complex musical topics easy to understand. Thirty years have passed since the end of his Young People's Concerts with…

Music teachers are often influenced by pedagogical practices in the collegiate ensembles in which they performed. Opportunities to participate in collegiate world music ensembles have increased in recent decades; West African ensembles and steel bands represent the second and third most common of these in the United States. The absence of…

The work the author has done with children with special needs in the music field has been heavily influenced by a number of eminent music therapists. She says this work has also been the most enjoyable and often the most exciting of all her experiences as an educationist. She started off as a classroom teacher and at that stage had no aspirations…

This article reports a project designed to foster first-year music students' academic study skills and to investigate their expectations and experiences of starting at university. Data gathered through questionnaires, diaries and in-class tasks reveal the change in learning strategies and musical identity the students experience in their first…

In this article, an ethnocentric view of the improvisatory music of Korea is presented in terms of what Korean musicians think of improvisation as opposed to fixed composition and how improvisation operates as a performance practice. Musical scores and selected recordings are listed. (Author/KC)

In this article, the author argues that in many ways, developing instrumental practice techniques is an experiment with a sample of one. Musicians must learn which methods work best for them as individuals. This starts in the earliest stages of learning a musical instrument. Teachers offer suggestions: students discover how others are practicing,…

Musicians practice to build endurance, flexibility, and dexterity. They practice to maintain good performance, to sight-read better, to memorize, and simply, to enjoy music making. There are other motivations for practice, but one, more than others, is a catalyst for consequential change in musical development--practicing to solve performance…

This article was motivated by a staff development session when the brass faculty of a conservatoire were invited to share and discuss their approaches to teaching. It presents the results of interviews with six well known woodwind or brass players who have also taught at one or more conservatoires in London for periods of between one and 40 years.…