"One man's banal is another man's Beethoven".Thank you Brent for a once again deeply insightful analysis of one of the elements of music education.
This is a quote that deserves further examination. Indeed the question is: "what is banal and what is instructive?"
If one bases one's philosophy of teaching on that line of thought then thatallows for any old rubbish to be accepted as valid music in the classroom.This argument says that for example "Achy Breaky Heart" deserves the same recognition and value as for example, "Let It Be". You may as well take the teenager's easy way out: "whatever".
My view is that it is simply not good enough for teachers to be guided by such simplistic cliches as "banal versus Beethoven". We are trained, and it is our responsibility, to decide and define what is of value for our students and what is bad for our students.
As Brent points out:
Musically, we are the experts. Our filters are the ones being used to pass the best of our culture on to the next generation.To do so requires a better founding philosophy than: "one man's banal is another man's Beethoven". This view accepts that poor expression, for example, in English writing skills is OK, that is all right not to know your multiplication tables, what the hell: we've got calculators for that; what does it matter if you don't know what causes the seasons?
Because if the above is your guiding philosophy, this information, these skills and knowledge might as well be just as banal as they are important and valuable to know. And what is the difference and who cares?
"It doesn't matter, the kids enjoy it, it's entertaining". We're not talking about music education here, were not talking about education of any sort. This is what banality in education leads to: the dumbing down of the curriculum, and the dumbing down of the students, not to mention the teachers.
I had the pleasure of sitting above a park one evening recently and hearing a little girl skipping home in the evening dusky light, singing "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen in a beautiful clear soprano voice. This was an uplifting and inspiring experience for me, and provided clear justification for teaching quality music as opposed to music of poor quality and poor value. If, on the other hand, I had heard that little girl singing Britney Spears' "If You Seek Amy" I think I would have found be experience not uplifting but seriously depressing and discouraging and disheartening - because the one is "Beethoven" and the other "banal". (And by the way, if you do not know what "If You Seek Amy" means, ask a 12-year-old).
I have also seen a group of Muslim girls in primary school singing with great gusto and great amusement Aqua's "I'm a Barbie Girl"... a song which from my position I would have defined as banal, which in fact turned out to have quite a deep meaning for them, and a definite social value! We should not forget to turn to the wisdom of "babes and sucklings" from time to time.
We walk where angels fear to tread.
However we do have guidelines to assist us in deciding this. Orff, Kodaly, Bettelheim, and many others have suggested ways of determining whether or not a text or piece of music is "good". Here's a suggestion from Doug Goodkin "Play, Sing and Dance, p157.", and he points out that "alone, each point may not be helpful, but in combination, give a good working guide".
(italics mine).
1. Children and adults equally enjoy it.
2. It bears repeated experiences.
3. It has withstood the test of time.
4. It invites something new.
5. It is created with good intention.
Doug goes on to elaborate these points in some detail, and it is worth a read.
In some cases the distinction is easy: for example compare the Walt Disney Winnie the Pooh with the original A.A. Milne. With blissful disregard for quality, the Disney Company destroyed all originality, and all meaning from the original brilliant stories and poems.... "The feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide," Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel .
It is the very timelessness of the characters which makes them work in the original. Disney has modified and qualified each of the original characters, thus removing their usefulness and integrity, to which children need to relate.
And it is our responsibility as teachers and, if you like, guardians of the faith, as well as educators -- those responsible for not only maintaining the culture but also developing the culture which is so important to us.
There's a major battle in Australia at the moment, and it's been going since about 1960, and you're facing the same problems in the States, about justifying the validity of teaching music in the National Curriculum. Comments such as "one man's banal is another man's Beethoven" hardly support the integrity and the importance of our subject. We need to be doing a lot better than that.
"What we [are] fighting for at the moment is the integrity of music as a subject in its own right and not a subject which needs other subjects to help it out. I am very protective of the idea, and we have to fight very hard for music as a subject. You know currently that there's this thing called creative arts, and performing arts. Often they're all seen as being the same, they all link and they're all related and they're one and the same. And that's not true. Music is not visual arts, visual arts is not drama, drama is not music." Richard Gill, in Keys to Music, May 2009:
<http://www.abc.net.au/classic/keys/>
Richard Gill again (n.d.) "My view is children should have access to all my view is children should have access to all music: rock pop, classical, jazz. They need a broad experience of music so that they can make decisions and make choices. A diet of uninterrupted hip-hop, is as interesting as a diet of uninterrupted Vivaldi concerti.
Biasing a music program to one type of music is not music education. There is such a wealth of extraordinary music in the world, going right back to pre-Christian if you like, to now. Why shouldn't children have access to all of that over their time at school?
By listening to lots of music, different type of music, different styles, they can make comparisons: see where there are similarities, see whether differences, and through the comparisons they start to develop an appreciation for music. To develop wisdom to make choices. ...
.. were I the teacher teaching it, I would say: the nature of the Beatles is that they sang harmony, they sang songs in parts with instrumental accompaniment. So I go straight to the Bach cantatas, and I'd look at, an example of text which is accompanied, sung by two or three voices, and then you look at all sorts of vocal music right through from the beginning of chant to madrigals. Because, what the Beatles are doing is part of the tradition. And so with the Mozart chamber work, we can then look at all sorts of other chamber music coming right up to now, the evolution ensembles. So I would see music like that which is set as a syllabus is a trigger to study all sorts of other music."
Although this is slightly off my main point, the implication is that with good music, it is possible to teach music. In the case of music that isbad, there is very little that can be taught.
There is no place for the banal in our classrooms, or for that matter in our culture. If we do not teach the difference, then how will our children know how to discriminate between excrement and food? What will they eat?
Zoltan Kodaly: "real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible, is a benefactor of humanity."
That would be our job. How lucky are we?
John Handley
Mosswood Music
mosswoodmusic.com
1 comment:
"Although this is slightly off my main point, the implication is that with good music, it is possible to teach music. In the case of music that is bad, there is very little that can be taught."
In this statement we are in absolute agreement. Music that is bad or is of limited purpose or intent has little value as a teaching tool. It is also true, however, that chants, rhymes, slogans, jingles are used as tools in various musical activities, but are not to be held up as pristine examples of the finest artistic expression. I will never forget listening to Richard Gill describing the rhythmical modes and the various criteria used in the 9th century to determine the "quality" of the music that could be "allowed" in church. We sang, played, improvised and discussed every type of 9th century choral music from the ridiculous to the sublime. We learned that the "artistic" intent often clashed with the "political" or "theological" intent, often to the detriment of the music.
"There is no place for the banal in our classrooms, or for that matter in our culture. If we do not teach the difference, then how will our children know how to discriminate between excrement and food? What will they eat?"
On this we disagree AND agree. There IS a place for banal in the classrooms, if only to demonstrate and teach the difference as my experience with Mr. Gill shows. What is the artistic intent and quality of expression in this piece? Is there any in this piece? The classroom quest for what is good art and what is bad, must include the entire spectrum of what is available. Then our work as teachers is a bit like mission work. We find out what the students know, teach them about it,then introduce new material that helps them grow to the next level of awareness. Sometimes that means meeting them "where they are" with music they know and bringing them to a new place helping them find the means, the knowledge, and the awareness of the true depth and breadth of the art of music to be able to hear and recognize fine quality and artistic expression.
As guardians of the art of music we should teach the essence of what makes music valuable. We should not make pre-judgements concerning what is good music or bad. Like excrement, the bad music becomes painfully apparent and immediately identifiable and is quickly put away never to be seen again. Teaching students to do this, to make these judgements for themselves is an important part of what we teach. In this we most certainly agree.
Brent
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