Otto Rudolph Ortmann, Music Philosophy, and Music Education

What is music? What should we teach when we teach music? How should we? In the early twentieth century, these most foundational questions relating to music education were addressed by the highly regarded, though less well known, educator and researcher, Otto Rudolph Ortmann. In 1922, he published an article in which he outlined a theory of musical experience, developing aspects of the physics of sound, qualitative theory, and Gestalt psychology, prefiguring important ideas in music philosophy. Ortmann highly valued his theory, utilized it in other research throughout his career, and influenced others such as Carl Seashore. Few, however, seem to be aware of his work or its implications for music education.¹

The seminal 1922 article, "The Sensorial Basis of Music Appreciation," was written while Ortmann was teaching at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.² While this article has received little attention, much of his other research has been widely and well received.³ "Papa Ortmann," well beloved of family and students, had a career Gerig characterized as "a wedding between Materia Medica and Frau Musica."⁴ A prolific researcher, superb musician, and excellent teacher, he published articles on music theory (one of which was reprinted and extended in 1983), musicology, music reading, ear training, synesthesia, and jazz.⁵ His research on piano performance, particularly his two books,⁶ is regarded as definitive; it has been discussed in a thesis and four dissertations; some of it has been replicated. In Famous Pianists and Their Technique, Gerig devoted a chapter to Ortmann.⁷ Ortmann's theory of listening types, in effect a theory of music cognition,⁸ was accepted by Robert Neidlinger, Doreen Rao, and Bennett Reimer.⁹ In the 1992 Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, F. R. Wilson and F. L. Roehmann praised the significance of Ortmann's body of research as undiminished in importance in music education.¹⁰

It may be that Ortmann's "Sensorial Basis"theory received little attention at the time because too few were interested in such theories or in the synthesizing of science and psychology or the touching on philosophy that he employed. Although he influenced Seashore, the philosophical issues he began to explore would be developed more strongly only decades later, by philosophers such as Monroe Beardsley, Peter Kivy, and Jerrold Levinson. It seems that Ortmann's theory not only prefigures some ideas in recent music philosophy, but supports them as well. If it does, then our increased understanding of music can provide a firmer basis for developing better music education-one of Ortmann's aims. In this article I will describe his theory, sketch how it aligns with subsequent research, and consider its value today. Ortmann attempted a comprehensive explanation of music's nature; as far as his explanation is accurate, that far it can help us understand music and in turn music education.

Three "Attributes"

At the turn of the 1900s, it was popular to refer to "attributes" of sound. Ortmann posited that all sensation, including sound, has three types of attributes. The primary attribute he termed extensity, by which he meant the breadth of the sensation that is perceived. Extensity has three forms, transtensity (frequency), intensity (strength), and protensity (duration). These can be perceived individually but also as sound's secondary attributes, chief of which is quality. Tertiary attributes of sound are made through association, either by (a) contiguity, linking a sound's quality with things experienced near in time to the sound, or by (b) similarity, associating the quality with sensations of like extensity (for example, the expressive brightness of a sound and a light). Ortmann believed that tertiary attributes form "the threshold of musical imagination, and imagination in turn, of musical enjoyment."¹¹ Accordingly, he concluded that music could express many things, and that this is dependent on listeners, their individual histories, and their entire field of sensations.

The Primary Attribute of Extensity

In the Renaissance, Benedetti and Galileo found that pitch was related to frequency, and in 1702, Sauveur was the first to state that overtones affect timbre. In 1863, Helmholtz...