Editorial

The nature of musical experience continues to intrigue philosophers who seek to explain ontological, epistemological, and axiological, among other aspects, of doing and undergoing music. Many different points of focus are evident in understanding the intersection of music and the human beings who are engaged in and with it. Important issues include the particularly musical qualities inhering in its sonic and other physical properties, formal design, genre, style, and other theoretical and technical properties, activities in which it is manifested in such ways as composition, improvisation, performance, production, dance or listening, emotional valence, and association with and mediation through social, technological, economic, and religious aspects of cultural and social life. Philosophers employ differing lenses to view these and other aspects of musical experience. All of these facets have a bearing on the purposes and means of music education, a field that juxtaposes musical and educational experiences. This cornucopia of perspectives is illustrated in the present issue of the Philosophy of Music Education in which our writers take up important matters concerning musical experience and their implications for the theory and practice of music education.

Richard Winter revisits the problem of how to explain the intersection of emotions and “abstract” music. His theory emphasizes the “inter-subjective and potentially empathetic” quality of musical experience and music’s function as an “action-metaphor” of inner subjective life. His analysis is in different vein from that of Susanne Langer whose writing on these issues will be more familiar to music educators, especially those in the United States. He then offers some implications of this theory for music education.

Drawing on Heidegger’s ideas, Trevor Thwaites tackles the issue of the meaning of the creative act as it is manifested in jazz. Beginning with the assertion of the transformative character of creativity, both the “need to transform and to be transformed,” he emphasizes the quality of thinking that drives such creative actions as improvising and listening to jazz. This emphasis on thoughtful experience in understanding creativity, whether as performer or listener, has the effect of putting musical experience at the very heart of the educative process.

Paul Louth’s exploration of computer-assisted composition in formal music education from a critical theory perspective draws especially on Adorno’s writing. Here, the ontological and epistemological character of music is at stake. He argues that the act of composing music is mediated by technological, ideological, and musical convention. His analysis is especially important for music education at a time in which electronically composed and generated music is in the ascendancy.

Teryl Dobb’s analysis of Hans Krása’s operetta, Brundibar, draws on differing theoretical perspectives on Holocaust testimony to make the case for how participating in this particular musical experience can do what might not otherwise be possible. She illustrates how the study and performance of this operetta serves an important pedagogical function in pointing to the “violence, trauma, complicity, memory” of tragic historical events. Her study not only clarifies the importance of including music as a core subject in general education but the imperative of studying music that exposes evil and good, highlights darkness and lightness, and expresses sorrow and joy.

Writing from a United States perspective, William Perrine explores issues of religious music and free speech in public education. Drawing on the case of Nurre v. Whitehead, he tackles the twin issues of how religious music is to be defined relative to legal protections by the United States Constitution, and whether student musical expression is protected under the rights to free speech afforded also by the Constitution. While this case has particular relevance to the United States in which religion is not established, his analysis raises wider questions of how music educators are to address music associated with religions in today’s secularized and multicultural societies.

Stanley Haskin’s analysis of “gradually adaptive frameworks” as a means of understanding the ways in which beliefs and the ways in which they are adjudicated change over time is a useful way to see philosophical disagreements in music education. Taking the case of Bennett Reimer and David Elliott, he examines disagreements between these writers over time over such matters...