Musical Values and the Value of Music Education

Symposium 49 experiencing great musical events. I must interject here that I am not talking about a so-called great composer list. Every genre has its major works of outstanding artistic substance, whether within Western music or from other cultures. If we fail to giveour studentsthe substancethat both human existence and expression demand, then music education, in my view, will always remain peripheraltothe educationprocessandtheculture will be the worse. Musical experience is deeper than entertainment. It is deeper than the usual uses for social intercourse. It lies at the very root ofwhat and who we are a species. NOTES 1.Arthur Koestler, Beyond Reductionism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). 2.We are still defining consciousness, however, intelligence seems to be a property of the phenomenon. Many studies on animal intelligence and emotions have been reported over the last couple of decades. See, for example, a discussion on intelligence in parrots in "Polly Wanna PhD?" Discover, January 2000, 70-75. 3.A recent challenge to Western traditional philosophical assumptions is Philosophy In The Flesh, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. (NY: Basic Books, 1999). As they explain, "Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience" 4. 4.Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown oftheBicameralMind. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976). See Chapter II, especially 6263 . 5.Prior to birth, the fetus experiences hearing the heart beat and the peristaltic movements of the mother. Pierce suggests that bonding occurs when theneonate is placed on the mother's breast and when the heart beat is again experienced; bonding begins to occur as a reinforcement ofthe previous, perfect existence in the womb. See Joseph Chilten Pierce. Evolution's End: Claiming the Potential ofour Intelligence (San Francisco: Harper, 1993). 6.Anthony J. Palmer, "Multicultural Music Education: Antipodes and Complementarities," Philosophy of Music Education Review 5, No. 2 (Fall, 1997): 92100 . 7.See Palmer, "Music as an Archetype in the 'Collective Unconscious': Implications fora World Aesthetics ofMusic," Dialogueand Universalism VII, No. 34 (1997): 187-200. 8.The whole thesis ofDonald N. Ferguson in The Why of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969) is that we connect with music most easily when it is reflective ofhuman experience. 9.Art may also be considered bad because the artist's intentions may be hampered by a lack of adequate technique and therefore is unable to make sense to recipients ofthe work. 10.Michio Kaku, Hyperspace, A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 1 1 . William P. Malm, Music Cultures ofthe Pacific, the NearEast, andAsia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 54-56. 12.This feature is certainly far from being an absolute. Dances in the Gagaku repertoire derived from Korea, for example, are in three plus two meters. There are many odd meters in Balkan dancing, however, they are within even phrase lengths. There is definitely a symbiotic relationship between dance music and the human organism but artistic goals lie at the basis for ultimate configurations of the music. The march in Western culture certainly cannot be in anything but duple meter because of the need to move linearly forward. Any other meter would cause more dancelike movement which would violate the image of strength ofsoldiering. 13.At the risk ofrepetition, theunderlying universal is to organize, while the expressed form is based on and shapedbytheexperiences ofindividualsandcultures. 14.These should not be incompatible and would not be if conditions of quality were to accompany every endeavor. Musical Values and the Value of Music Education Thomas A. Regelski Theideathat somethings oractivities1 have more worth no doubt is rooted in primitive impulses connected with survival. It is all the more interesting, then, to consider how and why music should be valued since it is widely believed that music is not a requirement forsurvival andmerely enhances life. However, ifvalue is simply defined as involving the worth ofsomething and ifworth isexplainedasthequalitypossessedbysomething that renders it valuable, we have the kind of circularity that drives people crazy. 50 Philosophy of Music Education Review The traditional study of axiology has attempted to break this circle by postulating intrinsic values that are...