Estelle R. Jorgensen e Art of Teaching Music INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis http://iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 e Art of Teaching Music Jorgensen Indiana Music, Education A veteran teacher’s practical approach to music education “ is book will turn heads and quite likely deepen the thoughts of working musicians who teach. I do not doubt that it will, as Jorgensen declares, open wide the conversation on teaching that is waiting to happen.” Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington e Art of Teaching Music takes up important aspects of music teaching from organization to serving as conductor to dealing with the disconnect between the ideal of university teaching and the reality in the classroom. Writing for both established teachers and instructors on the rise, Estelle R. Jorgensen opens a conversation about the life and work of the music teacher. e author regards music teaching as interrelated with the rest of life, and her themes encompass pedagogical skills as well as matters of character, disposition, value, personality, and musicality. She re ects on musicianship and practical aspects of teaching while drawing on a broad base of theory, research, and personal experience. Although grounded in the practical realities of music teaching, Jorgensen urges music teachers to think and act artfully, imaginatively, hopefully, and courageously toward creating a better world. Author photo courtesy of Indiana University Estelle R. Jorgensen is Professor of Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where she teaches courses in the foundations of music education. She is author of In Search of Music Education and Transforming Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2003), and editor of e Philosophy of Music Education Review. e Art of Teaching Music e Art of Teaching Music Estelle R. Jorgensen Indiana University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis is book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404- 3797 USA http:// iupress .indiana .edu Telephone orders 800- 842- 6796 Fax orders 812- 855- 7931 Orders by e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu © 2008 by Estelle R. Jorgensen All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. e Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. e paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jorgensen, Estelle Ruth. e art of teaching music / Estelle R. Jorgensen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-35078-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-253-21963-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Music—Instruction and study. I. Title. MT1.J667 2008 780.71—dc22 2007040647 1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09 08 For all my teachers formal and informal intentional and accidental known and unknown past and present Contents Preface ix 1. Teacher 1 2. Value 16 3. Disposition 35 4. Judgment 57 5. Leader 78 6. Musician 94 7. Listener 111 8. Performer 135 9. Composer 161 10. Or ga n i z a t i o n 1 8 3 11. Design 199 12. Instruction 215 13. Imagination 233 14. Reality 254 A erword 279 Notes 285 Index 335 Preface I have o en remarked to my students on the similarity of teaching and music. In thinking of teaching as an art and cra , I see teaching as a meta- phor for music and music as a meta phor for teaching. is double- meta phor may not seem, at least super cially, to get us very far. A critic might suggest that if music is regarded as a meta phor for teaching and teaching as a meta- phor for music, each is de ned in terms of the other and this smacks of tautological or circular thinking. Still, this critic has made a crucial error and is mistaken. e principal purpose of meta phors is not to de ne but to illumine. inking about teaching as an art and cra such as music juxta- poses music and teaching so that we may think musically about teaching; thinking about music as teaching juxtaposes teaching and music so that we think pedagogically about music. 1 Both juxtapositions set us thinking about music and teaching in potentially di erent ways. And this is one of the purposes of meta phor. My objective in this book is not to de ne music education, for I have tackled this task in an earlier book, In Search of Music Education. 2 Nor is it to examine the changes that are needed in music education, because I have begun to do this in Transforming Music Education. 3 Rather, I seek to share principles that I see as important in the life and work of a music teacher— principles that emerge out of my reading and re ection on my own lived experience. I focus on the music teacher since those of us who teach music are in a crucial position to help our students develop as people, musicians, and lovers of music and culture. is emphasis should not be read to di- minish the importance of the student in the instructional pro cess. How- ever, as becomes clear in these chapters, as we take stock of our own lives and work, we are paradoxically better able to help our students. And so I begin with our practical work as teachers. [...]... them has been the question “What is really important in music teaching? ” There are many other aspects about which I might have written Still, within the scope of this book, these fourteen chapters relate to a trio of questions: chapters 1–5, “Who ought the teacher to be?”; chapters 69, “What is the nature of musicality at the heart of music teaching? ”; and chapters 10–14, “How should music instruction... of these questions relating to the music teacher, musicality, and music teaching begin and end Consequently, I prefer to see them as intertwined even though, for expository purposes, I move from one focus to another throughout these chapters As becomes clear in the following pages, I see music teaching as imaginative, artful, and craft y.4 In thinking about this underlying theme of the artfulness of. .. raise the level of musical teaching in primary and elementary grades.26 One of the greatest losses to school music education in the United States throughout the latter half of the twentieth century was that of music supervisors and coordinators equipped to lead school districts by example and precept.27 From the time when music was introduced into the common and public schools of the United States, music. .. elucidate the fuzzy boundaries of music, its social context, and the social construction of musical meaning.19 Claire Detels suggests that we draw the threads of the various artistic specialties music, art, drama, dance—closer together to reflect the “soft boundaries” that should exist between them.20 My own dialectical response is to posit that these ideas are all important but in tension one with another.21... Yet music teachers are often rewarded by moving “up” to the high school, college, or university, or out of teaching into administration The resulting pyramid teeters on a narrow base of musical expertise at the kindergarten rather than being grounded on a solid and wide base in the pre-school and primary grades Small wonder that so many in the public-at-large are ignorant of musical culture beyond the. .. open mind 12 • The Art of Teaching Music Developing One’s Art- Craft As with every art, music teaching incorporates techniques and skills that may be called “arty-craft” and “craft y -art. ”16 I like this view of what we do as music teachers because it is necessary to accumulate “tool-kits” of techniques that we can employ—knowledge of instructional planning and delivery, techniques of rehearsal and... essential in the making and taking of music Although Charles Leonard and Robert House as well as Bennett Reimer propose musical and artistic reasons as rationales for musical study,17 David Elliott and Christopher Small seek to refocus the work of music education on the doing of music. 18 Notwithstanding their different emphases, these writers agree that the receptive and active elements of musical experience... about music teaching I am after something deeper than simply amassing skills and techniques since teaching and musicality are more than the sum of their parts Rather, the things about which I write have been growing with me for the better part of a working lifetime I want to excavate beneath superficial and demonstrable skills to think about the ideas and principles of music teaching, the things that... events of which it is a part So thinking about music as art allows us to apply these characteristics to music teaching and, as Vernon Howard has done, to teaching more generally.6 My point, here, is to show how these artistic features apply specifically to musical instruction and, although less emphasized in these chapters, how notions of teaching may also bear on the ways in which we can envisage music. .. since I am also conscious of falling short regarding them, they inspire me to sharpen my ideas and improve my actions Thus they are my teachers, 18 • The Art of Teaching Music since they constantly suggest the need to think and do better than I have in the past Occasionally I see them embodied in the life and work of others When this occurs, it seems that I already knew what they had to teach but had . Jorgensen e Art of Teaching Music INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis http://iupress .indiana. edu 1-800-842-6796 e Art of Teaching Music Jorgensen Indiana Music, Education A. Transforming Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2003), and editor of e Philosophy of Music Education Review. e Art of Teaching Music e Art of Teaching Music Estelle R. Jorgensen Indiana. Jorgensen is Professor of Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where she teaches courses in the foundations of music education. She is author of In Search of Music Education