20.01.2022 | 19:00 | Online | Via Zoom
By James A. Davis, Distinguished Professor of Musicology, School of Music, SUNY – State University of New York, Fredonia
Music history pedagogy in the United States has witnessed a steady transformation since the 1980s that impacts how we as teachers define ourselves and what we see as the content and purpose of our field. At the primary and secondary levels, there has been a growing emphasis on making or “doing” music while minimizing the study of music as a liberal art. At the collegiate level, “new musicology” and recent efforts to decolonize and decanonize the curriculum have steered teachers towards a focus on the social issues surrounding music with a de-emphasis on standard literature, genres, and agents. Together these two trends are generating a paradigm shift for music teachers traditionally tasked with teaching music history. Students entering higher education have less background knowledge of music history, yet collegiate teachers are encouraged to forgo the traditional history curriculum in favor of courses based around socially-relevant topics and music from outside the Western art music tradition. At the same time, teacher training is reorienting towards performance-based education which makes traditional history less relevant to students’ future careers. At one end, making music is the priority. On the other end, musicology has come to dominate. Where does music history fit into this new paradigm?