Musical Understanding

Ideal for introductory music education, philosophy and psychology of music education, and music education methods courses, Teaching for Musical Understanding explains current research-based theories of how students learn in order to show prospective and practicing music teachers how to teach effectively. Author Jackie Wiggins draws on her twenty-two years of experience teaching K-12 music and twenty years of teaching in higher education to demonstrate how theory applies to music education. The text is deeply grounded in the work of social constructivist theorists and researchers in both education and music education. The third edition takes a cultural psychology perspective, giving more attention to sociocultural influences and to the roles of learner agency in learning process. It includes in-depth examples of assessment practices in music classrooms, stories "from the trenches," and more extensive use of endnotes and citations.

Musical Understanding is an outcome of the Symposium on Musical Understanding held in Victoria, BC on February 22-23, 2001. This collection of essays is not a typical report of proceedings. The book features chapters that examine musical understanding from a number of perspectives while addressing theoretical and practical considerations. The topics discussed by established teachers and teacher educators from Canada and the United States include: constructivism, multicultural music education, impact of cognition and culture, mind/body dualism, movement and music, and listening to music.

With Understanding Music and The Aesthetics of Music (1997) Roger Scruton set a new standard of rigour and seriousness in the philosophy of music. This collection of wide-ranging essays covers all aspects of the theory and practice of music, showing the significance of music as an expression of the moral life. The book is split into two parts, the first is devoted to the aesthetics and theory of music and the second consists of critical studies of individual composers, thinkers and works including essays on Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven's Ninth, Janácek & Schoenberg, Szymanowski and Adorno. Understanding Music will appeal to specialists in philosophy and musicology and also to music lovers who wish to find deeper meaning in this mysterious art. The Bloomsbury Revelations edition includes a new preface from the author.

Appropriate for use in Elementary Music Methods course offered in most education programs in universities and university-colleges across Canada. Appropriate for use in Elementary Music Methods courses offered in most education and music programs in universities and university-colleges across Canada, Teaching Towards Musical Understanding: A Handbook for the Elementary Grades, provides pre-service teachers with a comprehensive look at teaching music to children in the elementary grades. Age appropriate music, classroom activities, and teaching strategies are provided for all aspects of elementary school music. Research is presented side by side with its pedagogical implications leading students to make significant connections between theory and practice. This text is ideal for pre-service education students who will be required to teach music as generalist/classroom teachers as well as teachers who are preparing to be music specialists. This is the only Canadian text available for either audience.

In an age when our patterns of music consumption are changing rapidly, musical understanding has never been more relevant. Understanding Music provides readers with an ideal entry point to the topic, addressing 'both the music lover who has made listening to music an important part of his life and at the same time is willing to reflect on music and his encounter with it, as well as the more academically-minded enthusiast and the thoughtful expert.' Its author, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, was one of the most influential German musicologists of the twentieth century and yet he is almost unknown to English readers. His published work stretches from one end of the musicological spectrum to the other, with research on historical topics in early music, Bach, Beethoven reception, Mahler and music aesthetics all featuring. Understanding Music summarizes Eggebrecht's thoughts on the relationship between music and cognition. As he says in his preface, the purpose of his book is 'to direct the reader towards the fundamental issues and processes implied in understanding music. What does understanding mean when applied to music? How is the process to be described? What different kinds of understanding are to be distinguished here? What other concepts are implicit in and related to the concept of understanding? How is the relationship between music and the listener who understands it to be articulated? What might correct understanding of music mean given music's multiplicity of meaning and effect? Where are the limits of understanding and what lies beyond? What role do language and history play?'. Eggebrecht's answers to these and other questions amount to a compelling account of how the mind grasps the sounds of music in themselves and what other factors contribute to music's meaning so much to us as listeners.

Roger Scruton first addressed this topic in his celebrated book The Aesthetics of Music (OUP) and in this new book he applies the theory to the practice and examines a number of composers and musical forms. His continued fascination with Wagner provides much interesting content but he also deals near-death blows to his favorite targets like Pierre Boulez and Hoagy Carmichael. His legal encounter with The Pet Shop Boys is well documented (they sued him for libel in 1999) and the book closes with a devastating chapter on pop music, containing more controversial views that readers will relish. Many will be delighted; others enraged. However, underlying this book there is a consistent argument and passion for tonality and rhythm.

Peter Kivy presents a selection of his new and recent writings on the philosophy of music, a subject to which he has for many years been one of the most eminent contributors. In his distinctively elegant and informal style, Kivy explores such topics as musicology and its history, the nature ofmusical works, and the role of emotion in music, in a way that will attract the interest of philosophical and musical readers alike. Most of the essays are published here for the first time, all of them are accessible and self-standing, and so there is much here to delight both followers of Kivy'swork and those who are new to it.

Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!