• Bio
  • Contact Ian

Ian Sidden

Subscribe

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Craft
  • My News
  • About the Music
  • The Rest of Life

“Defend” Music?

June 17, 2015 By Ian Sidden

Peter Green writing for CURMUDGUCATION: Stop “Defending” Music:

First of all, it’s a tactical error. If your state gets swept up in the winds of test dumpage and suddenly tests are not driving your school, what will you say to the ax guy (because, tests or not, the ax guy is not going away any time soon)? If your big selling point for your program has been that it’s actually test prep with a horn, you’ve made yourself dependent on the future of testing. That’s a bad horse on which to bet the farm.

Second, it’s just sad. And it’s extra sad to hear it come from music teachers. Just as sad as if I started telling everyone that reading Shakespeare is a great idea only because it helps with math class.

There are so many reasons for music education. Soooooooo many. And “it helps with testing” or “makes you do better in other classes” belong near the bottom of that list.

His passionate article independently echoes my thoughts from my article “What is the Value of Music“:

Another genre of manifestations-as-value are those arguments that treat music as an intermediary step for the actual valuable activities of our lives. The “Mozart Effect” and other bullet points about how music improves collaboration skills, language skills, reasoning and so on have one thing in common: they assist some serious sounding but ultimately non-musical goal.

And, please, don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of non-musical benefits of music. But – again – these are individual manifestations, they’re not the primary value. They aren’t the valuable kernel that starts our relationship with music and makes us stick with it long-term. The non-musical benefits of music are like the potential health benefits of wine: wine drinkers are happy they exist, but they’re secondary.

His stance really resonates with me. Just ask yourself: why do you do music (either playing or listening)? Is it for any of those often cited secondary reasons, or is it for something else?

That said, I’ve never been a teacher in a public grade school facing budget cuts. I don’t know how I would protect my program under those situations.

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailClassical Music for Elevators What is the Value of Music?

Filed Under: Linked Tagged With: Curmudgucation, Music education, Value, What is the value of music?

« Premiere: Vom Mädchen, das nicht schlafen wollte
Straws to the Rescue »

About Ian

Ian Sidden is currently a bass member of the Theater Dortmund Opera chorus. Read More…

Latest Posts

Training Singing, Practicing Strength

In the past few years, I’ve begun viewing my singing work in a similar manner to my weight training. And vice versa. The two share obvious similarities. We use time and effort to get better: We want more power. We want more endurance. We want more agility. We want to be more durable. We want […]

Premiere: Fernand Cortez

Tonight we premiere our production of Gaspare Spontini’s Fernand Cortez, ou La conquête du Mexique at Opernhaus Dortmund. This is after a two year delay; originally we were to have premiered this in 2020, but history intervened. There are many versions of this opera floating around, and we are doing a version that has – […]

Premiere: Frédégonde

Here’s one I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. Tonight at Opernhaus Dortmund, we’re premiering Frédegonde for the first time in Germany. It’s a work inspired from the early history of the Merovingians in what is now France and the ongoing feud between two of the queens, Brunhild and Frédegonde. The work was composed by […]

“Ständchen” by Schubert, Guitar and Voice Arrangement

Here is a performance of my self accompanied guitar arrangement of Franz Schubert’s “Ständchen”.

PREMIERE: Tosca

Tonight at Opernhaus Dortmund, we’re premiering our “Tosca”, which is the first premiere including the chorus since March 13, 2020.

Copyright © 2023 · WordPress