Placing American Music History in Context

I was surprised (though, retrospectively, I wonder why I was so shocked) how often classism presented itself through the chapter of A Concise History of American Music Education. Even as early as the fifth century in Greece, when tribes engaged in choral competitions, boxing out amateurism because “choral singing became too difficult for amateurs to perform. It had become complex and required technical proficiency, and by the fifth century, musical performance had become the work of specialists. The average citizen no longer participated in music” (Mark, p. 2) Later, the Spanish and French used music as a tool to sway the classes of people they saw as inferior in the lands they were conquering, then church leaders passing judgment on the quality of music produced by their congregations, then, as the industrial revolution “brought more and more country people to jobs in the cities… urban Americans came to disdain [psalmody and church hymns], regarding singing school music as unsophisticated and unrefined, the music of country people” (p. 19) Singing schools were something relegated to the rural South where there was no public school. Mark even makes point to say that even forms of notation were associated regionally (“shape notes came to be associated with rural people… even though they were the object of derision, shape notes helped people learn to read music” (p. 22)). It seems that to consider the evolution of music and music education in America would be irresponsible without using the lens of stratification.

John Dewey’s answer to this can be found in the second chapter of Art as Experience. He wastes no time, beginning the chapter this way: “Why is there repulsion when the high achievements of fine art are brought into connection with common life, the life that we share with all living creatures?” (Dewey, p. 20) He recognizes that “a complete answer to the question would involve the writing of a history of morals that would set forth the conditions that have brought about contempt for the body, fear of the senses, and the opposition of flesh to spirit,” (p. 20) and, throughout the chapter, this would boil down to just the concept of fear. He writes that “the institutional life of mankind is marked by disorganization” (p. 21) and that we seek to mend this with the “static division of classes,” (p. 21) both of people and everything else. “Life is compartmentalized… as high and as low; their values as profane and spiritual, as material and ideal” (p. 21) This causes us to “see without feeling; we haer, but only a second-hand report… we use the senses to arouse passion but not to fulfill the interest of insight” (p. 21) Painfully truthful, he explains that “oppositions of mind and body, soul and matter, spirit and flesh all have their origin, fundamentally, in fear of what life mayーbring forth” (p. 23) But he teaches us that we should lean into that fear, because “there are more opportunities for resistance and tension, more drafts upon experimentation and invention, and therefore more novelty in action, greater range and depth of insight and increase of poignancy in feeling” (p. 23) The experience of life and art is only possible when we engage everything, when we embrace the tension of the high-minded and the baser instincts, and it is in fact only relevant when we do so. If we are to learn from the history of music education, we must both acknowledge our fear of the unknown and the discomfort of knowing, to include those people we do not know, and lean into it.

Dewey, J. (1934). The Live Creature and “Ethereal Things.” In J. Dewey (Author), Art as experience (pp.

20-35). New York City, NY: Perigree.

Mark, M. L. (2008). Music Education in Early Times. In M. L. Mark (Author), A concise history of

American music education (pp. 1-29). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.