The second edition of Music Matters: A Philosophy of Music Education is divided into three parts (see the Table of Contents). In the coming days, as we build to our release date, we will be posting a summary of each of these sections. These will offer you a preview of the ideas and theories that we explore in the book.
Part One: Foundational Matters
In Part One of this book, we propose that school music educators and community musicians should consider the interrelationships between music, education, and personhood. Because music is made with and for people, people are at the core of all musical transactions. Hence, we are against foundational thinking that conceives of music narrowly—as nothing more than pieces or “works” of music alone. Musics result when persons engage in critically reflective actions and active reflection within musical praxes, at specific times within specific cultures. And depending on those times and cultures, musical praxes refine and redefine themselves in relation to the people they are made and created for. Indeed, musics are embedded in and derive their nature and significance from their contexts of production and use. Even the structural properties of musics owe their characteristic features to the reflections of practitioners and theorists who work at particular times in the history of their music-cultural belongingness. Accordingly, musics are thoroughly artistic-social constructions. MUSICS, considered globally, are the diverse human praxes of making diverse kinds of musics for different kinds of participants and listeners. And EDUCATIONS, considered globally and carried out as praxes, refers to all possible instances, forms, and transactions of educative and ethical teaching and learning.
UPDATE:
Read the summaries of all three parts of Music Matters:
- Part One: Foundational Matters
- Part Two: Musical Processes and Products in Contexts
- Part Three: Music and-as-in Education
You can also view the complete the Table of Contents and buy the book