A philosophically based praxis for teaching symphonic music literature

This study is directed to an awareness of and exploration concerning the wealth of the cultural heritage that the modern world possesses in the great body of symphonic music literature. A survey of musical education in this field showed a neglect of the subject compared to time and attention given to skills, theory, and performance. Practices are based on random individual philosophies for the most part. The author has pursued the development of techniques for teaching symphonic literature for several years, always questioning the educational philosophy that was best suited to this teaching, and searching for a pedagogy based on the best philosophy discernible. The emerging aesthetic philosophy of the 1960\u27s showed fresh promise of investigation into theory and method. The work of Stephen Pepper who formulated four World Hypotheses was used as a pivot to evaluate the hypothesis that best suited the project at hand. Pepper chose a theory termed Contextualism exemplified by the theory of John Dewey presented in his Art as Experience (1980). This philosophy of experience was in line with the emerging phenomenological thought. Kaelin, keenly interested in education, in his extensive writings has given an account of aesthetic theory based on existential phenomenology. These theories were applied to music education, and methodological considerations were treated gathered from followers of Dewey, Champlin, Villemain, and Ecker. An outline was made of the contextualist/experimentalist proposition for art education, and Kaelin\u27s description of aesthetic education was presented. Philosophies of music and music education were examined. Schwadron and Reimer laid the foundations for an aesthetic music education but by the 1990s the field was expanding rapidly. The analysis of philosophies with regard to music knowledge by Stubley in the Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning (1992) was used as a base to examine emerging bodies of thought. She favored phenomenological perspectives of constructivist theories. Ingarden\u27s theory of the musical work and the process of appreciation were examined along with several other phenomenological points of view. Kaelin\u27s application of the theory he termed “Aesthetics Proper” to music, its temporality, and the funding of significance through apprehension of the qualities of a work, were adopted for application to a praxis. A method using time-contour charts constructed from musical scores, created by the author, was presented, with a description of the procedure, the role of the teacher, the nature of the experience of music, as well as cognitive and expressive characteristics of the process. Two examples, the first movement of Mozart\u27s Symphony #40, and two selections from Holst\u27s, The Planets , were used with lesson plans and the constructed time-contour charts for each. These were analyzed for cognitive and expressive characteristics, with ideas for discussion and evaluation. An extensive list of reference and source materials was included