Keynote: Italian Musicologists and the Challenge of Music Pedagogy

The article offers an overview of the research and initiatives that have been carried out over the past 15 years by a group of Italian scholars in the field of Music Pedagogy. In Italy, but also in other European countries, musicological and pedagogic-didactic researches often appear to be pursued separately. On the one hand, Musicology has increasingly narrowed its focus on strictly discipline-related topics, while the development of Music Pedagogy and Music Didactics has mostly taken place outside of universities, with no connections to the so-called “learned knowledge” (or savoir savant) of Musicology and Educational Science (General Pedagogy and Didactics). Therefore, while it is essential that musicologists build a specific scholarly knowledge that is solid and sound in all respects, what is equally essential is that this knowledge is channelled into the didactics of the discipline and utilized in school settings. The article offers an overview of the research and initiatives that have been carried out over the past 15 years by a group of Italian scholars in the field of Music Pedagogy. In Italy, but also in other European countries, musicological and pedagogic-didactic researches often appear to be pursued separately. On the one hand, Musicology has increasingly narrowed its focus on strictly discipline-related topics, while the development of Music Pedagogy and Music Didactics has mostly taken place outside of universities, with no connections to the so-called “learned knowledge” (or savoir savant) of Musicology and Educational Science (General Pedagogy and Didactics). Therefore, while it is essential that musicologists build a specific scholarly knowledge that is solid and sound in all respects, what is equally essential is that this knowledge is channelled into the didactics of the discipline and utilized in school settings.