Percy Scholes on Music Appreciation: Another View

Abstract

Percy A. Scholes' (1877–1958) defence of music appreciation remains one of the most clearly articulated among the twentieth-century approaches to school music. His published work is eminently readable, spiced with wit, and attractive to non-musicians. Scholes has gone beyond philosophical argument to practical strategy, as his published work attests. Nevertheless, his ideas ought not either be accepted at face value or ‘written off’ as a ‘failure’ without careful examination of them.1 This paper attempts to reconstruct Scholes' ideas about music appreciation evidenced in his published work; to examine his assumptions about the rationale, objectives, instructional methods and curriculum for music appreciation; and to suggest implications of this analysis for future research and practice.

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