The Third Street Music School Settlement: The Grand Tradition as Social Practice on New York's Lower East Side

Abstract

Abstract The Third Street Music School Settlement was founded on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as a dedicated music school offering conservatory-style music instruction along with social services in an effort to improve the lives of the immigrant poor and ease their assimilation as citizens of the United States. Music instruction aligned with social action and service was a powerful combination that attracted financial support and strong enrollment. When societal change and economic fluctuations in New York City affected enrollment and the fiscal health of the school, Third Street responded with renewed efforts to foster music instruction within a social context to serve the changing social needs of students and families. These efforts required negotiating a balance between concepts of music as aesthetic object and as social practice. Daily use of classical music as the expression of a diverse musical community has created contexts in which classical music is heard, not as a European cultural product or a historical artifact, but as a dynamic and living part of everyday life, a force for self-realization, and a basis for personal relationships.

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