What Does Music Mean, and Can Music Education Really Matter?

Abstract

Philosophers quail at the prospect of attempting to define music’s mean-ing, because the latter term raises “some of the most intractable problems of philosophy ” (Crane, 1995, p. 541). Yet, as Reimer (1970) acknowl-edged in the first edition of his A Philosophy of Music Education, music edu-cation philosophers must nevertheless attempt to do so if for no other reason than it is difficult to talk about music and its importance in edu-cation without “some notion ” of what it means (p. 56). Following the advent of the aesthetic education movement in music education in the early years of the Cold War, the prevailing view among American and many other music educators was that music should be taught for its own sake, that is, as organized sound to be perceived and appreciated primar-ily for its structural properties and qualities. Social, political, or other ref-erences were sometimes acknowledged as potentially relevant to musical experience, but only when transformed into musical content—otherwise they would distract listeners from the music’s true or aesthetic meaning (Reimer; Reimer & Wright). But even then, the former meanings remained extrinsic and of secondary importance, if they were noticed at all. The purpose of music education was to develop children’s capacity to experience the “aesthetic meanings available in musical expressive forms ” and not to focus on political and ethical issues and social prob-lems surrounding, embedded in, or pervading music, or in which music is implicated (Reimer; Reimer & Wright). Music was to be taught as pure, unadulterated sound and not, as many of today’s music academics would have it, as a communicative medium whose meanings shape, and are in turn shaped by, history, culture, and ideology.

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