Guido d'Arezzo Presentation

The Tangelwood Symposium

The Tanglewood Symposium was a convening of music educators in the 1960s to discuss “Music in American Society.” The results of this symposium provided the music education profession with philosophical guidance that is still useful today.

A declining economy in the early 1960s caused the American public to support a “back to basics” educational movement. In response to attacks being made on music education, the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) and important music educators met in Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home, to discuss this issue and other pressing matters regarding the arts. The symposium’s focus was “Music education as an integral part of life and living, not only within the individual but as it extend[s] to society” (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 23).

At the symposium’s conclusion, the Documentary Report of the Tanglewood Symposium stated, “Educators must accept the responsibility for developing opportunities which meet man’s individual needs and the needs of a society plagued by the consequences of changing values, alienation, hostility between generations, racial and international tensions, and the challenges of the new leisure” (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 23). With such a rapid cultural shift occurring in the 1960s, the symposium was able to keep up with educational trends and set a precedent for future music educators to adapt to similar changes.

Many of the issues becoming relevant to American society in the 1960s are still factors in music education today. The Tanglewood Symposium brought up issues related to special education, electronic music, youth music and jazz, music education in urban settings, and music as related to other arts (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 23). The MENC National Standards, written in 1994 and still highly advocated by music educators today, promote an awareness of music’s relation to cultural factors (The National Association for Music Education 2008). Many U.S. laws, most recently the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind,” require equal educational opportunities, and therefore music education opportunities, for children with special needs. With the dawning of a new administration, educators can depend on more changes in educational policy, and with an even greater economic slump than in the 1960s, music educators in particular will need to draw on historical support such as the Tanglewood Symposium to ensure arts education is not forfeited for the sake of another “back to basics” movement.


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

The National Association for Music Education. “National Standards for Music Education.” 2008. http://www.menc.org/resources/view/national-standards-for-music-education (accessed January 25, 2009).

Early 20th Century Expansion

The first part of the 20th century showed an expansion of music education in public schools, particularly secondary schools. There were many factors that led to this expansion, including shifts in educational philosophy, World War I, the changing role of high schools and the Depression. This expansion primarily took the form of group instrumental instruction.

As John Dewey’s philosophy of educating the “whole child” gained popularity in the early 1900s, educators came to believe that the arts should be part of this “total school experience” (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 16-17). Class instrumental instruction expanded partially due to Albert F. Mitchell (a music supervisor in the Boston public schools) publishing Mitchell Class Method for violin; other educators followed his lead and published books for orchestra, band and piano group instruction (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 17).

After World War I, the American public had an increased interest in band music, and men returning from the army who had played in military bands were employed by schools to start up instrumental programs. Patrons such as George Eastman (founder of Eastman Kodak) purchased large amounts of instruments for public schools, which in turn were able to hire instrumental teachers (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 17).

Between 1910 and 1940, the chances of children in the United States attending high school increased from 10 percent to 75 percent (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 18). As secondary schools expanded, so did their curricular emphasis: a higher percentage of students did not plan to attend college, so an increase in technical emphasis led to increased numbers of students graduating high school with professional-level musical skills. This rapid expansion resulted in a shortage of qualified teachers, leading schools to employ professional musicians who taught in a rehearsal-style.

The Great Depression also led to secondary school music being taught by professional musicians rather than trained school music teachers. Communities did not feel they could afford to support local orchestras, and “talking pictures” began to use recorded accompaniments rather than live musicians. Though this could be seen as positive for the expansion of instrumental music education in the secondary schools, the government helped further by forming the Works Progress Administration. The WPA supplied funds necessary to employ performing artists, offer low-cost or free performances to the public, and employ teachers (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 19).

Though changes in the middle and late 20th century continued to alter the landscape of American music education, the advances in the early 20th century account for much of the country’s heavy emphasis on instrumental programs in the secondary schools today.


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

Lowell Mason

Lowell Mason is known to many educators to be the “father” of music education in the United States because of his role in propagating elementary music in Boston public schools in the early 19th century. As the United States’ first public school music teacher, his efforts were limited to vocal music for various reasons.

Mason grew up learning several different instruments, singing, conducting and composing. He became president of the Handel & Haydn Society of Boston in 1827. In order to improve the society’s performance quality, he established a vocal instruction studio. During this time, he learned of the Pestalozzian music education philosophy (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 11-12). Because of Mason’s experiencing in teaching vocal music and because of Pestalozzi’s emphasis on first teaching children to sing before they read or write music, his initial petition to the Boston school board to include music instruction in elementary school was limited to vocal music.

Mason and the committee that approved his petition advocated including music instruction in elementary schools based on three standards: intellectually, morally and physically. Their explanation harped back to the Greek doctrine of ethos, which suggests music could be “directed and arranged as to produce those habits of feeling of which these sounds are the type,” as well as the Greek belief in the importance of physical education (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 12). They also justified their belief based on the medieval idea of the seven liberal arts, with music being part of the quadrivium including arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Philosophically, they believed that “Through vocal music you set in motion a mighty power which silently, but surely, in the end, will humanize, refine and elevate a whole community” (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 13).

After Mason visited Europe to learn more about the Pestalozzian approach, he returned to the United States to use the method in his own classrooms, eventually leading to his employment as the country’s first public school music teacher. The belief that vocal music is of the utmost importance in elementary music instruction is still advocated in today’s classrooms by followers of the Kodály philosophy of music education (Organization of American Kodály Educators 2004). Furthermore, the importance of music instruction in enriching the quality of life, as the Boston committee pointed out, is still touted by modern music education philosophers such as Bennett Reimer (2003). To Mason, “music contributed to the well-being of the individual…. It created better homes, better citizens, and happier human beings” (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 13). Vocal music education was the means by which these goals could be achieved.


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

Organization of American Kodály Educators. “Kodály Philosophy.” 2004. http://oake.org/php/kodalyphilosophy.php (accessed January 25, 2009).

Reimer, Bennett. A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing the Vision, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.

Pestalozzi

The Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had a strong influence on the development of education in the United States. However, fewer educators might know that his work also had an impact on the inclusion of vocal music instruction in elementary schools.

Pestalozzi believed that active participation and engagement of the senses was the best way to educate children. As a result, he urged educators to include music instruction in their teaching. American proponents of the Pestalozzian method therefore had a philosophical basis for including music in basic instruction (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 10).

Joseph H. Naef, an immigrant to the United States and an early proponent of the Pestalozzian method in the U.S., presented the “Principles of the Pestalozzian System of Music” at an 1830 meeting of the American Institute of Instruction in Boston. The seven points outlining the method were:

1. To teach sounds before signs and to make the child learn to sing before he learns the written notes or their names;
2. To lead him to observe by hearing and imitating sounds, their resemblances and differences, their agreeable and disagreeable effect, instead of explaining these things to him—in a word, to make active instead of passive in learning;
3. To teach but one thing at a time—rhythm, melody, and expression, which are to be taught and practiced separately, before the child is called to the difficult task of attending to all at once;
4. To make him practice each step of these divisions, until he is master of it, before passing to the next;
5. To give the principles and theory after the practice, and as induction from it;
6. To analyze and practice the elements of articulate sound in order to apply them to music, and
7. To have the names of the notes correspond to those used in instrumental music. (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 11).

Some of the basic principles Naef presented are still relevant to elementary music education in the United States today. The Orff Schulwerk method of music and movement education, developed in the 20th century by German composer Carl Orff, advocates that students should create music before learning to write it, similar to the way language is learned: “When the children want to write down what they have composed, reading and writing find their moment” (American Orff-Schulwerk Association 2009). Today, over 10,000 music educators in the United States adhere to an Orff Schulwerk philosophy in their classroom. Additionally, the Kodály philosophy of music education, the collection of ideas advocated by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, advocates singing as the “essence” of the concept and that vocal music instruction should precede instrumental. There is a strong Kodály following in the United States today by elementary and other music educators (Organization of American Kodály Educators 2004).

Although Abeles, Hoffer and Klotman (1995, 10) point out that Pestalozzi cannot be directly credited for incorporating music instruction in any schools but his own, his work in education laid the groundwork for elementary (and other) music education as we know it today.


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

American Orff-Schulwerk Association. “What is Orff Schulwerk?” 2009. http://aosa.org/orff.html (accessed January 25, 2009).

Organization of American Kodály Educators. “Kodály Philosophy.” 2004. http://oake.org/php/kodalyphilosophy.php (accessed January 25, 2009).

Early Music Notation

As music education became more prevalent in the Middle Ages and necessary to the propagation of the Church, a system of music notation began to develop. This system ensured that churches throughout most of Europe would use the same music in liturgical services.

Medieval churches used a style of singing now referred to as chant as part of their worship. There were many different local chant dialects, such as Celtic, Gallican, Mozarabic, Ambrosian and Gregorian, but when Charlemagne was crowned king of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 A.D., he and his successors succeeded in perpetuating the Gregorian repertory and almost completely suppressing all other forms (Grout 2001, 24). Charlemagne achieved this by sending musical missionaries throughout Europe, and these missionaries claimed that the source of the chants was St. Gregory himself (Grout 2001, 37).

Most early transmission of chant was achieved orally. In order for standardized chant to succeed, a method of music notation needed to develop. Initially, signs called neumes were written over the text to indicated ascending or descending patterns. At some critical point in music history around the tenth century, a scribe drew a red horizontal line to indicate the pitch F, and the neumes were placed in relation above or below it. Later, a second yellow line was added to indicate C. Guido of Arezzo described a staff in the eleventh century with lines for F, C and G, which eventually became the modern clefs (Grout 2001, 56). The modern plainsong notation that most people would recognize has a four-line staff with neumes sung with the same rhythmic duration (Grout 2001, 36).

The development of music notation assured that chants could be sung nearly the same everywhere, “Thus notation was both a result of the striving for uniformity and a means of perpetuating that uniformity” (Grout 2001, 38). This brought about a need for more formal music instruction, causing music education to expand even further in the Middle Ages (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 6).


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

Grout, Donald J., and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music, 6th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

The Doctrine of Ethos

Ancient Greek philosophers had a much broader understanding of the word “music” than modern thinkers, leading to beliefs about music education that are still debated today. Music was inseparable from numbers and poetry, and the mathematical connections in particular lead Greek writers to believe music could affect the soul.

The mathematician Pythagoras discovered the numerical ratios necessary to create different consonances. He and his followers believed numbers were “the key to the entire spiritual and physical universe.” As such, musical pitches and rhythms “exemplified the harmony of the cosmos and corresponded to it” (Grout 2001, 5). This also led Greek thinkers such as Ptolemy to associate music and astronomy, since both were believed to be ordered by numbers. Separately but also of great importance to ancient Greek society, poetry was so inextricably tied to music that the Greeks did not have a word for “artful speech” without music (Grout 2001, 6).

Because the ancient Greeks believed that numbers controlled the seen and unseen world, including the human soul, they believed music could affect a person’s morals. This doctrine of ethos promoted by both Aristotle and Plato meant that the type of music people listened to would directly affect their character, since music “imitates the passions or states of the soul” (Grout 2001, 6). Therefore, censorship of certain modes would be necessary to encourage citizens to become the “right” kind of people (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 4-5). Greek mythology bears many examples of heroes being able to perform great feats through music, such as Orpheus retrieving his wife (albeit briefly) from the underworld (Morford 2003, 356).

Because of the broad range of uses and effects the Greeks believed music encompassed, it played a large role in education. While gymnastics was deemed necessary to educate the body, music’s purpose was to educate the soul. However, Plato stressed that the two elements should be balanced, because “too much music makes a man effeminate or neurotic while too much gymnastics makes him uncivilized, violent, and ignorant;” only the proper balance could produce a “true musician” (Grout 2001, 6). This early emphasis on music education did not go unnoticed by medieval scholars, leading music to be included in the quadrivium, four number-related liberal arts. Of a lower order was the trivium, three verbal-related liberal arts (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 5-6).

Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman (1995, 4) note that many issues debated among ancient Greeks over the use of music in education and society are still in contention thousands of years later. Music educators still must justify the merit of studying music as more than just entertainment. With the advent of new genres of music, modern music educators must also wonder whether the Greek doctrine of ethos holds true and if they and other musicians are responsible for the positive or negative characteristics of their students.


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

Grout, Donald J., and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music, 6th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Morford, Mark P. O., and Robert J. Lenardon. Classical Mythology, 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.