Variability, Change, and the Learning of Music

Bibliographic Data

ID7768732
AuthorsBarbara Barnard Smith
Year1987
Volume31
Issue2
Pages201
Publication date1987-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnomusicology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1836 • E-ISSN: 2156-7417
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/851888
OpenAlexW2315298189
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited9

I am deeply honored to have been invited to present Charles Seeger Memorial Lecture for 1986, tenth anniversary of Charles Seeger's Distinguished lecture which was first in this series that now bears his name. This year is also centennial of both birth of Charles Seeger whose views on music have challenged all of us, and of Carl Stumpf's Lieder der Bellakula-Indianer (1886) which some scholars consider the first really ethnomusicological publication (Nettl 1964:14). The occasion therefore invites retrospection; as first Annual Meeting of Society for Ethnomusicology to focus on learning of music1 it also invites a look to future. I am delighted with meeting's theme, Learning and Musical Training, and opportunity to contribute to it; however it has not been easy to prepare my presentation2 because one of my greatest joys is that today younger scholars-my students and othersare carrying forward ideas that came to me only mid-way in my professional career, and are now better than I in articulating them and in perceiving their significance to our changing society. Having been urged to present ideas from my own experience, and believing that to understand learning at a deep level we need to know not only what learning is, but also how and why it is achieved, I will describe some experiences and how I reacted to them, and some situations (as I, though not always my colleagues, perceived them) and how I responded to them that have been influential in determining my views on learning of music. My presentation is in three parts: first, an overview of how our Society and music education3 arrived at this 1986 juncture-to adopt term from title of Seeger's lecture (1977a:179); then, some learnings derived from interactions with my parents, teachers and classmates, and later from interactions with my students and colleagues, with members of Hawaii's multicultural community and with Micronesians;4 and finally, a brief look at present juncture of ethnomusicology and music-learnology5 and some thoughts on its implications for future

Art · Centennial · Ethnomusicology · Musical · Sociology · Theme (computing) · Visual arts · Diverse Music Education Insights · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Psychology

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