Good Music, Bad Music, and Youth Music

This article is about one focus of a two-year project researching the Penrith (NSW Australia) Youth Music Program offered at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. The Penrith Youth Music Program has been designed to encourage young string players through a program of guided rehearsals and tutorials with mentoring by performers from the Australian Chamber Orchestra. This article focuses on a part of the research that has engaged the young string players in reflection on their own progress. Eight young string players are the focus here, drawn from the whole study that encompasses 27 instrumentalists. In focus groups they were asked at intervals (at the end of each session of three ensemble rehearsals, spaced approximately 6 weeks apart) about their learning and about their practice strategies. This article presents the voices of the eight instrumentalists as they talk about technical issues, ensemble cuing, issues of balance and dynamic control. It also provides data that benefits in performance were achieved without an increase in the reported time given to practice but rather through thoughtful attention by the instrumentalists to their practice and to the proximity of the expert mentors as role models.

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Mass Media and New Types of Youth Music. Methodological and Terminological Problems

International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music ◽

10.2307/836941 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 25 (1/2) ◽

pp. 165

Author(s):

Irmgard Bontinck

Keyword(s):

Mass Media ◽

Youth Music

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Musical Culture To-day: A Sociological Note

Tempo ◽

10.1017/s0040298200060083 ◽

1944 ◽

pp. 104-107

Author(s):

W. H. Mellers

Keyword(s):

New Technique ◽

Musical Culture ◽

The Public ◽

Look Back ◽

Good Music ◽

Adequate Provision ◽

Post War ◽

The Way

We are often told that there is to-day a promising efflorescence of musical culture in this country; that the public for ‘good’ music is growing rapidly; and that more adequate provision must be made for music in the post-war reconstructed world. Substantially I believe all this is true; but it does also seem to me that much potential cultural vitality may be wasted if these conclusions are accepted too easily, without enquiry into the premisses on which they are based. What do we mean by musical culture? What do we expect music to give us? The mere quantity of music played tells us nothing; we want to know what kind of relation the noise has to the society that produces it, we want to know what bearing it has on the way people live. If we look back a moment to consider some of the things that music has meant to people living before us, we shall soon see that our problems are peculiarly difficult, and that we may well need a virtually new technique to deal with them. A refusal to see our educational problems against the background of history will lead to confusion and incompetence in musical culture as in everything else.

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Music in Secondary Education: Predictors of Music Subject Choices and Associations with Academic Achievement

10.31234/osf.io/9xrtm ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Maruša Levstek ◽

Daniel Elliott ◽

Robin Banerjee

Keyword(s):

Academic Achievement ◽

Academic Performance ◽

Secondary Education ◽

Music Education ◽

Economic Status ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Systemic Factors ◽

Education Hub ◽

Socio Economic Variables ◽

Youth Music

This paper investigates the relationship between music qualification choice and academic performance in secondary education in England at Key Stage 4 (KS4; usually at age 15 and 16). We analysed data from 2257 pupils at 18 educational settings in a city in the southeast of England. Two regression analyses with clustered errors modelled KS4 music qualification choice and GCSE academic achievement in English, Mathematics, and other English Baccalaureate subjects, while controlling for a range of demographic, academic, and socio-economic variables. Choice of music as a subject at KS4 was positively associated with the total volume of KS4 qualifications entered for examination and was also predicted by coming from an affluent neighbourhood. Furthermore, this choice of music at KS4 was associated with greater academic performance on English Baccalaureate subjects above and beyond other significant predictors (gender, language, prior academic achievement, total volume of KS4 qualifications, and neighbourhood socio-economic status; local Cohen’s f-squared = .09). These results point to a small but significant additive effect of studying music at KS4 in relation to performance on core GCSE subjects. We also found that schools with KS4 music qualification choice greater than the national average were higher in overall academic attainment, in the proportion of pupils attending extra-curricular instrumental lessons, and in our composite measure of school’s engagement with a local music education hub. The results are interpreted in light of sociological theories of education in an attempt to better understand the underlying systemic factors affecting youth music engagement.

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FromThere's Magic in MusictoThe Hard-Boiled Canary: Promoting “Good Music” in Prewar Musical Films

Journal of the Society for American Music ◽

10.1017/s1752196318000068 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 151-178

Author(s):

GINA BOMBOLA

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

The United States ◽

Transitional Period ◽

Film Production ◽

World War ◽

Star Power ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Archival Documents ◽

Wide Debate ◽

Good Music

AbstractIn 1941, Paramount releasedThere's Magic in Music, a film about a soprano who sings opera in burlesque and wins a scholarship to attend Interlochen. The movie's utopian view of art music, however, caused difficulties for the studio in regard to marketing, leading to a studio-wide debate over the film's title. Archival documents positionThere's Magic in Musicas a valuable case study for investigating the transitional period of musical film production between the Great Depression and the onset of World War II, particularly with respect to operatic musicals. Just prior to the United States’ entry into the war, Hollywood moved away from the escapist fantasy of 1930s cinema toward the realism that would mark the 1940s. To reboot fading interest in musicals, studios toyed with the formula of the backstage musical to focus more on dramatic narratives and star power.There's Magic in Musicthus serves as a lens through which we might examine changes both in musical film production and in notions of “good music” at the eve of World War II.

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Who are you, Olivier Messiaen?

Tempo ◽

10.1017/s0040298200045885 ◽

1961 ◽

pp. 33-36 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Olivier Messiaen ◽

Bernard Gavoty

Keyword(s):

Olivier Messiaen ◽

Youth Music ◽

A Performance

The following discussion between Olivier Messiaen and Bernard Gavoty, music critic of Figaro, took place at a Youth Music concert in Paris in February of this year immediately before a performance of Messiaen's Trois petites Liturgies de la présence divine. It was subsequently published in the Journal Musical Français to whom we are indebted for permission to print the following translation.

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Music lessons from infants

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199298457.013.0021 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Sandra E. Trehub

Keyword(s):

Subsequent Development ◽

Musical Culture ◽

Music Lessons ◽

The World ◽

Good Music ◽

Musical Systems ◽

The Cost

What can we learn about music and musicality from infants? Sceptics may question the possibility of deriving fruitful answers to such questions from immature beings whose hearing is deficient (relative to adults) and whose exposure to ‘good’ music, even conventional music, is limited. This article considers the possibility of nature making some contribution to our musical beginnings and to our subsequent development. The story that emerges from infancy involves a rich musical environment, with mothers delivering performances which match the inclinations of their infants. Moreover, infants have predispositions or inborn preferences for musical features that are common across the world's cultures. Because musical systems across the world differ in notable respects, it makes sense that infants are open to the available alternatives. With increasing exposure to music, they gain expertise as listeners, but that expertise comes at the cost of diminished sensitivity to features which are irrelevant or infrequent in their own musical culture.

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