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COPYRIGHT 2005 Music Teachers National Association, Inc.
It is always an amazing phenomenon when music teachers gather, but particularly when it is early on a Saturday morning. Gatherings of music teachers mean that music will be made, provocative thoughts about teaching and learning music will be raised and learning will likely happen. Any time is the right time for such gatherings, as teachers appear in demonstration of their tremendous commitment to music as performance and pedagogy. Early one morning in April 2005, blanketed in a Seattle mist, music teachers assembled together with the collective strength and passion of their commitment to the whole musician through a series of sessions about "making music last a lifetime." Of the various sub-themes that emerged, one that swept across the sessions concerned the matter of musical meaning--for people of all ages and for those who teach them.
We care about the experience and education of people in music and through music. As music teachers, the radiant and resonant sound of music is one of our prime gifts to the world. Teaching is a bona fide talent and skill, too, and it also is our gift to be able to facilitate and activate the musical selves of the people we teach--awaken in them their expressive potential--to help them craft their ability to think musically, perform, create and re-create musically. Because we are musicians and teachers both, we understand the coinciding points of music making and music teaching, and how one supports and enriches the other. Music is a powerful "property" and deeply satisfying process that is both personal and social. We understand the unique niche it fills in the lives of people everywhere, the claim that music has on the human psyche and in the human body. We play and sing and dance because we must, because it is a part of what makes us human, and we pride ourselves on what we can do to tap that human potential in those we teach.
There are several launch points regarding the roles and values of music in our cultures and communities: our music-pedagogy pathway, the children we teach, and the amazing power of music and its making. While these points may appear to comprise a circuitous route for examining musical meaning, they are nonetheless relevant for understanding ourselves, our students and our professional endeavor. With an under standing of these facets, we are able to marvel that we are in an amazing place in the world and are endowed with the privilege of living, working and playing through music and in music. We can revel in the knowledge that we possess the arts of musical expression and the human realm of teaching--giving to--others. These facets matter to those of us committed to the arts of music making and music teaching.
A Noble Calling
Musical meaning is at the heart of who we are and what we value. To be professionally Involved in music is one of life's noble callings. Music is one of the beautiful things in life, and across the world people are drawn to listen to music, dance to it, sing it and play it. Music is a human phenomenon, an artistic form that is both personally expressive and socially meaningful. The musical acts of performance, creative expression and informed listening can be richly fulfilling to all who engage in them. By hard work and sheer determination, some of the truly fortunate land in situations where music is what they "do" all day (and maybe well into the night). They make music as performers, composers, improvisers, arrangers and even sound and recording engineers, and as teachers they enable others to make music and understand it for its full intent. These music professionals need not work to support their musical interests; rather, their musical interests are the core of their professional work.
"Musicians who can, teach." This phrase is quite...
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