Title: Theme and Variations: European Imports to American Music Education in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Author(s): Carolyn Livingston Source: Livingston, C. (1992, Fall). Theme and variations: European imports to American music education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Quarterly, 3(3), pp. 31-40. (Reprinted with permission in Visions of Research in Music Education, 16(3), Autumn, 2010). Retrieved from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~vrme/ It is with pleasure that we inaugurate the reprint of the entire seven volumes of The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning. The journal began in 1990 as The Quarterly. In 1992, with volume 3, the name changed to The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning and continued until 1997. The journal contained articles on issues that were timely when they appeared and are now important for their historical relevance. For many authors, it was their first major publication. Visions of Research in Music Education will publish facsimiles of each issue as it originally appeared. Each article will be a separate pdf file. Jason D. Vodicka has accepted my invitation to serve as guest editor for the reprint project and will compose a new editorial to introduce each volume. Chad Keilman is the production manager. I express deepest thanks to Richard Colwell for granting VRME permission to re-publish The Quarterly in online format. He has graciously prepared an introduction to the reprint series. Thetlle And Variations: European Jrrrp-or-ts To Atnerican Music Education In The Nineteenth And T-w-entieth Centuries By Carolyn Livingston University of Rhode Island lthough history does repeat it- new practices at times when pressures from A. self, it is not strophic in form, society indicated that innovation was needed. but can be compared to a The "variations" refer to the different prac- theme with variations. The variations are tices and the ways in which they were car- likely to be diverse from one another and ried out in the United States. may vary widely from the original subject. Societal Pressures on American The theme can always be found, however, by the observer who attends closely. Music Education There is a striking similarity between Seeking a way to have music accepted as a Lowell Mason 0817-1892) sailing to Europe valid pzrt of the public school curriculum, and for Pestalozzian enlightenment as the nine- being well aware of the European influence teenth century neared its mid-point, and the on American culture and thought, it was logi- American music educators who traveled to cal that Lowell Mason might seize upon meth- Europe to study and import the instructional ods that were then being promoted by the Eu- approaches of such European music educa- ropean pedagogical community. Much the tors as Dalcroze, Kodaly, and Orff, beginning same salt of pressures existed for Mason as for near the middle of the twentieth century. American music educators in the late 1950s Americans through the years have been mes- and early 1960s after Sputnik I, the Soviet merized by Europe and the air of culture it Union's early triumph in technology, created a invokes. Music of the United States has a need for educated workers in the space indus- long tradition of being affected by European try. Advances in technology had begun earlier practices and innovations. A number of writ- in the twentieth century but were brought to ers have pointed out the strength of this in- the attention of the public with new intensity fluence on American composers.' Birge, as when the Russian space satellite was launched early as 1928, mentioned the influence of and began orbiting the earth in 1957. A wide- Pestalozzi on American music education as spread demand for accelerated concentration well as that of the tonic sol-fa method begun on mathematics and science in the school cur- in England in 1840 by Elizabeth Glover and riculum quickly followed. Because of the con- adapted by John Curwen.s The "theme" of straints of time and funding involved, music's this article, therefore, is the fact that Ameri- position in the curriculum was threatened. can music educators have gone to Europe for Many reasoned that if the study of math and science were to be increased, something Carol Livingston is Assistant Professor and would have to decrease, and subsequently the Coordinator of Music Education at the Uni- arts were looked upon as "frills" which were versity of Rhode Island. expendable. Volume III, Number 3, 1992 31 This portrait engraving of Lowell Mason was clipped from an unknown publication in about 1865. Although the artist is unknown, "Kilburn Del." and "Brightly SC" appear at the bottom of the engraving. The portrait accompanies a biographical article. Credit: Music Library, University of Maryland at College Park (Lowell Mason Collection). The curricular tensions which Lowell Mason for grades one through eight had already been faced in the nineteenth century were established in Boston in the early nineteenth prompted by America's earliest efforts at in- century, in part to prepare an increasing im- dustrialization, pan of what Toffler refers to as migrant population to enter the industrialized the Second Wave.3 Workers were needed to work force. The school attendance law made meet the demands of an expanding nation. In it possible to control large groups of people . ew England and the 1 ortheast, rapidly grow- whose values and social mores were sometimes ing industries were producing firearms, tex- embarrassingly different from those of native tiles, machinery, and numerous other goods in Bostonians. The bureaucratic industrial man- mass quantities. Compulsory public education agement model was thought to be the answer 32 The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning to the problems of a city school system growing it demanded men and women prepared to more crowded with new residents from foreign slave away at machines or in offices,perform- shores. Toffler describes the way in which this ing brutally repetitious operations." led to the "overt" and the "covert" curricula: As Lowell Mason's grandson and biogra- Builton the factorymodel. mass education pher, Henry Lowell Mason (1864-1957), taught basic reading, writing,and arithmetic,a stated of this period, "Music... was neither bit of history and other subjects. This was the well understood, nor, generally speaking, "overtcurriculum." But beneath it lay an in- held in high esteem." As the Second Wave visible or "covertcurriculum"that was far demanded well-trained workers, so did the more basic. It consisted...of three courses: Third Wave, which depicts the present tech- one in punctuality,one in obedience, and one nological society. The desired worker char- in rote, repetitivework. Factorylabor de- acteristics for the Third Wave were some- manded workers who showed up on time, what more sophisticated, but the emphasis especiallyassembly-linehands. It demanded placed on the required attributes was still so workers who would take orders from a man- strong that it left little room in the school agement hierarchywithout questioning. And curriculum for music and the other arts. rI This portrait engraving appears to be a variant of the engraving shown on the opposite page. Is it, perhaps, another artist's version of the same photographic original? This engraving has no signature. It accompanies an obituary article published in The Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated 55 (October 1872): 215-19. Credit: Music Library, UniversityofNlaJylandatCollegePark (Lowell Mason Collection). Volume III, Number 3, 1992 33 Lowell Mason's Work in the around 1793 as a reaction against the primi- Nineteenth Century tive, indigenous American music of William Mason was born in Medfield, Massachu- Billings, Timothy Swan, and other Yankee setts, where his musical talents, under the tunesmiths. Not only was their untrained instruction of several local teachers, found style of composition under attack, but the early expression in singing and playing in- harsh vocal techniques and out-of-tune sing- struments. In 1812 he traveled to Savannah, ing employed were criticized by such musi- Georgia, where he made his home. At that cians as Andrew Law, William Cooper, Tho- time Savannah had the distinction of being mas Hastings, and later by Mason himself.7 the southernmost city in the United States. Of the proponents of the "scientific" method, An international seaport and thriving com- Hamm wrote, "Their teaching methods, pub- mercial center, it offered rich cultural oppor- lications, and public pronouncements were tunities, similar to those Mason had left in based wholly on the premise that music New England, with its musical societies and should be a literate art, that nonliterate music regular performances. was inferior to literate music, that universal The city's religious heritage also played a musical literacy was the only way to improve significant role in Mason's life. It was in Sa- the art in America.t" vannah that John Wesley (1703-1791), the Even the title of Mason's first published founder of Methodism, had established the collection of music, The Boston Handel and world's first Protestant Sunday school in 1736. Haydn Society Collection of Church Music Mason was later to write hymn tunes for many (1822), reflects the fact that his own style of of the approximately 6,500 hymns authored by composition was based extensively on that of John Wesley's brother, Charles. Mason had the European masters. During his lifetime, been a member of his family's Congregational Mason adapted almost 500 melodies from church in Medfield and soon became active as these and other composers and wrote some organist and choirmaster at Savannah's Inde- 1,200 original hymn tunes. Most of the latter pendent Presbyterian Church, the same church exemplify Mason's preference for the Ger- where the English evangelist, George manic style.