This book explores Iranian music education history, detailing its beginnings in 1900 up to present practices and challenges contextualised in the wider society and culture. In addition to this historical account, the text offers detailed and well-illustrated discussions of playing various Iranian classical musical instruments, with discussions of key pedagogical parameters of the tone production and performance of Iranian classical instruments. The information provided here will serve to stimulate further research into Iranian music pedagogy and repertoires, the Ney and Iranian instrumental pedagogy in general. This book offers musicians, educators, historians and musicologists a comprehensive investigation of Iranian instrumental music pedagogy, and fills a current gap in the literature on important global musical and music learning traditions

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Assessment in Music Education offers global, comprehensive, and critical perspectives on a wide range of conceptual and practical issues in music education assessment, evaluation, and feedback as these apply to various forms of music education within schools and communities. The central aims of this Handbook focus on broadening and deepening readers' understandings of and critical thinking about the problems, opportunities, spaces and places, concepts, and practical strategies that music educators and community music facilitators employ, develop, and deploy to improve various aspects of music teaching and learning around the world.

This volume focuses on the collective wisdom of Asian philosophies and their implications for music education. All twenty chapters are written by highly regarded philosophers and music educators steeped in various Asian traditions. These chapters will include an explanation of a prominent philosophical tradition, evidence in a contemporary music teaching and learning settings (including its inception and historical development along with an explanation of how the philosophical tradition works in contemporary music education), and suggestions for potential directions in the near and distant future. The book is organized into five sections. Section I is based on Chinese philosophical traditions, which have the longest history and are some of the most influential across Asia and beyond. Chapters in Section II present a snapshot of Japanese and Korean views, beginning with the musical practices in the Joseon Period (1392-1910) that are still being practiced in South Korea today to Western influences in 19th century Japan. A collection of philosophical traditions from South and Southeast Asia are contained in Section III, ranging from the insights of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, King Rama IX of Thailand, an accomplished jazz musician, to the Balinese notion of taksu, a form of supreme energy and divine power crucial for compelling performances in the performing arts. We venture into the Islamic and the Middle Eastern world in Section IV, where the dance practices of the Hadhrami Arabs in the Malay Archipelago to traditional sharah music are contextualized within Islamic philosophy. This section also describes the philosophical ideas of the 12th-century Persian philosopher and founder of the Illuminationist (Ishraq) philosophy, Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, arguing that his ideas have much to recommend music education, as this approach requires students to listen in deeper ways, absorb more abundantly, and move beyond arts education to encompass the education of the whole person. Section V concludes with a metaphorical view on a New Silk Road in music education in the 21st century, where ideas are traded for mutual benefit and the development multicultural philosophies of music education. While there are numerous publications on the philosophy of music education rooted in the Western philosophical traditions of ancient Greece, the Asian philosophical voice is virtually silent outside of Asia, and this volume aims to begin the long process of redressing this imbalance. This volume will open readers to the richness of Asian philosophical sources and hopefully stimulate dialogues that could generate new insights and directions for further development, cross-pollination, and application of some of the world's earliest philosophical traditions.

Essays examining the role of religion in music education from a variety of perspectives. Music, Education, and Religion: Intersections and Entanglements explores the critical role that religion can play in formal and informal music education. As in broader educational studies, research in music education has tended to sidestep the religious dimensions of teaching and learning, often reflecting common assumptions of secularity in contemporary schooling in many parts of the world. This book considers the ways in which the forces of religion and belief construct and complicate the values and practices of music education—including teacher education, curriculum texts, and teaching repertoires. The contributors to this volume embrace a range of perspectives from a variety of disciplines, examining religious, agnostic, skeptical, and atheistic points of view. Music, Education, and Religion is a valuable resource for all music teachers and scholars in related fields, interrogating the sociocultural and epistemological underpinnings of music repertoires and global educational practices. “The book serves as a study volume for all those who are active in this field and provides both systematic reflections and useful empirical studies. A further impressive feature is the regional and religious breadth of the content presented and examined.” —Wolfgang W. Müller, Reading Religion

Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today is a collection of thematically organized essays that illuminate the importance of music education to individuals, communities and nations. The fourth edition has been expanded to address the significant societal changes that have occurred since the publication of the last edition, with a greater focus on current readings in government, philosophy, psychology, curriculum, sociology, and advocacy. This comprehensive text remains an essential reference for music educators today, demonstrating the value and support of their profession in the societies in which they live.

Questions of creativity, and particularly the processes which underlie creative performance or ’improvisation’, form some of the central areas of interest in current musicology. Yet the predominant discourses on which musicological thought in this area are based have rarely been challenged. In this book Laudan Nooshin interrogates musicological discourses of creativity from the perspective of critical theory and postcolonial studies, examining their ideological underpinnings, the relationships of alterity which they sustain, and the profound implications for our understanding of creative processes in music. The repertoire which forms the book’s main focus is Iranian classical music, a tradition in which the performer plays a central creative role. Addressing a number of issues regarding the nature of musical creativity, the author explores both the discourses through which ideas about creativity are constructed, exchanged and negotiated within this tradition, and the practice by which new music comes into being. For the latter she compares a number of performances by musicians playing a range of instruments and spanning a period of more than 30 years, focusing on one particular section of repertoire, dastgāh Segāh, and providing transcriptions of the performances as the basis for analytical exploration of the music’s underlying compositional principles. This book is about understanding musical creativity as a meaningful social practice. It is the first to examine the ways in which ideas about tradition, authenticity, innovation and modernity in Iranian classical music form part of a wider social discourse on creativity, and in particular how they inform debates regarding national and cultural identity.

Music education thrives on philosophical inquiry, the systematic and critical examination of beliefs and assumptions. Yet philosophy, often considered abstract and irrelevant, is often absent from the daily life of music instructors. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education, editors Wayne D. Bowman and Ana Lucía Frega have drawn together a variety of philosophical perspectives from the profession's most exciting scholars. Rather than relegating philosophical inquiry to moot questions and abstract situations, the contributors to this volume address everyday concerns faced by music educators everywhere, demonstrating that philosophy offers a way of navigating the daily professional life of music education and proving that critical inquiry improves, enriches, and transforms instructional practice for the better. Questioning every musical practice, instructional aim, assumption, and conviction in music education, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education presents new and provocative approaches to the practice of teaching music. Bowman and Frega go deeper than mere advocacy or a single point of view, but rather conceive of philosophy as a dynamic process of debate and reflection that must constantly evolve to meet the shifting landscapes of music education. In place of the definitive answers often associated with philosophical work, Bowman and Frega offer a fascinating cross-section of often-contradictory approaches and viewpoints. By bringing together essays by both established and up-and-coming scholars from six continents, Bowman and Frega go beyond the Western monopoly of philosophical practice and acknowledge the diversity of cultures, instructors, and students who take part in music education. This range of perspectives invites broader participation in music instruction, and presents alternative answers to many of the fields most pressing questions and issues. By acknowledging the inherent plurality of music educational practices, the Handbook opens up the field in new and important ways. Emphasizing clarify, fairness, rigor, and utility above all, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education challenges music educators around the world to make their own decisions and ultimately contribute to the conversation themselves.

This book is a contemporary analysis of children’s music education, combining theoretical insight with practical application. It examines how children engage with, and think about, music and how an understanding of this can empower rich approaches to teaching and learning. Key topics include: an overview of music education as a field of study, musical imagination in thought and practice, musical worlds created with, and for, children and a range of perspectives on musicality and musical knowledge in childhood. This is essential reading for anyone involved in music education with children, including music leaders working in community settings, and for primary school teachers, and those training to teach, seeking to deepen their own professional understanding. Mary Stakelum is Area Leader, Music Education at the Royal College of Music.

Creativities, Media, and Technology in Music Learning and Teaching reviews the diverse types of creativity found within music education practice across the globe. The volume explores the transformative changes within the discipline resulting from new technologies and rapid advances in media, and the implications these have for the future.

Music and Music Education in People's Lives is one of five paperback books derived from the foundational two-volume Oxford Handbook of Music Education. Designed for music teachers, students, and scholars of music education, as well as educational administrators and policy makers, this first book in the set provides a framework for understanding the content and context of music education, and for future action within the profession. A broad examination of the philosophical, psychological, cultural, international, and contextual issues that underpin a wide variety of teaching environments or individual attributes is paired with 25 relevant and insightful commentaries from established scholars and music educators. Taken as a whole, Music and Music Education in People's Lives gives clear direction to how the discipline of music education can achieve even greater political, theoretical and professional strength. Contributors Harold F. Abeles, Nick Beach, Wayne D. Bowman, Liora Bresler, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Richard Colwell, Robert A. Cutietta, David J. Elliott, Sergio Figueiredo, Lucy Green, Wilfried Gruhn, David Hargreaves, Sarah Hennessy, Liane Hentschke, Donald A. Hodges, Christopher M. Johnson, Estelle R. Jorgensen, Andreas C. Lehmann, Richard Letts, Håkan Lundström, Raymond MacDonald, Clifford K. Madsen, Andrew J. Martin, Marie McCarthy, Katrina McFerran, Gary E. McPherson, Bradley Merrick, Dorothy Miell, Graça Mota, Bruno Nettl, Bengt Olsson, Susan A. O'Neill, Johnmarshall Reeve, Bennett Reimer, James Renwick, Huib Schippers, Wendy L. Sims, David J. Teachout, Rena Upitis, Peter R. Webster, Graham F. Welch, Paul Woodford