Category: creativity and innovation

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Integrated Music Education – Challenges of Teaching and Teacher Training

“Thinking and learning in South Indian Music” by Ludwig Pesch, chapter 4 in: Markus Cslovjecsek, Madeleine Zulauf (eds.)
Integrated Music Education – Challenges of Teaching and Teacher Training
Peter Lang Publishers, Bern, 2018. 418 pp., 29 fig. b/w, 2 tables
MOUSIKÆ PAIDEIA Music and Education/Musik und Bildung/Musique et Pédagogie. Vol. 1 pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-0388-0

Contents & contributors

Starting point. The school’s disciplinary learning scaffold : a challenge for integrated education / Rudolf Künzli ; The intertwining of music, education, and integration / Madeleine Zulauf & Markus Cslovjecsek
Step 1. Approaching integrated music education by exploring distant horizons. Integrating arts performance and education in communities of practice : a Brazilian experience / Joan Russell ; Thinking and learning in South Indian music / Ludwig Pesch ; Making connections : avant-garde visual artists and Varèse / Colleen Richardson
Step 2. Encountering integrated music education: where school meets life. Cooperative learning in music : music education and the psychology of integration / Frits Evelein ; Music/arts/language interdisciplinary intervention : cultural, linguistic, and artistic development in Francophone minority communities / Anne Lowe & Monique Richard ; Promoting spirituality through music in the classroom / Diana Harris
Step 3. Uncovering school models in integrated music education. Interdisciplinarity based on a deep understanding of disciplinarity : benefits for students’ self-development / Dagmar Widorski ; Considering frameworks for integrating music and the arts / Kari Veblen; Cross-curricular approaches in music teaching / Jonathan Barnes
Step 4. Becoming familiar with integrated music education activities in the classroom. Activities which use and unveil cultural artifacts / Smaragda Chrysostomou, Colleen Richardson & Joan Russell ; Activities which explore links between music and one other subject / Markus Cslovjecsek, Ludwig Pesch & Joan Russell ; Activities which develop from the learners’ presence / Anke Böttcher, Frits Evelein & Diana Harris
Step 5. Being invited into the minds of people engaged in integrated music education. Conceptions of integrated music education : models in dialogue / Madeleine Zulauf & Peter Gentinetta ; When teachers meet specialists : retrospect on the symposium ‘Practice and research in integrated music education’ as a form of professional development / Hermann Gelzer & Helmut Messner

Find a library copy on Worldcat.org >>

This book was presented  during the 33rd ISME World Conference for Music Education (isme2018.org) on Wednesday 18 July 2018.

About this book

Schools are generally oriented towards discipline-based programmes and therefore students often accumulate fragmented knowledge, disconnected from real life concerns. The eighteen contributors to this work suggest that music offers a highway to developing a more appropriate integrated education. They present a range of views on Integrated Music Education rooted in various cultural traditions, based on several interdisciplinary models and integrated arts curricula, inspired by psychological concepts and referenced to recent teaching experiments as well as original research.

In this innovative book, the reader is invited to go beyond the dichotomy between ‘education in music’ and ‘education through music’, exploring the opportunities put forward by Integrated Music Education thanks to a constant movement from the theoretical roots through a precise description of teaching activities to the benefits for students in terms of integration of knowledge, personal development, and social and cultural belonging. Lastly, there are some new and interesting ideas for training teachers.

Art: Arun VC (Wayanad, Kerala)
Illustration from
Vaitari: A musical picture book from Kerala
Audio file: Lakshmi and Marma talas combined in an original rendition by Thrikkamburam Krishnan Marar, a hereditary temple musician in Kerala. Recording location: Natanakairali Irinjalakuda; described in the present publication:
Vaitari: Syllable-based rhythm exercise from Kerala by Ludwig Pesch (pp. 290-4), Ch. “Activities Which Explore Links between Music and One Other Subject”
Worldcat lists compiled by Ludwig Pesch

Carnatic (South Indian classical) music 

Rabindranath Tagore: works by and about the influential writer, humanist and social reformer

Indian performing arts

History 

Publications, book chapters and articles by Ludwig Pesch

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Yehudi Menuhin over interculturele relaties en synthese

Wederzijdse muzikale beïnvloeding suggereert een bepaalde harmonische richting, die in strijd zou zijn met de strikte wetten van de harmonieleer: een soepele en melodieuze combinatie van zelfstandige stemmen (contrapunt).

De muziek van onze tijd volgt deze wetten niet meer. Maar ook vroeger voelden meester componisten zich maar zelden aan vaste regels gebonden.

[ … ] Er is vast geen betere plek dan Israël om de onderlinge relaties tussen oosterse en westerse culturen te verkennen. Want daar komen drie krachtige stromingen bij elkaar: etnische groepen afkomstig uit Afrika, Azië en Europa. Ze geven een indruk van complexiteit en aantrekkingskracht, het resultaat van een wisselwerking tussen verschillende modellen. Daarom is dit boek meer dan een wetenschappelijk document, even actueel als boeiend, gebaseerd op eigen ervaring.

Europa heeft zijn wilskracht bijgedragen, en het vermogen om veel te synthetiseren wat zijn oorsprong in Azië heeft: van Mongolië in het noorden tot India in het zuiden, vervolgens in Hongarije verenigd in de muziek van de Magyaren en zigeuners [Sinti en Roma]. 1

[…] De opgave van onze tijd is een genuanceerd beeld van de onderlinge relaties door gebruik te maken van het vermogen waarover alle volkeren en culturen beschikken, namelijk de kracht om te geven en te nemen, van elkaar te leren; want we zullen elkaar altijd nodig hebben. Het vergt wel enige nederigheid om het best mogelijke te bereiken – en het ergste te voorkomen – in tijden van toenemende afhankelijkheid van elkaar. – Yehudi Menuhin (Londen, januari 1977) 2

Vrij vertaald uit: Musik zwischen Orient und Okzident: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Wechselbeziehungen von Peter Gradenwitz S. 390-392 | Details: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1046379134

Yehudi Menuhin - Book cover "Unfinished Journey" thumbnail
Participation in Indian music means much to me – urging in sequences which will never be repeated the savoring of each note; heightening the ear’s perception of the notes, the rhythms and the flexible tensions between them
Yehudi Menuhin in Unfinished Journey (London, 1978, p. 343)
  1. Toelichting voor de niet langer gebruikelijke, want denigrerende term “zigeuner” en de behoefte aan nuance, die pas na de publicatie van dit boek in 1977 tot verandering heeft geleid (hier vrij vertaald zoals volgt):

    “Zigeuner is een stereotiep woord, alleen gebruikt door de meerderheid, maar wordt door de minderheid als discriminerend afgewezen; want deze minderheden noemden zichzelf altijd Sinti en Roma. Dankzij de Duitse burgerrechtenbeweging vanaf de eind jaren zeventig werd een bewustzijn gecreëerd wat vooroordelen en uitsluitingsmechanismen betreft die met het woord “zigeuner” verbonden zijn. [ … ] De termen Sinti en Roma zijn geenszins “politiek correcte” uitvindingen van de burgerrechtenbeweging maar al in documenten uit de 18e eeuw aantoonbaar. [ … ] Dus het woord zigeuner zegt meer over de fantasieën, angsten en verlangens van degenen die het gebruiken dan over het leven van de Sinti en Roma.

    Meer informatie zie: https://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de/sinti-und-roma-zigeuner/
    (Duitse en Engelse bronnen)
    In Nederland ontbreekt het tot nu toe blijkbaar aan een gezamenlijk standpunt over belangenbehartiging van de verschillende gemeenschappen:
    https://www.verwey-jonker.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/318020_Verkennend-onderzoek-naar-centrale-Roma-Sinti_WEB.pdf
    [↩]

  2. “Humility is a quality often associated with self-deprecation. But by championing our achievements while also acknowledging our weaknesses, we could see benefits in many areas of our lives – and even increase our attractiveness.” – Introduction BBC podcast All in theMind (accessed 1 November 2023) [↩]
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How will we experience music in 2050? To play music together and connect!

Ideally in a very profound way – the way families have shared music for thousands of years, and long before music became a commodity:

So it’s a rainy day in 2050 and you and your friends decide you’d like to see a concert. […] Emmy Parker, a cultural futurist and former brand manager for synthesizer maker Moog Music, said that the future could also allow us to experience music and sound in a very profound way, the way families have shared music for thousands of years, and long before “music” became a commodity.

“How can we expand that simple idea, which has been on planet Earth probably for 150,000 years, that we play music together to, number one, connect with each other?” said Parker.

19:40 we play music together, to connect to our higher self or God or universe; to our ancestors, to bring us back to another time and place […] very similar to a time traveler.

We use to heal our minds, our hearts and spirit, and our body, and connect to each other, to our families.

Listen to Spark’s Next Big Thing series, which explores how technology in various guises might affect humanity in the far future >>

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Enriching town and village life alike: Suitable, ecologically responsible venues with local materials and expertise

“To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now … with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption: a lifestyle designed for permanence.” – E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, p. 16 (Abacus 1984 ed.)

“If the town life was rich, the village life was equally so. … The villagers were not altogether cut off from the activities of town life. … The monotonous life of the villager was often enlivened by rural amusements of varied character. Every village had a common dancing-hall (kalam). Even the village women took part in these public performances like the tunankai, a kind of dance .” – V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, The Cilappatikaram (Tinnevelly: The South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, 1978), chapter on “Village and Village Life”, pp. 61

More Things I recommend: Worldcat.org >>

Download, read in full screen mode or listen to A Theatre For All: Sittrarangam—the Small Theatre Madras by Ludwig Pesch (open domain) on Archive.org >>

Bibliography >>