Re-thinking Western Art Music: a perspective shift for music educators

Abstract

While many resources are now available to teach world music in our classrooms, less attention has been given to helping teachers exhibit the quality defined by Patricia Shehan Campbell as ‘an open reception to the breadth of music’s multiple manifestations’. For many music educators, Western Art Music is ‘their music’, which they often unconsciously privilege in their work. Further, the widespread adoption of western education systems has led to ‘music’ in formal education being defined in western terms. Barbara Lundquist suggests that we need to develop new ethnomusicological perspectives on the music we teach. Applying this approach to Western Art Music leads to the conclusion that it can usefully be described as North-west Asian Court Music. This shift in perspective allows the music to be viewed and taught in the conservatorium and in the classroom in a different way, with no loss of status to those involved in it or to the music itself. In this way, neo-colonial attitudes can be avoided while music educators can better meet the needs of students in the modern world.