Musikkfilosofiske tekster. Tanker om musikk – og språk, tolkning, erfaring, tid, klang, stillhet m.m., 2020
The essay examines the notion of musical–aesthetic experience as an event of appearance in the li... more The essay examines the notion of musical–aesthetic experience as an event of appearance in the light of the aesthetic theories of Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Seel, and Gumbrecht. Despite their radically different responses to the challenges posed by late modernity and their distinctive ways of rethinking metaphysics, some underlying common concerns and insights can be detected. What appears in aesthetic experience is, for all of them, not merely a construction by the subject, as implied by Kant’s aesthetics, but rather ‘something’ that arises from the work of art itself. For Heidegger, this happens through the process of ‘enowning’ (Ereignis), while Gadamer speaks of ‘presentation’ (Vollzug), Adorno of ‘epiphanies’ of the ‘non-identical,’ Seel of ‘appearance,’ and Gumbrecht of the ‘production of presence’. There is a common insight that the status of the subject must be changed by such experiences. Instead of ‘using violence against the object’ (Adorno), a certain passivity is appro...
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The practical relevance of a course or a teaching activity is a question that students often are asked to value in student evaluations. However, what type of practical relevance is asked for here? And which teaching content do students value as being relevant? Student evaluations in music teacher education show that many students find teaching activities that can be directly used in their own teaching as most relevant. Teacher educators also argue that a collection of such classroom activities ("metodisk mappe") can be used as a tool box for the students in the beginning of their career as music teachers. Thereby the "praxis shock" may be avoided, it is claimed. However, is there something about the understanding of "practical relevance", and about the status of practice in teacher education, both among students and teacher educators, that makes them understand practical relevance largely as instant relevance?
Further, is this especially a problem in a practical subject as music, where the master-apprentice model has been a dominating learning strategy, at least in the parts of the subject that have to do with music-making, which is leading us to focus on reproduction of knowledge and practical skills more than other types of knowledge in music teacher eduaction? Jon Helge Sætre (2014) asserts that the subject music in Norwegian generalist teacher education is largely based on traditional practice-oriented and contextual forms of knowledge, besides certain forms of theory inspired by the conservatory model, and that student teachers ask for representations of practice, 'how-to'-skills, and exemplary models of teaching (Sætre, 2014, s. 41-42).
It seems to be a common opinion that practice is the ideal benchmark for measuring the relevance of education. We seem to take for granted that if a teaching activity "works in practice", it is practically relevant and thereby of good quality. What makes this activity work? Is it because it is easy, funny or popular, that it goes without much explanation, music work, much thinking? Is it possible that we sometimes mix up relevance and quality with popularity and the easy-going? And is it true that everything that is done "out there" in the field of practice, in school, is of good quality? The German Scholar Jürgen Vogt argues that letting school or "practice" set the agenda for which learning contents are relevant could lead to a situation where the popular or the established contents dominate. This type of knowledge and skills is not necessarily of bad quality, but such one-sided orientation might hinder professional development of music educational practice. The professionalization of music teacher education can thereby easily become a "closed loop" in which the professional field is merely turning around on and confirming itself (Vogt, 2001).
With the help of relevance theory (Kecskés, 2009; Schütz, 1962 [1945], 1970 [1951; Sperber & Wilson, 1995) and illustrating examples from music teacher education as a case in point, I will carry out a critical-philosophical inquiry into the understanding and use of the notion of practical relevance in generalist music teacher education. Thereby the relation between the notions of relevance, practice, quality and meeting the needs of society will be examined, and the possible implications for both general music teacher education and other music educational settings will be discussed.
Grimen, H. (2009). Profesjonslæresetenes dilemmaer. I M. Lindh (Red.), Profession och vetenskap-idéer og strategier för ett professionslärosäte (Bind 8, s. 47-59). Borås.
HiOA. (2017). Strategi 2024. Hentet fra http://opengov.cloudapp.net/Meetings/hioa/AgendaItems/Details/202106
Kecskés, I. (2009). Communicative Principle and Communication. I J. L. May (Red.), Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics. Oxford: Elsevier Science.
Schütz, A. (1962 [1945]). On Multiple Realities Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality (s. 227-230). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Schütz, A. (1970 [1951). Reflections on the Problem of Relevance. New Haven; London: Yale University Press.
Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Second utg.). Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Sætre, J. H. (2014). Preparing generalist student teachers to teach music : a mixed-methods study of teacher educators and educational content in generalist teacher education music courses (PhD). Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo (2014:11)
Vogt, J. (2001). Praxisbexug als Problem. Zur Professionalisierung der Musiklehrerausbildung. Musik und Bildung, 6(Grundlagen, Hochschuldidaktik), 16-23.
Musical practice embodies temporal phenomena like pulse, tempo, timing, ad lib, accelerando and fermata. The musical present can be viewed as a moment of semantic fullness, a meaningful moment. Music can carry narrative, which is a related phenomenon, also containing intrinsic temporality. Furthermore, music can be improvised in the present moment. The tonal texture of music is experienced as a context, a coherency with an intrinsic temporality. This symposium is set to investigate how music can be experienced, philosophically speaking, in the present moment. In order to do this, we introduce a number of prominent Western philosophers who have taken an interest in the phenomenon of time by using the phenomenon of music as a lens: Saint Augustine, Husserl, Bakhtin and Ricoeur.
After this introductory presentation, the symposium continues as a dialogue between the perspectives provided by these philosophers.