Why Study Music?
by Dr. Don Bowyer
Ten years ago I was teaching music at a K-12 private school in the U.S.
Virgin Islands. That was the year I realized that music is probably the only
subject that middle school students believe they know more about than their
teachers. Middle school students might hate their math, science, or history
classes, and they may think the teachers are complete idiots, but they don’t
believe they know more about math, science, or history than the teacher
does.
In music class, the educational world seems upside down to them. The day
they first realized that I was a musical fraud was the day the students
rushed into my class and screamed, “They shot Tupac!” I should have known
better than to ask “Tupac who?” Of course, things got even worse a couple of
days later when they told me Tupac Shakur was really still alive, hiding out
somewhere in South America. I couldn’t help asking if he and Elvis had
started a band.
Why do we study music in schools? Isn’t it enough to know what you like?
Why is it important to know anything about Bach, Beethoven, or Dizzy
Gillespie? Who cares what a fugue is? They never play a fugue on my radio
station, do they? And why can’t they make up their minds about who wrote
which symphony? If Haydn wrote more than a hundred of them and Mozart wrote
more than forty, how did Beethoven write the Ninth Symphony after they were
both dead? Why teach someone to be a musician? If someone wants to be a
musician, all he or she really needs to do is learn a couple of chords and
swear a lot. Good looks and a choreographer wouldn’t hurt, but music schools
don’t teach those things.
Speaking of music schools, why would anyone choose music as a college
major? Hardly anyone makes a living playing piano or trumpet anymore. What
else can you do with a music degree, other than teach?
The answer to that final question is probably the easiest to provide.
Music majors at UAH earn a Liberal Arts degree, which qualifies them for
numerous music and non-music careers. Specifically, UAH music graduates are
currently pursuing careers in performance, education, retail music, arts
administration, music therapy, software engineering, recording engineering,
church music, radio, banking, insurance, etc.
I should also point out that I receive at least one contact a month from
a working adult who did not pursue a music degree and now wishes he or she
had done so. Some of them have gone to great lengths to go back to college
and work on music degrees later in life.
The American Music Council, a non-profit music education advocacy
association, offers a document on their website titled “Essential Advocacy
Resources for Music.” The document can be found at
http://www.amc-music.org/pdf/Essential-Advocacy-Resource.pdf. I will
close this article with ten quotes from that document, along with their
original sources:
- A 2000 Georgia Tech study indicates that a student who participates
in at least one college elective music course is 4.5 times more likely
to stay in college than the general student population.
– Dr. Denise C. Gardner, Effects of Music Courses on Retention, Georgia
Tech, 2000
- The part of the brain responsible for planning, foresight, and
coordination is substantially larger for instrumental musicians than for
the general public.
– “Music On the Mind,” Newsweek, July 24, 2000
- A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence
reports that music training - specifically piano instruction - is far
superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s
abstract reasoning skills necessary for learning math and science.
– Dr. Frances Rauscher and Dr. Gordon Shaw, Neurological Research,
University of California at Irvine, February, 1997
- Physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the undergraduate
majors of medical school applicants. He found that sixty- six percent
(66%) of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted, the
highest percentage of any group. Forty-four percent (44%) of
biochemistry majors were admitted.
– “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 1994
- College students majoring in music achieve scores higher than
students of all other majors on college reading exams.
– Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated
Press, October, 1999
- Music students demonstrate less test anxiety and performance anxiety
than students who do not study music.
– “College-Age Musicians Emotionally Healthier than Non-Musician
Counterparts,” Houston Chronicle, 1998
- On the 1999 SAT, music students continued to outperform their
non-arts peers, scoring 61 points higher on the verbal portion and 42
points higher on the math portion of the exam.
– Steven M. Demorest and Steven J. Morrison, “Does Music Make You
Smarter?,” Music Educators Journal, September, 2000
- Researchers at the University of Muenster in Germany have discovered
that music lessons in childhood actually enlarge parts of the brain. An
area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note is enlarged 25% in
musicians compared to people who have never played an instrument. The
earlier the musicians were when they started musical training, the
bigger this area of the brain appears to be.
– Pantev et al., Nature, April 23, 1998
- Research shows when a child listens to classical music the right
hemisphere of the brain is activated, but when a child studies a musical
instrument both left and right hemispheres of the brain “light up.”
Significantly, the areas that become activated are the same areas that
are involved in analytical and mathematical thinking.
– Dee Dickinson, “Music and the Mind,” New Horizons for Learning, 1993
- The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania School District analyzed its 1997
dropout rate in terms of students’ musical experience. Students with no
ensemble performance experience had a dropout rate of 7.4 percent.
Students with one to two years of ensemble experience had a dropout rate
of 1 percent, and those with three or more years of performance
experience had a dropout rate of 0.0 percent.
– Eleanor Chute, “Music and Art Lessons Do More Than Complement Three
R’s,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 13, 1998
Value of Music
by Dr. Carolyn Sanders
Simply
stated, music students as a whole enjoy greater college success. One
recent study of 7500 university students revealed that music majors scored
the highest reading scores among all majors including English, biology,
chemistry, and math. And according to an article in the Phi Delta
Kappan Journal, 1994, physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the
undergraduate majors of medical school applicants, indicating that music
majors were most successful in being admitted to medical school. He
found that 66% of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted,
the highest percentage of any group. By comparison, 44% of
biochemistry majors were admitted.
Now
that I've caught your attention, let's back up and examine why those who
study music at the college level experience such terrific success in both
musical and non-musical pursuits.
"Art
and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible,
the great seduction of life, the great stimulant of life." This was a
statement made by the great German philosopher of the 1800's, Friedrich
Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself was an accomplished pianist and composer.
He strongly believed that music and the other arts should occupy a prime
space in one's life.
Nietzsche wrote that music was one of the arts which so sharpened our sense
of participation in the world that it gave a much greater meaning to life.
For him, it was not merely a passing pleasure but one of the things which
made living possible. Nietzsche also shared the conviction with many
scholars that music could exert powerful effects on human beings, both good
and evil. In attributing such significance to music, Nietzsche was
closer to the ancient Greeks than to many modern thinkers. Many of the
earliest cultures recognized that music should be an important part of every
human's education. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle
believed in the ability of music to motivate humans towards excellence in
all endeavors. Music competitions were considered to be equally
important as compared to athletic competitions, such as the Olympics.
In addition, music was one member of an elite group of seven subjects in
which all Greeks were to be well educated, known as the trivium and
quadrivium.
As
Anthony Storr describes in his recent book, Music and the Mind,
"Nietzsche's perception of music as so significant that it can make life
worth living seems utterly remote from the mundane preoccupations of
Western politicians and educators. Of course it is right that they
should be concerned with raising standards of literacy, with increasing
expertise in both sciences and crafts, with equipping men and women with the
skills necessary to earn a living in a world increasingly dominated by
technology. But a 'higher standard of living' does not make life
itself worth living. The arts can do so; and, amongst the arts, music
is profoundly significant..."
Storr
continues by saying "Although music is not a belief system, I think that its
importance and its appeal also depend upon its being a way of ordering human
experience. Music exalts life, enhances life, and gives it meaning.
Great music outlives the individual who created it. It is both personal and
beyond the personal. For those who love it, it remains as a fixed
point of reference in an unpredictable world. Music is a source of
reconciliation, exhilaration, and hope which never fails."
Either
by itself, or merged with another discipline, the field of music presents
many wonderful career possibilities. Jobs are relatively plentiful for
those whose interests lie in the area of either public or private education,
especially since it is becoming an increasingly common belief that
music should be a part of every child's education. Recent research
indicates that the study and performance of music can enhance the learning
ability of students in dealing with other subjects, and enhance their
overall well being. In the state of Georgia, as an example, state law
mandates that every newborn be provided with a classical music compact disk,
symbolic of the importance of music from the beginning of the life.
Degree
programs that combine the study of music with other fields are becoming
increasingly popular. Many music-oriented careers are evolving which
combine music with other disciplines in the Liberal Arts, business, science,
or technology. As an example, the field of music therapy, which
utilizes music as medium in a therapeutic setting, such as a hospital or
nursing home, is emerging as an increasingly important field whose benefits
are well-documented. For those with an interest in technology,
students can combine their enthusiasm for music with their desire to delve
into computer science or engineering, eventually landing jobs in
fast-growing fields such as music software and hardware design.
In
conclusion, the performance of music is one of the few educational pursuits
that truly combines the physical, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of
human beings. One must draw on physical capabilities, much like an
athlete. One must possess an acute awareness and understanding of the
power of human emotion, much like the psychologist. One must
understand the structure and notation of the musical language, much like a
mathematician or computer scientist. Few disciplines allow one to
integrate so many different aspects of self as music does. And
finally, few disciplines provide one with as complete an array of
experiences which, as Nietzsche so accurately stated, makes life worth
living.
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