Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgements
- Bernarr Rainbow: A Biographical Note
- Part I Five Bernarr Rainbow Lectures
- Part II The 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society Lecture
- Part III A 2013 Perspective
- Part IV Three Views on Music Education
- Music Education, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
- Keeping Music Musical
- Music: The Breath of Life
- Part V Two Reviews of Bernarr Rainbow on Music
- Appendices
- Index
Music: The Breath of Life
from Part IV - Three Views on Music Education
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgements
- Bernarr Rainbow: A Biographical Note
- Part I Five Bernarr Rainbow Lectures
- Part II The 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society Lecture
- Part III A 2013 Perspective
- Part IV Three Views on Music Education
- Music Education, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
- Keeping Music Musical
- Music: The Breath of Life
- Part V Two Reviews of Bernarr Rainbow on Music
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
As a writer, composer and educator Wilfrid Meilers (1914–2008) was a major influence on several generations. He started the music department at York University in 1964 and – as he explains – its curriculum anticipated the current scene where many forms of popular and world music coexist with the Western tradition. Mellers began with a staff of composers – David Blake, Peter Aston, Bernard Rands, Robert Sherlaw Johnson and John Paynter – and soon added performers and ethnomusicologists since he didn't believe in separating theory and practice. His books included studies of Couperin, American music (Music in a New Found Land), popular music heroes such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and also Bach, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Grainger and Poulenc; there are also several anthologies of his writings. Mellers was a composer, too; his Yeibichai, commissioned by the BBC for the 1969 Proms, involved a coloratura soprano, a scat singer, an improvising jazz trio, orchestra and tape.
My professional career parallels Sir Frank Callaway's; and since I am even older than he, I can pay heartfelt tribute to the decisive changes that he, more than anyone, effected in the prospects for music education. There can to my mind be no doubt as to what was the most significant change in attitudes to music education that occurred during our careers, hopefully given committed pushes by both of us. To put it crudely, music education became less a study of historical artefacts arranged in chronological sequence, and more a cultivation of music as ongoing activity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Music Education in CrisisThe Bernarr Rainbow Lectures and Other Assessments, pp. 145 - 150Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013