Over the past year, or so, I’ve been thinking about how we educate our young people in music.
Regular readers of my blog will be aware of my views on some aspects of this that I consider negligible in worth: aural tests in ABRSM exams, the Kodaly method and other similar academic delusions. But the topic that I want to talk about today is ‘music appreciation’.
You’ll know from my other blogs on music education that I’m of the opinion that a lot of what is being examined in our young musicians (and mature ones, taking the dreaded graded exam journey) is outdated and irrelevent. The system has remained much the same for over 80 years, and shows no signs of changing anytime soon. Most exam systems we know have been changed several times of the years, so why have music exams (and I’m looking at you ABRSM) staunchly remained the same all of this time?
I’ve not written a blog for a while now, so I figured that with these few days off work, becasue of the snow and whatnot, I’d knock off a quick one about a couple of my favourite musical bugbears that I hear people bandying about willy-nilly.
And here they are:
1. Music that I don’t like is ‘just a noise’.
and
2. Music is a ‘universal language’.
Argh!
