This essay explores the benefits and limits of teaching and learning music in a changing technological environment, where both students and instructors are faced with the perpetual problem of keeping up with new methods of practicing music for the purpose of maintaining competence. The essay critically reflects on the argument that present societies overvalue technical instruments, at times giving consumers a false hope of achieving quick results in a brief period of time, and with the unintended consequence that playing techniques can be compromised. The idealizing of mechanical devices has become strongly associated today with sophisticated taste and class. Following Mumford and Postman, the essay argues that these technological tools should be seen as posing a challenge to instructional values and to human agency. This essay concludes that while we cannot help the fact that tradition is constantly being renewed, in part through technological change, the role of teaching that learning music needs to be focused on are historic values which incorporate experience and reciprocity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.21235 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Lukianenko, Sofia. |
| Contributors | Crowley, David (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Graduate Communications Program.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001655268, proquestno: MQ50540, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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