Journal of Historical Research in Music Education

In this article, I explore John Philip Sousa’s historic resistance to music technology and his belief that sound recordings would negatively impact music education and musical amateurism. I review Sousa’s primary arguments from two 1906 essays and his testimony to the US Congress from the same year, based on the fundamental premise that machines themselves sing or perform, severing the connection between live listener and performer and thus rendering recordings a poor substitute for real music. Sousa coined the phrase “canned music,” and I track engagement with this phrase among the hundreds of newspapers and magazines focused on Sousa’s resistance. To better understand the construction of Sousa’s beliefs, I then review how his rich musical upbringing around the US Marine Band and the theaters of Washington DC lead to his conception of music as a dramatic ritual. And I examine the curious coda of Sousa’s life, during which he recanted his beliefs and conducted his band for radio, finding that in fact these experiences reinforced Sousa’s worries. The discussion considers how Sousa’s ideas can help us better to examine the contemporary shift to digital music by combining Sousa’s ideas with those of Sherry Turkle.

In this study I examined archival material relating to music lessons that aired on the Indiana School of the Sky during its inaugural season in the 1947–1948 school year. The Indiana School of the Sky was an educational radio program intended for use in the public schools and produced by Indiana University students and professors, in partnership with the State Department of Education. The purpose of this study was to illuminate details of the Indiana School of the Sky music program during its inaugural season in 1947–1948, such as the staff, repertoire, teaching strategies, and program structure. Of particular interest was Dorothy G. Kelley, who served as supervisor of the Indiana School of the Sky music episodes during its inaugural season, and was the first female to join the faculty of the Music Education Department at Indiana University. A secondary purpose was to examine the intersection of education and technology in the late 1940s through the lens of the Indiana School of the Sky and to afford contemporary music educators the opportunity to reflect on how they use current technologies in their classrooms. This study found that the program employed three main teaching strategies: singalong, call and response, and listening. Indiana University music and music education students performed in many music episodes alongside Kelley, and 34% of compositions that aired during the 1948–1949 school year comprised of music by composers from the United States, or folk music originating in the United States. Other countries represented by either composer or folk tradition included Australia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Mexico, Russia, and Spain.

The 2020 bicentennial year of Indiana University (IU) Bloomington is a fitting time to recognize the 100-year legacy of the faculty members of the IU Music Education Department. This legacy has not been heretofore documented, exposing a gap in the knowledge of historical traditions and influences. The purpose of this study was to create a comprehensive list of the faculty names, and years of service, and to identify publications, leadership roles, curriculum development, and biographical insights. The historical narrative was created through immersion in the following primary sources found in the IU Archives: The annual Indiana University Bulletins, the Trustees Minutes, and miscellaneous clippings files containing photographs, news items, and obituaries. First edition hard copies of books and published articles by the faculty were examined. Greatest detail is provided for those IU professors of the distant past, including Edward Bailey Birge, Samuel T. Burns, Thurber H. Madison, Jack M. Watson, Dorothy G. Kelley, Newell H. Long, Miriam P. Gelvin, Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. This study illustrates how one-storied Music Education Department is inextricably linked to its past and suggests that other legacy studies are needed for comparison and contrast.

Anthony Johnson Showalter (c. 1853–1924) was a music educator, gospel composer, publisher, and considered a pioneer in gospel music and education in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Showalter is notably mentioned in numerous texts and studies related to gospel music; however, little data has been collected regarding the tools he used in singing schools—namely, the rudiment books he wrote and the schools where he used the curriculum. The purpose of this study is to discover Showalter’s possible motivation to begin his career, his determination in writing music education curriculum, organizing singing schools, his reasonings for focusing on seven-shape note style, and his influence into the twenty-first century. Materials analyzed included Showalter’s rudiment books, extant copies of his periodical, “The Music Teacher and Home Magazine,” and interviews at present-day gospel singing schools. Extant research related to four-shape and seven-shape hymnody and education was also reviewed. Findings indicate that Showalter was a progressive student-centered educator who utilized alternate tools in helping many with literacy by organizing the Southern Normal Musical Institute. Showalter created materials and opportunities which were accessible to the advanced and the beginner, hence providing a future for gospel singing schools well into the twenty-first century.

The purpose of this study was to examine the sociocultural roots of folk songs from the perspective of renowned folklorist Henry Glassie. Dr. Henry Glassie holds the rank of Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, where he previously served on the faculty for the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Primary sources included Glassie’s archived collection of folk song transcriptions, recordings, and field notes from the Appalachian region between 1961-1967, housed at the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University. A total of 1,665 titles from elementary general music sources were cross-referenced with Glassie’s collection, 26 of which appeared in the archived account. Two oral history interviews with Glassie revealed that folk songs that are commonly used in elementary general music classrooms have historical roots of which teachers may be unaware. The songs in this study raise ethical and moral questions regarding their use in the general music classroom and suggest that teachers carefully research folk songs and their related meanings.