Journal of Research in Music Education

This article describes the development of Louisville public school music from its establishment in 1844 to its suspension in 1879. Rationales for music's introduction, debates over teaching methods, and choices of music curricula are examined within the context of Louisville society. Primary sources are used, including minutes and annual reports of the Louisville school board and accounts of mid-nineteenth-century historians. Although Louisville's early school music program had unique aspects, its development for the most part paralleled that of school music programs in other American cities. School board arguments in favor of music instruction focused on music's intellectual, physical, moral, and social benefits to students. Both “rote” and “note” teaching methods were used with success. Music curricula included books and series containing folk songs, songs by the authors of the books, and adaptations of songs by European composers. The music was simple in rhythm, melody, harmony, and form, and song texts were polite and sentimental.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived status of mainstreaming among music educators in Iowa and Kansas. A questionnaire was developed with items concerning years and type of teaching experience; area of music instruction; amount of educational preparation in special education; extent of instructional support in main-streaming students into regular music classes; the extent to which musical and nonmusical goals are primary concerns of music educators; the degree of difficulty in mainstreaming students with various handicapping conditions; and the perceived success of mainstreaming. Results of the study revealed the following: (1) slight differences among general, choral, and instrumental music specialists in their perceptions regarding mainstreaming; (2) no significant difference in responses among music educators with varied experience in working with mainstreamed students; (3) a low level of educational preparation for most music educators working with mainstreamed students; (4) a positive correlation between perceived success in mainstreaming and extent of instructional support; (5) consensus that students with certain types of handicapping conditions are more difficult to integrate into the music classroom; and (6) lack of consensus in primary instructional objectives for handicapped students.

The purpose of this study was to assess young children's abilities to echo short pitch patterns in relation to maintenance of a tonal center in self-chosen and taught songs. Additional considerations were (1) age differences in ability to maintain a tonality and echo pitch patterns; (2) accuracy of vocal reproduction in echoing pitch patterns; (3) age differences in use of vocal range; and (4) size of vocal range used for different singing tasks. Ninety-three preschool children, aged 3-5, were individually tested in singing a self-chosen song, singing a taught song, and echoing 20 short pitch patterns. Children more accurately echoed melodic contours than correct pitches or intervals. A low positive correlation was found between ability to echo pitches or contours and maintenance of a tonal center in singing. Children consistently used larger vocal ranges in echoing pitch patterns than in singing songs.

In an effort to compare the effect of modeling on the development of musical preference, the author of this study compared subject race and sex with preferred-performer race and sex, examined subject-preferred solos given solo models of differing race and sex, and determined the relationship between performer preference and solo choices. Junior high males (n = 67) and females (n = 112), composed of blacks (n = 110), whites (n = 45), and Hispanics (n = 24), indicated their preferences for the 21 performers of the popular song “USA for Africa: We Are the World.” The students then viewed the videotape We Are the World and verbally indicated which solo they would prefer to sing. Statistical comparisons were made between performer preference and solo choices comparing model race and sex with subject race and sex. Results indicated that, generally, subjects tended to prefer same-race and same-sex models. Consistent with previous research, the tendency was stronger for males than females.

Multiple regression techniques were used to analyze the relative contributions of academic ability, music experience, and musical aptitude in predicting grades in first- and second-semester freshman music theory courses. The best predictor of grades in both courses was the math component of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). For the first-semester course, high school grade point average, the incidence of piano study, and scores on the verbal portion of the SAT were also statistically significant predictors. Together, the four predictors accounted for 41% of the variation in theory grades. For the second-semester course, principal instrument was also statistically significant in the prediction of grades, and the incidence of experience on more than one instrument was marginally significant. A principal components analysis of the first-semester data produced five factors that accounted for 78.6% of the variance in the original variables: (1) academic and musical ability, (2) piano experience, (3) years of performing experience, (4) performance on more than one instrument, and (5) musical aptitude.

Thaddeus L. Bolton, a graduate student in psychology at Massachusetts's Clark University who received a Ph.D. in 1895, appears to have written the first doctoral thesis on a topic closely related to music education. The thesis, titled “Rhythm,” predated by a few weeks a music education dissertation written by John]. Dawson, a graduate student of education at New York University. Bolton's dissertation describes an experimental study of the reactions of thirty subjects to sounds occurring at different speeds and intensities and with different durations and patterns of accentuation. Bolton's work on rhythm, which appears to have been among the earliest on music by an experimental psychologist, influenced Iowa music supervisor Philip C. Hayden, who applied some of Bolton's findings to his teaching. Hayden's desire to share his applications with others led, in large part, to the first meeting (1907) of what became the Music Supervisors National Conference.