Free Download William M. Perrine, "Beauty, Reason, and Power: Music Education in a Pluralist Society"
English | ISBN: 1433199122 | 2023 | 372 pages | EPUB, PDF | 3 MB + 36 MB
Music, when approached as a part of a classical liberal arts education, is a profoundly humanizing endeavor which can facilitate individual musical and moral growth within communities of practice. A classical approach to music education contrasts with common progressive and critical curriculum frameworks through a philosophically realist analysis. From this perspective, a classical education serves as an induction into the liberal arts as a living tradition of cultural memory rooted in the transcendentals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Further, because a classical liberal arts education is an education in virtue, it equips students to contribute to the common good as a member of their broader communities. Music education, as part of a classical education, can cultivate shared loves across political, religious, or cultural lines in a pluralist society. Studying music allows practitioners to expand the circle of internal goods of a musical tradition while respecting existing individual and community moral commitments. Students learn music classically through ethical apprenticeship, a foundational method of induction into existing musical traditions which draws its pedagogical authority from both the internal standards of the craft and the practice's hierarchical relation to an external moral order. Music education ultimately contributes to the life well lived when it reflects a narrative unity encompassing myth and reason, lived virtuously through the mastery of desire as measured by normative standards that are intrinsically meaningful beyond the limitations of the self.