Marx's 'Lehre' and the science of education: Towards the recuperation of music pedagogy

Music and Letters

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 489-526

  Spitzer, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 63849253141     PISSN: 00274224     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ml/79.4.489     Document Type: Review

References (102)

1. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, How Gertrude Teaches her Children, trans. Lucy E. Holland, London, 1938, p. 199
2. A. B. Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, Leipzig, 1837-63. The treatise went through six full or partial editions in Marx's lifetime alone. The complex publication history is given in MGG, viii, cols. 1734-8: i: 1837, 1841, 1846, 1852, 1858, 1863, 1868, 1875, 1887, 1903; ii: 1838, 1842, 1847, 1856, 1864, 1873, 1890; iii: 1845, 1848, 1857, 1868, 1879; iv: 1847, 1851, 1860, 1871. A further complexity is that the sixth edition of Vol. 1 (the last before Marx's death) exists in two versions: Marx's original and Hugo Riemann's radically reworked edition of 1887. I shall refer to both versions, since Riemann's interpretation sheds light on many of Marx's ideas. For the most commonly available English translation (based on the 4th edn.), see The School of Musical Composition, trans. August Heinrich Wehrhan, London, 1852
3. The best study of Marx from a pedagogical viewpoint is still Kurt-Erich Eicke's Der Streit zwischen Adolph Bernhard Marx und Gottfried Wilhelm Fink um die Kompositionslehre ('Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung', xiii), Cologne, 1966
4. See also idem, 'Das Problem des Historismus im Streit zwischen Marx und Fink', Die Ausbreitung des Historismus über die Musik, ed. Walter Wiora, Regensburg, 1969, pp. 221-32
5. For a study which focuses on Marx's formal theory, see Lotte Thaler, Organische Form in der Musiktheorie des 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1984
6. Of recent studies in English, the most comprehensive is Scott Burnham, Aesthetics, Theory and History in the Works of Adolph Bernhard Marx (unpublished dissertation), Brandeis University, 1988
7. See also idem, 'The Role of Sonata Form in A. B. Marx's Theory of Form', Journal of Music Theory, xxxiii (1989), 247-71
8. and 'Criticism, Faith and the Idee: A. B. Marx's Early Reception of Beethoven', 19th Century Music, xiii (1989-90), 183-92
9. See Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, 'Der neumusikalische Lehrjammer oder Beleuchtung der Schrift: Die alte Musiklehre im Streit mit unserer Zeit', Leipzig 1842, p. 2: 'Zusammenmischung alles dessen, was sonst eben so gut und noch besser, aber, wie es sich gebührt, in einzelnen Disziplinen gelehrt worden war'
10. Matthäus Zeheter & Max Winkler, Vollständige theoretisch-praktisch Generalbass und Harmonielehre für junge Musiker, ii (Wurdlingen, 1847)
11. See Eugene Walter, Placeways: a Theory of the Human Environment, Chapel Hill, 1970, p. 18: 'Originally, theoria meant seeing the sights, seeing for yourself, and getting a world-view. The first theorists were "tourists" - the wise men who traveled to inspect the obvious world. Solon, the Greek sage whose political reforms around 590 B.C. renewed the city of Athens, is the first "theorist" in Western history.'
12. Keith Swanwick, Music Education and the National Curriculum, London, 1992, p. 13. The book crisply describes the problems of reconciling an educational theory with political exigencies. In particular, Swanwick voices his disquiet about the false symmetry of the two Attainment Targets, which were imposed upon an originally ternary model of 'Performing-Composing-Appraising'. Moreover, AT2 had initially been drafted as 'Knowledge and Understanding', reflecting an undue slant towards a factual, historical approach. This was reformulated as 'Listening and Appraising' following a fax sent by Swanwick to the then Secretary of State for Education, Kenneth Clarke (Swanwick's booklet ends with a dramatic account of this intervention; see pp. 25-31)
13. Keith Swanwick, Musical Knowledge: Intuition, Analysis, and Music Education, London, 1994
14. See also idem, Music, Mind, and Education, London, 1988
15. Marx, The School of Musical Composition, p. xvi
16. Nicholas Cook, Analysis through Composition, Oxford, 1996
17. Cook's course (designed mainly for first-year undergraduates) attempts to mediate the teaching of Schenkerian concepts such as prolongation, diminution and voice-leading via the practice of composition and arrangement in the Classical style. For my review, see Music & Letters, lxxviii (1997), 599-600
18. Swanwick, Music, Mind, and Education, p. 85
19. See Colin Griffin, Curriculum Theory in Adult and Lifelong Education, London, 1983, p. 41: 'Generations of teachers in training have failed to see the point or the relevance of much of the theoretical element in their courses: its concerns have seemed to them far too removed from the problems of classroom practice'
20. Basil Bernstein, 'On the Classification and Framing of Knowledge', Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, ed. Michael Young, London, 1971, pp. 47-69
21. See Charles Plummeridge, Music Education in Theory and Practice, London, 1991
22. For the close links between the inception of Marx's formal theories and Beethoven reception, see Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero, Princeton, 1995
23. See also my review-article 'Convergences: Criticism, Analysis and Beethoven Reception', Music Analysis, xvi (1997), pp. 369-91
24. See, for example, Johann Logier, System der Musik-Wissenschaft und der praktischen Composition, Berlin, 1827. Logier's treatise is interesting for its hybrid or transitional nature. On the one hand, its chapter plan follows the conservative, eighteenth-century progression, starting with the basics of harmony and counterpoint (fundamental basses, modulation, suspensions and passing notes, secondary and chromatic harmony) and considering rhythm, metre and phrase structure only in its final chapters. On the other hand, Logier's deliberate simplification of theoretical categories, for example in repeated use of a C major scale as a vehicle for explaining tonality, profoundly influenced Marx's method
25. Bernstein, 'On the Classification and Framing of Knowledge', p. 59
26. See Georg Sowa, Anfänge institutioneller Musikerziehung in Deutschland (1800-1843), Regensburg, 1973, p. 55
27. See Rosamund Shuter-Dyson & Clive Gabriel, The Psychology of Musical Ability, London, 1981. The authors explore processes of 'naturalization' and 'enculturation' in chapters devoted to, respectively, 'The Development of Musical Ability' (pp. 97-170) and The Determinants of Musical Ability' (pp. 171-237)
28. The former focuses on the universal and cross-cultural aspects of children's aptitude, from birth to adolescence. The latter is directed more towards differences: the effects of home and social environment; the impact of specific practice and music lessons. This division does not fit strictly with a 'nature/culture' or 'innate/learnt' distinction. For example, the authors include within their 'determinants of musical ability' the influence of genetic inheritance. For an alternative scheme, see John Sloboda, The Musical Mind: the Cognitive Psychology of Music, Oxford, 1990, pp. 194-238. Sloboda divides his chapter 'Musical Learning and Development' into two sections. The first section, on 'enculturation', deals with commonalities: 'a shared set of primitive capacities which are present at birth ... a shared set of experiences which the culture provides ... roughly similar ages at which the various achievements occur' (pp. 195-6). The second section, on 'training', concentrates 'on specific experiences which are not shared by all members of a culture' (p. 196). Increasing accomplishment follows on from particular types of instruction (loc. cit.)
29. See, for example, Keith Swanwick & June Tillman's spiral model of musical development presented in 'The Sequence of Musical Development', British Journal of Music Education, iii (1986), 305-39. This model is based on a survey of 745 compositions from 48 children between the ages of three and eleven
30. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 1962
31. For a penetrating discussion of 'presentist' versus 'historicist' viewpoints, including a helpful survey of the secondary literature, see Thomas Christensen, 'Music Theory and its Histories', Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. Christopher Hatch & David W. Bernstein, Chicago, 1993, pp. 9-39
32. Marx, Die Lehre, i (2nd edn., 1841), p. vi: 'Könnten auch die Lehrsätze, die dem Ganzen zum Grunde liegende Kunstanschauung und das Wesentliche der Methode keine Aenderung erleben, ich vielmehr durch fortgesetzte Prüfung, vielfältigere Erfahrung und die Beistimmung so vieler Sachkundigen nur noch fester von ihrer Wahrheit überzeugt werden: so liess es mich doch nicht ruhen; ich war gedrungen, meinem Lehrideal immer energischer zuzustreben'
33. Marx, Die Lehre, i (6th edn., 1863), p. vii: 'Freudig habe ich das halbe Buch umgestaltet, um keine neue Anschauung und Erfahrung unbenutzt zu lassen'
34. See A. B. Marx, Die alte Musiklehre im Streit mit unserer Zeit, Leipzig, 1841, p. 29: 'Hier könnten sie nun begreifen, - was der Psychologe schon vor voraussetzen wird, - dass die lustvolle Gabe eignen Gesanges in den meisten Menschen angelegt ist, in den meisten wohlorganisirten Kindern schon in frischer Blütte sich entfaltet'
35. See A. B. Marx, Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst, Leipzig, 1835-8
36. trans. A. H. Wehrhan as The Universal School of Music, London, 1853, p. 322
37. See A. B. Marx, Die Musik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Pflege: Methode der Musik (1855)
38. trans. C. Macfarren as The Music of the Nineteenth Century and its Culture: System of Musical Education, London, 1855, p. 184
39. Marx, Die alte Musiklehre, pp. 96-101
40. Marx, The Universal School of Music, p. 344
41. Marx, Die Lehre, i (1st edn., 1837), 24: 'Ein in sich genügendes, bestimmt abgeschlossenes einfaches Tongebilde, das also nicht Periode ist, nicht aus Vorder- und Nachsatz besteht, nennen wir Satz'
42. By contrast, the length of the analogous section on Salzbildung remains stable at four pages across the six editions: i (1st edn, 1837), 29-33; i (6th edn., 1863), 41-5
43. Marx, Die Lehre, i (9th edn., 1887, ed. Hugo Riemann), 44: 'Wir können daraus die Lehre ziehen, dass der gestaltende Wille, den - gleichviel ob vollbewusst oder halb instinktiv - höhere Gesichtspunkte leiten, die strenge Form des Ganges beliebig durchbrechen kann; der Gang wird gleichwohl seine Bedeutung als nächstliegendes Mittel der Fortführung behalten'
44. See Leonard B. Meyer, Explaining Music, Chicago, 1973, pp. 115-30
45. See Gary Hatfield, The Natural and the Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz, London, 1990, pp. 117-28
46. Pestalozzi, How Gertrude Teaches her Children, p. 201
47. For a good overview, see Käte Silber, Pestalozzi: the Man and his Work, London, 1976. According to Silber, the term 'Anschauung' 'may mean sense-impression, observation, contemplation, perception, apperception, or intuition' (p. 138). Silber traces Pestalozzi's theory of perception to Leibnitz
48. Johann Pestalozzi, The Method, a Report by Pestalozzi, included in How Gertrude Teaches her Children, pp. 199-211. In his A B C der Anschauung, Zurich, 1803, Pestalozzi includes a more complex chart illustrating the interaction of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines (p. 84)
49. Hans Georg Nägeli, Vorlesungen über Musik, Stuttgart, 1826
50. Nägeli, Vorlesungen über Musik, p. 38: 'Worin besteht nun hier unsere einfachste Wahrnehmung, was nehmen wir am Töne wahr? - Bewegung - was an einer Reihe von Tönen? - mehrfache Bewegung - was weiter an geregelten Tonreihen? - deren Verbindung zu einem Kunstwerke durch vervielfachte Bewegung. Bewegung ist also das Grundelement der Tonkunst.'
51. See James F. Brennan, History and Systems of Psychology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, & London, 1994, pp. 129-30
52. Marx, The Music of the Nineteenth Century, p. 21
53. Marx, Die alte Musiklehre, p. 43: 'Wiederum berüht der Eindruck der Musik zum Theil auf den gleichartigen Wirkungen und Vorstellungen, die ein und dieselbe Stimmung auf die verschiednen Organe des Körpers und in die verschiednen Richtungen geistiger Thätigkeit übertragt'
54. See Patrick Shove & Bruno Repp, 'Musical Motion and Performance: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives', The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. John Rink, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 55-83
55. Nägeli & Pfeiffer, Gesangbildungslehre, p. 226: 'Das Lehren und Lernen an den Kunstwerken selbst ist nicht Bethätigung der Kunstanschauung in ihrer Einheit, sondern ein störendes Spalten der Natur in die Funktionen des Wissens und Könnens'
56. For a discussion of Natorp's song treatises, see Max Schipke, Der Deutsche Schulgesang, von Adam Hiller bis zu den Falkschen Allgemeinen Bestimmungen, 1775-1875. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gesangpädagogik, Berlin, 1913, pp. 136-7
57. Nägeli, Vorlesungen, pp. 243-4
58. See also his Umriss der Erziehungsaufgabe, Zurich, 1832, p. 15
59. Spohr's account is quoted in Richard Hunter, A Short Account of the Progress of J. B. Logier's System of Musical Education in Berlin and its Subsequent Introduction by Order of the Prussian Government into the Public Seminaries for its General Promulgation through the Prussian States, London, 1824, pp. 37-40
60. See 'Musikalische Notizen gesammelt von Louis Spohr während seines Aufenthalts in London vom Ende Februars bis ende Juny 1820', in AmZ (1820), 521-30, esp. p. 527
61. See Adolph Diesterweg, Wegweiser zur Bildung für deutliche Lehrer, 4th edn., Essen, 1850. Diesterweg (1790-1866) was Pestalozzi's first major exponent in Germany. Though working initially in Frankfurt, he opened a seminary in Berlin in 1832
62. See Howard Gardner, Developmental Psychology, Boston, 1982, pp. 408-18
63. Lyle Davidson, 'Songsinging by Young and Old: a Developmental Approach to Music', Musical Perceptions, ed. Rita Aiello, Oxford, 1994, pp. 99-130
64. See David Jones, Adult Education and Cultural Development, London, 1988. The concept of 'Andragogy' as a discipline distinct from 'Pedagogy' was developed in the work of Malcolm S. Knowles. According to Jones, 'Knowles appears to define adulthood, not so much in terms of chronological age, but in terms of individuals accepting responsibility for the direction of their own lives. He sees the role of the adult educator as dependent upon an acceptance that adults are self-directed' (pp. 156-7)
65. Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: an Anatomy of Creativity, New York, 1993, p. 30
66. Sowa, Anfänge institutioneller Musikerziehung in Deutschland (1800-1843)
67. Sowa, Anfänge institutioneller Musikerzuhung, p. 34
68. See Glenn Stanley, 'Bach's Erbe: the Chorale in the German Oratorio of the Early Nineteenth Century', 19th Century Music, xi (1987-8), 121-49, at pp. 126-32
69. Nägeli, Vorlesungen, p. 236: 'Es gibt eigentlich, praktisch genommen und praktisch gesprochen, nur zwey Real-Wissenschaften; alle andere sind Hülfswissenschaften. Die zwey Real-Wissenschaften sind: Pädagogik und Politik'
70. Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn, Theoretisch-praktische Harmonielehre, Berlin, 1840
71. See Johann Friedrich Herbart, Allgemeine Pädagogik, Göttingen, 1806
72. trans. Henry & Emmie Felkin as The Science of Education: its General Principles Deduced from its Aim, London, 1897
73. See also Catherine Isabel Dodd, Introduction to the Herbartian Principles of Teaching, London, 1898
74. Henry M. Felkin, An Introduction to Herbart's Science and Practice of Education, London, 1901
75. Frank Herbert Hayward, The Critics of Herbartianer, London, 1903
76. Johann N. Schmidt, Herbart-Bibliographie 1842-1963, Weinheim, 1964
77. Loc. cit.: 'So ist doch der Zusammenhang dieser Anfange mit dem gewordenen Kunstwerk einen höhern Grad von Kunstbildung voraussetzt'
78. See Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Peter le Huray & James Day (abridged edn.), Cambridge, 1988, pp. 306-8
79. Hatfield, The Natural and the Normative, p. 6
80. Included in Herbart's The Science of Education, pp. 57-77
81. See David W. Green, Cognitive Science: an Introduction, Oxford, 1996, p. 295: 'The most obvious distinction is probably between data-driven and conceptually-driven operations. Data-driven processes involve bottom-up analysis of perceptual features. Thus, for example, deciding how many vowels there are in the word WHITE is a data-driven process, and reading venus hearing a word will require different data-driven operations. In contrast, conceptually-driven processes are much more top-down and involve the extraction of meaning. Knowing that white is the opposite of Mack would be an example.'
82. Marx, Die Lehre, i (4th edn, 1852), 28
83. Herbart, The Science of Education, p. 126
84. For a colourful account of Hiller and Rein's activities, see Dunkel, Herbart and Herbartianism, pp. 209-39
85. See Dodd, Introduction to the Herbartian Prinriples of Teaching, p. 127
86. See Felkin, An Introduction to Herbart's Science and Practice of Education, p. 117
87. See Burnham, Beethoven Hero
88. See A. B. Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, 2nd edn., Berlin, 1863, p. 276
89. The journalist Friedrich Wähner, for instance, 'spoke of Beethoven's "childlike naivete" and likened him to "an amiable boy"': see Maynard Solomon, Beethoven, London, 1978, p. 258
90. Bernstein, 'On the Classification and Framing of Knowledge', p. 60
91. See especially Burnham, 'Criticism, Faith and the Idee'
92. See my 'Creativity, Life and Music: Three Books about Beethoven', Music Analysis, xv (1996), 343-66, at pp. 354-7
93. For an accessible introduction to these issues from an ethnomusicological viewpoint, see Jonathan P. J. Stock, 'Concepts of World Music and their Integration within Western Secondary Music Education', Teaching Music, ed. Gary Spruce, London, 1996, pp. 152-67
94. See Eric Clarke, 'Mind the Gap: Formal Structures and Psychological Processes in Music', Contemporary Music Review, iii (1989), 1-13, at p. 11
95. For a particularly broad survey, from ancient Greece to the present day, see Bernarr Rainbow, Music in Educational Thought & Practice, Aberystwyth, 1989
96. Rainbow cites Marx solely in the context of German institutional reform, that is, as the holder of the first Chair of Music at Berlin University. For surveys focusing on the German tradition, see Hermann Kretzschmar, Musikalische Zeitfragen, Leipzig, 1903
97. Georg Schünemann, Geschichte des Schulgesang Unterrichts, Berlin, 1913
98. Gerhard Braun, Die Schulmusikerziehung in Preussen von den Falkschen Bestimmungen bis zur Kestenberg-Reform, Kassel, 1957
99. Sigrid Abel-Struth, 'Materialien zur Entwicklung der Musikpädagogik als Wissenschaft', Musikpädagogik, Forschung und Lehre, i, ed. Sigrid Abel-Struth, Mainz, 1970
100. Helmuth Hopf, Walter Heise & Siegmund Helms, Lexicon der Musikpädagogik, Regensburg, 1984
101. Hermann Ebbinghaus, Abriss der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1908, p. 1
102. Hermann Helmholtz, 'The Physiological Causes of Harmony in Music', in idem, Selected Writings, ed. Russell Kahl, Middletown, Connecticut, 1971, pp. 75-108