I. Defining Music.

)​ The title of this section is rather ironic, because the section itself details how
difficult it is to truly define music, even within western culture. This is partially due to how much
music itself has evolved over a relatively short span of time. Defining music becomes even more
troublesome in other cultures, with many languages not possessing a word that means exactly
what our word, “music” means. Better yet, some languages have more than one word for music,
leading to further confusion. For many societies, music is still completely intertwined with their
life, music is played while working and everyone participates. After exploring societies and
cultures that might seem rather arbitrary to us musically, some foundations are laid down to help
build a better understanding of what music is in our specific context. These foundations include
terms such as sound, melody, harmony, etc… Each one of these facets of what we would
define as music is further explored, with some having a sublayer of terms beneath the initial
word. For example, sound is divided yet again into overtone, timbre, pitch, amplitude and
duration. One feature of this chapter, and the book as a whole, that I’ve noticed is that no
expenses are spared in making sure everything is defined in such a way that a complete
beginner could still understand, which I approve of from a place of inclusion. In the next section,
several studies are presented that illustrate the advanced musical state of even an infant,
responding accurately as prompted by changes within the music. More vocab is introduced in
the following section, but there are two contrasting terms for each category, and there’s a set of
terms for a young child, and a set for older children. This vocab explores ways to describe music
to children, and how children could describe music to us, with terms like loud and soft for a
younger student to describe dynamics, while an older student could use rough vs. smooth to
gain a better understanding of the timbre of the piece. A large portion of the chapter is then
devoted to helping with the beginnings of teaching/learning fundamental musical concepts, such
as learning note names and rhythms. Some resources for developing these skills are listed
afterwards. ​II. Music Education in America​.) The last portion of the book chronicles the origin
of music education in America, from the very beginning as singing schools, where solfege
began to really take root in America as a teaching mechanism, because it was easily
understood by adults and children alike. Several incredibly influential figures were also
introduced during this section, such as Johann H. Pestalozzi, a pioneer of progressive
education from Switzerland, and Lowell Mason, who was catalyst for much of the music
education formats we use today.