In the current world of education, politics and public opinion, musical experience is increasingly threatened. It is designated ever more as an expendable luxury. This kind of general trend has hardly left the thinking in the field of music and music education untouched. Inspiration comes from the technical rationality of our time. This rationality affects an oblivion of ontology. In this article we discuss this trend related to Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the human existence in the world, artworks and notions (...) like “being” (Sein) and “oblivion-of-being” (Seinsvergessenheit). We think that it is possible to see this “oblivion-of-being” in relation to the trend in cultural and educational politics as well as in music educational thinking to focus on the instrumental usefulness of learning music. (shrink)

In the current world of education, politics and public opinion, musical experience is increasingly threatened. It is designated ever more as an expendable luxury. This kind of general trend has hardly left the thinking in the field of music and music education untouched. Inspiration comes from the technical rationality of our time. This rationality affects an oblivion of ontology. In this article we discuss this trend related to Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the human existence in the world, artworks and notions (...) like “being” (Sein) and “oblivion-of-being” (Seinsvergessenheit). We think that it is possible to see this “oblivion-of-being” in relation to the trend in cultural and educational politics as well as in music educational thinking to focus on the instrumental usefulness of learning music. (shrink)

Inspired by Estelle Jorgensen’s book Values and Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2021), the author of this Book Review Essay, from a Scandinavian perspective, discusses the concept of value, the struggles of values, and the tension between universal values and relativism, as well as the fact that there is no such thing as a neutral position to speak from. Among thinkers and philosophers who have inspired these reflections are Charles Taylor, Chantal Mouffe, Simon Frith and Frede V. Nielsen.

Abstract:This essay reflects on the values of slowness and resistance as fundamental ideas directly opposed to modern culture's ideals of effectiveness and smoothness and discusses how music from the Western classical music tradition can offer such values in music education. At the same time, how we listen to music is highlighted as equally important as what we listen to. Values like slowness and resistance are seen as important critical ideas, not only in the bubble of aesthetics, music, and music education, (...) but also in general discussions of consumeristic modern culture, characterized by unsustainable ideas of constant action and economic growth. Slowness and resistance in musical experience is argued to be important in forming the future of music education for sustainable development. The Korean-born German philosopher of art and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han's discussion of the concept of beauty, is central for the ongoing reflections in the essay. Martin Heidegger's aesthetics of unveiling, and Hannah Arendt's concept of vita contemplativa, as well as music of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and the Icelandic singer Björk, are also involved in the discussion. (shrink)