Editorial

Extract

Technology has historically presented music educators with myriad challenges, and it is perhaps salutary to recollect that back in the 1920s and 1930s the development of the gramophone generated considerable misgivings amongst music teachers. As Colin Symes points out in his paper ‘A Sound Education’, many feared that recorded music would discourage individuals from reading books, and it was a commonly held view that the phonograph was counter-educational. With hindsight we know that this new technology affected music education profoundly, contributing to the rise of the music appreciation movement and the central place afforded to listening. It enabled music educators to broaden the tastes of the population, and eventually made accessible a range of music that had remained a closed book to Western ears.