Music, Music Education and Musical Heritage

One of the statements concerning music education which impresses me the most is the following of Werner Jank and Martin Stroh (W. Jank, W.M. Stroh, Aufbauender Musikunterricht – Königsweg oder Sackgasse,
http://www.musik-for.uni-oldenburg.de/vortraege/afs2005_jankstrohtext.pdf): ‘Many people do not take the discipline of music quite seriously. Unfortunately, they are right many times. Ironically, despite our thematic oversupply as regards music, we deny the children and youths at school experiences of true learning success by demanding too little of them. ’It describes on a gloomy note the problems which music teachers face regarding music and its heritage. Considering the curricula all over Europe however, we find a surprising uniformity including singing, musicking, listening, moving to the music, musical creativity and knowledge about music.
On the other hand, music cannot be compared to any other discipline. Music literacy must be acquired in music schools on a voluntary basis and complementary to formal education. Music can be learned informally in a lifelong process, for example in community ensembles.
Additionally, the question has to be raised which kind of music should be learned. Musical heritage is a social construction and represented in a world of changing media; music is more and more consumed and less and less actively practiced or learned in schools. It is for this reason that music education lags behind the development and has a challenging position in the canon of school subjects. However, we should not forget that the UNESCO selected two
1) In 2011: Táncház method: a Hungarian model for the transmission of intangible cultural heritage and
2) In 2016: Safeguarding of the folk music heritage by the Kodály concept
on the register of intangible cultural heritage of human kind. And as luck would have it, both deal with music education, and both have their origins in Hungary. Should this be understood as a hint of the responsible persons of the UNESCO to developers of school curricula not to underestimate or simply to ignore music education in the canon of school subjects?
One of its problems is that it has to cover a wide range of contents. Music is not only the music of the today’s modern popular music or the music of the famous masters, but, from an ethnomusicological point of view, the music of our region, our nation, or continent or the music of others far from the globalised mainstream. One could say globalisation and musical heritage form two antipodes. But, as several interviews with my students reveal, globalisation, with the help of digitisation, can also enable a worldwide access to regional music traditions.
Zoltán Kodály’s and Leo Kestenberg’s commitment to music education is today still relevant. In Germany, the system of music education is still building on the achievements of Leo Kestenberg. Zoltan Kodály’s concept, based on a national / regional tradition, has reached a global standing. More as for others, his legacy deals with Music, Music Education and Musical Heritage.