In this article, the continuity in music taste from parents to their children is discussed via a multi-actor design. In our models music preferences of 325 adolescents and both their parents were linked, with parental and adolescent educational level as covariates. Parents' preferences for different types of music that had been popular when they…

The researcher acknowledges the importance of creativity and innovation in terms of discovering more methods or strategies on improving intellectual growth of an individual. In this case, the researcher focuses on the Social Learning Behavior of high school students. About 15 years ago, a professor of psychology stirred up the music world with the…

While many resources are now available to teach world music in our classrooms, less attention has been given to helping teachers exhibit the quality defined by Patricia Shehan Campbell as "an open reception to the breadth of music's multiple manifestations". For many music educators, Western Art Music is "their music", which…

How is the tradition of Western classical music faring on university campuses? Before answering this question, it is necessary to understand what has transpired with classical music in the wider culture, as the relationship between the two is so strong. In this article, the author discusses how classical music has taken a big cultural hit in…

In academic education, undergraduate students develop musical knowledge through the preparation of a repertoire within the western classical music tradition during a certain period of formal music practice. During the practice, the student makes choices and deals with personal strategies that assume forms of thinking and, therefore, differentiated…

Using a discursive approach, this study explores the ways that adolescents construct the notion of social status and "being privileged" through their talk about musician role models. Drawing on social identity theory (see Tajfel, 1978), we examined how adolescents moved between the relational "in" and "out" groups of being privileged versus being…

In this article, the author features the life and works of Antonin Dvorak, a Czech classical musician. In the throes of a New World epiphany, Dvorak has espoused a future for American music based on "negro melodies." For three years, beginning in the fall of 1892, Dvorak found himself embroiled in a sustained and often bitter debate over issues of…

To date, not much is known about how the functions of music relate to music preference. This article examines the basic hypothesis that the strength of preference for a given kind of music depends on the degree to which that kind of music serves the needs of the listener; that is, how well the respective functions of music are fulfilled. Study 1,…

The purpose of this study was to see whether different types of background music affect the performance of a reading comprehension task in Taiwanese college students. There are two major research questions in this study. First, this study tries to find out whether listening to music affect the learner's concentration when they are doing a task…

What does it take to become a successful performer of Western classical music in the United States today? What factors, beyond technical proficiency and musicality, come into play? We started exploring these questions in a study of gatekeepers' (e.g., critics, artistic directors) views on key variables that contribute to the career trajectories of…

In his recent monograph, Chris Higgins (2011) offers a remarkably original, thoughtful, and provocative argument for "an ethics of professional practice" for teachers. His study brings together a wealth of ideas and authors not often discussed in relation to each other, and it draws out elusive themes and ideas often overlooked in most…

In this article we probe the interplay between public and private music consumption using a large-scale survey of the Flemish population in Belgium. We analyze whether public and private music consumption have different correlates and to what extent there is convergence between the genres that people listen to at home and at concerts. Results show…

In her recent work, Green (2001; 2008) builds on the idea that there is a gulf between "real-world music" and classroom music (Ibid., p. 2). One of her main goals seems to be to pave the way for the former in the latter: to make the music in schools more in touch with reality. The learning practices of popular music are taken to bring the needed…

The purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate non-music major (N = 95) preferences for Western art music. A survey of 15 musical examples was assembled consisting of five subtests, each with three excerpts from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, or Twentieth Century. The mean preference rating of all excerpts combined was 4.68…

In this article, the author shares the views of John Williams, Hollywood's premier composer, who has written more than 300 scores, about the future of classical and film music. A gregarious person in a field requiring monklike isolation, Williams values the "association with the soloists, and the wonderful inspiration from players." His…