This book explores the various ways music affects people and how they create meaning from everyday musical experiences, from infancy through old age. These experiences help us construct meaning and understanding of ourselves, our cultures, and our world. The contributors examine the nature of musical experience and how it changes throughout our lifespan.
Genevieve Williams – Library Journal
Kerchner (music education, Oberlin Conservatory of Music) and Abril (music education, Northwestern Univ.) explore how people create meaning through music teaching and learning, composition, improvisation, performance, and therapy. This collection of research studies is organized according to stages of the life span, beginning with infancy and progressing through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The research is all qualitative in nature, focusing heavily on case studies, personal and descriptive narrative, and interviews. Study populations are typically small, in one case consisting of a single person, and the teaching and learning contexts vary from formal classroom settings to informal social arenas. Each study draws conclusions dealing with the construction of musical meaning and its personal importance to study participants, frequently with implications for instruction and pedagogy (particularly in the cases of younger populations). This is a useful addition to academic and research collections supporting the curricular and scholarly study of music education.
