Music learning theory

The field of music education contains a number of learning theories that specify how students learn music based on behavioral and cognitive psychology.

While formal music education has roots going at least as far back as the Hebrews in Egypt or the ancient Greeks, challenges arose as music became more specialized and technically complex after the 5th century BCE in Ancient Greece and as the development of notation shifted music education from training in singing to training in music reading. Educators and theorists such as Odo of Cluny and Guido d'Arezzo in the 10th and 11th centuries explored methods to teach these new developing notational practices. Academic interest in music education lessened by the Renaissance as universities abandoned music as a part of their curriculum in the mid 16th century, while the Protestant Reformation later brought some changes to music education, Martin Luther among other individuals suggesting that music, poetry, and history be added to standard education curriculum. In the 17th century, John Amos Comenius recommended music education for religious purposes and designed a methodology to do so, as Richard Mulcaster encouraged universal education including singing and playing as standard curriculum. By the 19th century the conservatory model became more common outside of Italy alongside a number of choir schools which provided education as well as practical music experience.

Mainstream pedagogy and examination of how students learn theory rose to prominence in the 20th century by theorists and educators beginning with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Zoltán Kodály, and Carl Orff, and followed by Shinichi Suzuki, Edwin Gordon, and Valeri Brainin among others. Later research into educational learning theories in the 1960s places emphasis on behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist thinking. The Tanglewood Symposium of 1967 and the Music Educators National Conference Goals and Objective Project in 1969 were other early examples of the growing movement of applying modern developments in sequencing curriculum.

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