Music History and Historical Consciousness

Authors

• Leena Unkari-Virtanen

Abstract

Since the end of the19th century, the history of Western music has been studied as part of the education undertaken by Finnish musicians. Nevertheless, examinations of music history from an educational perspective are few and far between. The objective of this article is to examine music history from a pedagogical point of view, and to discuss the problem of historical consciousness in music history studies. The article is based on an action research project. The data of the study was professional classical music students’ voluntary accounts, transcribed negotiations and the students' essays and exercises. Rom Harré's theory of identity and Auli Toom's description of tacit knowledge provided a theoretic basis for the classification of the students’ speech. According to the data, the core of music history studies was the musical works. The minor part of historical thinking in the data can be understood as a consequence of the tradition of music history writings. In this article I discuss the possibilities that new perspectives, such as historical consciousness, can open to music history teaching and learning.