The 1890s

Arthur Sullivan’s final decade was overshadowed by increasing and debilitating ill health and growing criticism of the light-weight nature of his work by critics associated with the English Musical Renaissance centred around two younger composers, C.H. Parry and C.V. Stanford. Sullivan did at last produce the grand opera, Ivanhoe (1891), which he had wanted to write for so long. He also continued to write comic operas for the Savoy Theatre, most of them with librettists other than Gilbert. He wrote a ballet and a hymn tune for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, set a patriotic song by Rudyard Kipling to raise funds for the families of troops serving in the Boer War, and wrote a Te Deum to be used when that war ended. He died in 1900, mourned and remembered as much as a church musician and for his sacred works as for his comic operas.

Educative Power and the Respectful Curricular Inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music

This chapter argues for the full, respectful curricular inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in order to promote a more balanced and equitable social and cultural vision of the nation-state in Australian schools. It challenges views that claim Indigenous cultures have been irretrievably lost or are doomed to extinction, as well as the fixation on musical authenticity. We propose that the gradual broadening of Indigenous musical expressions over time and the musical renaissance of the new millennium have created an unprecedented opportunity for current music educators to experience the educative power of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music. This means that culturally nonexposed music teachers can employ familiar musical-technical approaches to the music even as they begin to more fully investigate the music’s cultural-contextual meanings. The chapter considers issues that impinge on the music’s educative power, especially those relating to its definition, its intended audiences, and pedagogies. It aims to help clear the way for the classroom to become an environment in which students can sense the depth and vitality of contemporary Australian Indigenous music.

Spirituality as a Category of Musical Art and Education

Postmodern methodology, which influenced the development of the human sciences of the XXI century, teaches researchers to freely use any concepts and definitions outside of the original semantic context. The author of the article, opposing this practice, defends the traditional methodological foundations of the national pedagogy of music education, identifying the problem of ambiguity and inconsistency of understanding the category of spirituality in modern music and pedagogical research. Identification of the original meanings and clarification of the categorical specifics of spirituality is impossible outside of theological sources that capture the “mechanisms” of centuries-old experience of spiritual knowledge of the world and man. Recognizing the spirituality as the highest reality of human existence, it is suggested that in the pedagogy of music education this category is the basis for a dialogue of scientific and religious knowledge. Scientific interpretation of the category of spirituality in musical art and education is impossible without the correct “translation” of theological pedagogical attitudes into the language of music and musical creativity. Historical and cultural analysis of spirituality as a “super-understanding” of the existence of music is revealed using a comparison of religious meanings with the real sound “analogs”. The appeal to the Russian musical heritage allowed us to identify significant trends between “spiritual” and “artistic”. The first trend is the dominance of spirituality in temple music. It is confirmed by the birth of the artistic Canon of Orthodox temple singing, which emphasizes the semantic depth and grace of prayer texts. The article highlights the norms of the embodiment of spirituality in music, born in the bowels of the theory of its “inspired” origin, as well as the time cycle of the revival of the spiritual dominant in the phenomenon of the “Orthodox musical Renaissance”. Another trend is related to the development of spirituality in secular musical genres. The article notes the ambiguity of the contact between “spiritual” and “artistic” in secular music, the semantic diversity in the implementation of spirituality by Russian composers from its Evangelical understanding to mystical “author’s” interpretations. The transformation of the content components of spirituality into morality in the public consciousness of Russia and their further interaction contributed to the formation of the now widespread, but clearly insufficiently researched concepts of “spiritual and moral education” and “spiritual and moral culture”. In the content of modern music and pedagogical education, the moral component outside of its spiritual context is taken into account to a greater extent. All the above points to the need to develop a new master’s degree program that takes into account the following interrelated factors: the centuries-old experience of embodying spirituality in the musical art, the secular nature of the training of future music teachers.

The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

The performance history of Dido and Aeneas in the nineteenth century is marked by two, seemingly conflicting, trends: attempts to create a more authentic score and the increased use of added orchestration. Many of the most important contributions to the reception history of the opera in this era, including new editions and major revivals, can be attributed to the faculties at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. The founding of the Purcell Society by William Cummings, his biography of the composer, and his edition of the opera mark a watershed in the modern history of the opera. Within the so-called “English Musical Renaissance” of musical composition, Dido and Aeneas became a stylistic touchstone to which composers through the mid-twentieth century returned.