The Significance of Music for the Promotion of Moral and Spiritual Value

Carr, D. (2006). The Significance of Music for the Promotion of Moral and Spiritual Value. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 14 (2): 103-17.

 Introduction: Given its time-honored place, along with other arts, in many if not most past and present school curricula it would seem that at least some forms of music have been widely credited with educational value. Beyond the general association of music with high culture and, notwithstanding the evident discipline involved in learning to play musical instruments, however, it is less clear what sort of value this might be. Despite the considerable ethical complexity of much art and the vexed nature of any relationship between the moral and the aesthetic, one may clearly regard very many works of literature, much representational painting, and even some dances as having some moral educational significance. That said, it may be less clear how other arts or art genres—such as music or abstract painting—could be said to have much significant moral import or content (as well as being unreasonably procrustean to insist that they should). Indeed, recalling the well-known point of Richard Peters about the inherently normative character of the concept of education—that it would be hard to regard a man as educated who had not in some sense been made 'better'—one way of posing the present question might be to ask whether, regardless of its potential for pleasure, there is much if any real virtue in music?

Source: Project Muse