EDITORIAL

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Editorial Estelle R. Jorgensen This special issue celebrates the contributions of Bennett Reimer (1932–2013) to the philosophy of music education throughout the world. Probably no other philosopher is so identified with music education thought in the latter part of the twentieth century, as a protagonist for the view of music education as a form of aesthetic education and a precursor to an alternative, David Elliott’s praxial theory of music education. Here, our writers examine the historical and editorial context in which he wrote, his impact on music education practice, the nature of ideas that may constitute his legacy for music education, and his effect on music education internationally. Reimer is best remembered for his notion of music education as a form of aesthetic education articulated in his A Philosophy of Music Education (1970) with successive editions in 1989 and 2003. In formulating his philosophy, he dipped into the current of aesthetic ideas about music education that were circulating at the time. One thinks, for example, of Charles Leonard and Robert House’s case for the need for a robust aesthetic philosophy in music education, articulated in their text, Foundations and Principles of Music Education (1959) and Abraham Schwadron’s argument for the place of aesthetics in a philosophy of music education in his Aesthetics: Dimensions for Music Education (1967) published by the Music Educators National Conference. The role of aesthetics and feeling in music education was subsequently addressed by other writers in the 1970s. For example, Thomas Regelski credited Susanne Langer’s notion of feeling in his Principles and Problems of Music Education (1975) and drawing on Schwadron’s work, discussed aesthetics and feeling in his subsequent essay published in the Music Educators Journal, “Aim for the Inner Life: Teaching Early Teens” (1979). [End Page 113] Reimer’s achievement was to catch the imagination of the time and formulate an influential and evolving philosophy that impacted music education research and practice well beyond the United States. By the time I discovered the first edition of Reimer’s Philosophy, I was in the midst of a critique of music education that came to comprise my dissertation and eventually developed into my book, In Search of Music Education, published much later in 1997. Although I agreed with Reimer’s premise that music education constituted a means and form of aesthetic education, I sought a broader, different, and dialectical aesthetic view. For me, music education logically concerned not only aesthetic considerations but important ontological, axiological, and epistemological matters. Although music education might properly be construed as a form of aesthetic education, it could not be only that. My writing reflected a growing sense in the profession of the importance of socially, culturally, and practically grounded views of music and education that complicated and challenged Reimer’s philosophy. The dramatic cultural and societal changes of the times seemed to call for different approaches to the philosophy of music education than the theory Reimer had constructed. There was also a growing desire for a forum in which different philosophical ideas could be articulated and discussed. Reimer began to amend his views but changes in the second edition of his Philosophy were insufficient to satisfy his critics and matters came to a head at the end of the 1980s. In 1989, Elliott published a book review critical of the second edition of Reimer’s A Philosophy of Music Education in the Philosophy of Music Education Newsletter. In 1990, in a paper entitled, “What Should One Expect from a Philosophy of Music Education?” presented at the Philosopher/Teacher in Music: The Indiana Symposium on Research and Teaching in the Philosophy of Music Education, held July 8–12, in Bloomington, Indiana, Philip Alperson introduced the notion of a praxial approach to aesthetics as one of several philosophical moves that could benefit music education. Alperson’s aesthetic emphasis on the social and cultural constructs of music and the role of practices in the phenomenal world took advantage of new intellectual developments. Rather than suggest the praxial option as the only justifiable philosophical position or regard it as an anti-aesthetic posture, Alperson presented three aesthetic options, of which the praxial view was one, each having advantages and...