Whoever can speak, can sing

Abstract

Despite the rhetoric of failure inherent in the long‐lasting debates over school music instruction in Russia, the practice of school singing teaching in Russian schools, especially those serving peasants and the urban lower classes, satisfied to a large degree the needs of the community. However, the limited role for school music and singing instruction offered under this model did not satisfy the needs of the nascent music profession. Musical pedagogues attempted to increase the legitimacy of music and singing in the school curriculum by improving the status of both the subject and of its teachers. These efforts met with limited success. Although the state was willing to acknowledge the importance of music for the moral and aesthetic education of children, both the public and school officials tended to maintain, rather than modify, their belief that music instruction was peripheral to the main objectives of schooling. Whatever the flaws of school music instruction, when well taught the subject met the needs of the community, if not always the needs of professional musicians and specialist pedagogues.