The objective of this conference was to provide domestic and international music education specialists, performing artists and researchers with insights into up-to-date and innovative pedagogical practices, examples and performance-related approaches, with special attention to the social role of music, its impacts and future challenges. The conference, which was held on Thursday at MTA DAB Headquarters, was attended by 54 experts from 14 different countries. In ten individual sections, as many as forty-seven professional presentations explored the theoretical and practical trends shaping the present and future of music education, music research and the performing arts.
Judit Váradi, professor and research group leader at the Faculty of Music of the University of Debrecen and founding president of the event, highlighted that the conference, which had started out as a Hungarian event, opened its doors to the world three years ago and its efforts for internationalization offer countless opportunities to support and strengthen music education on a scholarly basis.
- There are quite a lot of different academic disciplines that focus on music. The more angles from which we approach this subject, and the better we understand the perspectives of other disciplines in this regard, the closer we can get to understanding the effects of music. This principle holds water both in Hungary and abroad. Thus, we can engage with the perspectives of experts coming from so many places, from Singapore to Australia and Israel, as well as our neighboring countries. While doing so, we can lay the groundwork for and establish a number of valuable collaborations. Our research group was established in 2018 and has operated ever since under the auspices of the Doctoral Program in Education and the Faculty of Music, providing a stable foundation for conducting research in music education with the support of the Institute for Art Theory and Methodology of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. Our research projects fill a gap across the entire surrounding region and they are of outstanding professional significance. Under this fairly broad ‘umbrella,’ we address questions such as how someone becomes a musician, what determines this choice, how it relates to parental support and parental and professional background, and how the mental health of students develops in the context of career choice. Research in music education is important because, among other reasons, it provides a scientific-scholarly basis for answering questions such as why the magic of live music has such an effect on children- said Judit Váradi.
The academic sessions addressed an array of interesting topics, including the role of young people in community music, the practice of learning to play an instrument as an adult in Hungarian amateur wind ensembles as a lifelong community activity, the importance of speech therapy techniques in playing brass instruments, the performance and pedagogical significance of two recently discovered works by Johann Sebastian Bach, the free flow of knowledge based on personal relationships, changes in the orchestral repertoire over the past forty years, and the achievements and objectives of the music school research faculty program.
Apart from providing insights into the most recent and current professional trends and academic findings, the conference offered an opportunity to strengthen international professional ties, share experiences, gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between music and society, and foster dialogue between diverse musical cultures and approaches.
Press Center - BZ