I originally posed this question in the music major thread, but it’s a little too academic/grad school-oriented for that space, methinks.
My current educational background is such: BM from Lawrence University Conservatory of Music with a Piano Performance major and a Piano Pedagogy emphasis; currently pursuing my Master of Music Teaching with an Instrumental track at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
I was recently cataloging the library for the Oberlin Community Music School, and I found some really interesting piano method books that had themes like you don’t usually see today - one was meant to teach “good behavior” through the lyrics of each song and another was for girls and had what it considered to be girls’ activities as the theme for each song, both in lyrics and artwork. This has sparked an interest for me in the history of music education and from doing some preliminary research, I haven’t been able to find a whole lot of in-depth info on the field. (Ie, while I definitely could be wrong about this, the history of music education doesn’t seem to be a super well-developed subfield and I’m not aware of any preeminent scholars on the subject.)
Does anybody know a) if there are good doctoral programs for this type of research and b) whether it would behoove me to look at PhD programs in music education or in musicology? My initial thoughts are that from the schooling I’ve already had, I have the necessary skills to analyze the pedagogy behind music education documents and movements but I don’t really have historical research skills, since I haven’t taken a history class since AP US History in high school. That would seem to point towards looking into musicology programs. At the same time, as I understand it (and if anybody could clarify this for me that would be awesome), if I were to pursue a PhD in musicology, I think it might take longer than music education since I’d have to get the MA on the way to the PhD, whereas I’m already almost done with my MMT and in music education I’d just need to get the PhD. I also don’t really know which PhD area would be better for historical music education research.
Caveat: I am not a musicologist or even a humanist, so this is simply based on my sense of the two fields. My sense, though, is that this sounds better suited for musicology.
I think you’re right in that musicology will give you more of the historical research and music criticism skills you need if you are interested in investigating more into, say, music used to teach social/cultural mores to children in the mid-20th century. That sounds very much like a musicology subject. Musicology is also the field concerned with the “social meaning of music,” and that would seem to encompass the history of music education and/or music used as an educational tool to teach other subjects. For example, here’s what Northwestern says about their PhD in musicology:
Music education programs seem to be more geared towards people who want to lead K-12 music education departments or teach K-12 music teachers. For example, Case Western’s PhD in music education website says this:
So it may be good to go to a PhD program in musicology that is at a university with a strong music education department as well; there you can take some supplemental coursework in music ed if you want to, while concentrating on the historical musicology skills you need to do the research you want to do.
This raises the question, though, of what you want to do with the PhD afterwards. Do you want to become a professor of music or music education? Do you want to teach preservice teachers how to teach music, or do you want to teach courses on music history and music theory to undergraduates in a more theoretical music program?