Listening to History. A phenomenon-based approach to teaching music-history

Abstract

Teaching history of music requires the teacher to mediate between musical experience and historical knowledge. In this paper, I present some ideas about how to work with this relation via the idea of human consciousness as developing through history. By taking Steiner´s view of the third and its function in tonal harmony as an example of a change in mentality, I present some examples of how to work with the immediate experience of music as a way to experience history as something still alive within the students. In this way, the attempt is made to make knowledge of history more alive and based on experience.