A Concise History of American Music Education

I haven't quite finished yet. But based on what I have read, this is a very detailed book about music education. It's given me a lot of historical documents to look into for future reference. The focus so far has been choral education, which is not as much my focus as an instrumental music teacher. However I just finished the chapters on the 19th century so perhaps the wind band is about to begin.

Read this for a graduate music education course. As mentioned by the other review, there's a disruption in the flow as you read. Within a chapter, there are multiple sections and subsections. When reading one subsection to the next, it jumps a few decades to a century in the timeline. When you get to the next section, you've jumped back a few decades. Superficial information on a specific organization, such as the date of when this organization changed their name, would be mentioned in, say, Chapter 3. Significant information on when this organization was actually established, why, and by whom wouldn't be explained until, say, Chapter 6. This happens very frequently to the point where it's frustrating. I was constantly going, "Wait, where did I read this before?"Other than that, it's been tremendously helpful to have a timeline of very important music education events consolidated into one book. I have definitely become more aware of how political and social events have lead to the current music education that we have today and this knowledge has provided me with more conviction in music education advocacy. I only wished I didn't have to work so hard to keep up with the chronology.

First of all, there is no attempt at matching the pagination so when a professor references a page number from the physical book, you will not be able to find it. Instead of 185 pages, there are listed 2087 "location points" in the Kindle edition.Secondly, I found that there were a few pictures missing from places that were referenced in class.These are pretty big issues so buyer beware!

I needed an overview, and the book was certainly concise. The book definitely served the purpose and provided great insight.Thank you.

History for music majors

This is a must read for all current and soon to be music educators. Michael Mark has done an outstanding job of presenting what the book's title infers.The shipment arrived well within the prescribed time frame and was in outstanding condition. No problems!

Its great

The book is very informative, if a bit dry; not much different than other History books. My main complaint is that the Kindle eBook is far from usable in an academic setting. Instead of giving you page numbers, it defaults to "locations" which is confusing and not a suitable way of citing any source I know of. Good luck trying to find what's being referenced when the professor says, "Page 96". Additionally, I found that there were certain accompanying images that I wasn't able to find, although I might just chalk that up to the thousands of locations I had to look through. Considering the paper back copy is only ten dollars more to own, I wouldn't waste your time on the Kindle version.