Of all musical activities, music listening is the
most ubiquitous and essential to all other
musical endeavors. In practice, however,
music listening is often over-looked as a
passive and prescribed activity. This article
has a three-fold purpose: (1) to describe music
listening as a thoughtful, creative, and
purposeful activity; (2) to explore the
connections among the four active musicmaking
approaches in terms of music listening;
and (3) to suggest ways teachers can
incorporate meaningful and active music
listening activities into their teaching practice.
Topics in the first section include foundations
of music listening as an activity and what
research in related literature offers. The
second section contains an exploration of links
among the four active music-making
pedagogies and their relationship to music
listening as instruction, with an emphasis on
Orff-Schulwerk and its connections to other
active music-making pedagogies. Finally, the
third section presents two practical
applications of music listening instruction
paired with active music-making tasks.
Because the National Cultural Policy now
links with the Australian Curriculum,
implications for the Australian music and
general classroom educators concludes this
article
