| Summary: | This thesis examines public school music in the making of a modern middle class in late-Victorian Toronto. Its aim is to show how this subject both shaped and was shaped by the culture of modernity which increasingly pervaded large urban centres such as Toronto during the course of the nineteenth century. In so doing, this study also examines various aspects of the acoustic soundtrack during the period under study—particularly that which witnessed the advent of industrialization—to bring additional context and perspective to the discussion. Using an approach which goes beyond pedagogic and bureaucratic justification, the overall intent is to present the evolution of school music and its public performance within a much broader acoustic framework, that is, to weave it into the increasingly-urban soundtrack of Toronto, to gain some appreciation of how it would have been heard and understood at the time.
In addition to its primary historical discourse, the study also draws meaning and context from a variety of other academic disciplines (musicology, sociology and education, to name but a few). Because of this, it necessarily moves from the general to the specific in terms of its overall focus, not only to provide background, but also to help make sense of the ways in which each of these areas informed and influenced the development of Toronto’s public school system and the inclusion of music in its classrooms. It then proceeds more or less chronologically through the nineteenth century, placing particular emphasis upon the careers of prominent educators such as Egerton Ryerson and James L. Hughes, to mark significant shifts in context and philosophy. Within each, a thematic approach has been employed to highlight relevant developments that likewise informed the way in which school music was conceived and comprehended. In this way, it is hoped that a fresh perspective will emerge on the history of public school music in Toronto, and prompt further research that employs aural history as a more prominent tool of historical research.
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