International Society for Jazz Research

Praxisorientierte Ansätze und Perspektiven im Bezugsfeld des Medienverbundes

The article begins with a resume of Gyula Trebitsch's combined media concept, based on the co-operation among the technical media, radio, television, film and record companies, with cultural and educational institutions (opera houses, symphony orchestras, music schools, music academies, etc.). Seven points then follow with reasons why Jazz should be included within basic and advanced music education programs. The next section deals with the scientific principles necessary for developing such a media-related and practice-oriented education program:

1. A theory of knowledge and problems of method in Jazz research,
2. Methodical analysis of aesthetic and didactic theory concerning communication and interaction in music; according to this theory, Jazz is a specific form of human interaction, and must not only be analysed with immanent structural methods, but analyses must also include historical, biographical, geographical, ethnological, sociological methods in an inter-disciplinary fashion.
3. Knowledge theory and college level didactic analyses, concerning the education of music teachers, which concentrate on three major problem areas in any study program:
1. in the autonomy and threatening isolation of one subject area from another,
2. in the division of theory and practice,
3. in the insufficient on-the-job-training programs.
Following the discussion of specific didactic problems within Jazz education, different possibilities of organising a media-related and practice-oriented education within the music college are developed:
1. Jazz as an option for all students at the music college,
2. Jazz as a compulsory subject for music educators,
3. Jazz for instrumentalists, composers, conductors, etc. who already have a diploma,
4. Jazz as an integrated diploma program with strong ties to practice within the co-operative media concept,
5. Jazz as an alternative compact-study program for all professional "classical" musicians, who have the talent and interest to obtain the necessary qualifications for professionally playing Jazz.
6. Advanced courses for music educators, who normally learn too little about Jazz during their studies.
The above mentioned problem areas for a media-related and practice-oriented basic and advanced education within Jazz and Jazz-related music can best be illustrated with a concrete example; the "Model Program for Development and Trial of a Compact-Course System with Practice in Popular Music (including Jazz and Jazz- related Music)". Characteristic of this model program, aside from the close theory- practice and project-oriented studies, is the newly formed college didactic structure: it consists of a didactic step system, in which compact-courses and a practice extending over a number of months, alternate, and are drawn from one another, in an intense, several week program. The teaching staff that will carry out this model program at the Hamburg College of Music will mainly consist of subsidiarily appointed professors, who will be taken directly from the Jazz scene. In addition, appointed college teachers will advise the proposed scientific programs. The results of this three-year model program, whose curriculum will be continually evaluated and corrected, will be used in developing an independent, integrated diploma study program, in the surroundings of the combined media concept in Hamburg, and may be distributed to other Music Academies of the FRG, such as Hannover, Cologne, Heidelberg, Mannheim or Würzburg, to name just a few.