2024 Volume 53 Issue 2 Pages 36-46
This paper examines Kiyomi Fujii’s music education practices and views on music education at Musashino Women’s Academy. As primary sources, Fujii’s diary, hand-made patterns for making music teaching materials, and the back sheets used for both collection of manuscripts of folk songs and manuscripts of folk song arrangements were used. Fujii’s music education practice is characterized by the following three points. (1) He gave lectures on musical grammar using hand-made teaching materials and giving exam questions. (2) He had the students listen to songs and write their impressions, and also had them write about choruses and textbooks. (3) He practiced music education of songs and chorus. Fujii used his unique “Japanese-style counterpoint” when converting folk songs into choruses, and for this purpose, it was better to arrange them polyphonically with three-part female chorus rather than four-part male chorus, which mainly uses harmonic processing. I thought it was appropriate. In this sense, the girls’ high school was also a place to experiment with the fusion of Western and Japanese music. At the root philosophy was his view of music education as “songs of life,” and he practiced music education that integrated theory and performance at a girls’ high school.
