ABSTRACT
The literature of music education in the twentieth century testifies to the ongoing commitment to afford music a secure place in the curriculum, and to ensure that children are allowed to develop their musical skills and understanding according to the priorities of the time. The beginning of the century, represented by the writings of Mills and Yorke Trotter offers an immediate insight upon the challenges facing music educators at any time. Music education reached the outbreak of World War II in a state of flux, with the ambitions of significant innovators tempered by the confines of amateur music making at the time, and the perception that listening and singing should be the principal activities of the secondary music curriculum. The diversity that was emerging at the end of the 1950s grew in the following decades as new ideas developed from a growing interest in popular, world and contemporary musics.
