ABSTRACT
In 1837, a report published by the Boston School Committee suggested that vocal music be added to the curricula of public schools, not least because of its potential to ‘humanize, refine, and elevate a whole community’ (Mark 2002, 83). To make the case for including moral development through vocal music in the purview of school education, the report drew a telling comparison with the prison: ‘Are our schools mere houses of Corrections, in which animal nature is to be kept in subjection by the lay of brute force and the stated drudgery of distasteful tasks?’ (ibid., 82). Around the same time, W. E. Hickson heard a prison choir sing in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. ‘[M]usic’, he concluded, ‘may be regarded as a great moral engine which, when wisely directed, can produce the most beneficial results’. Such was Hickson’s belief in the moral potential of vocal music that he proposed its introduction in schools across the Netherlands (Hickson 1838, 3). If not in such a wholehearted fashion (but see also Gussak, this volume), some prisons in the US today allow prisoners to participate in choirs, moral development being a key underpinning rationale.
