ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the interplay of musical narratives, illustrations, and titles in Michael Aaron's legendary Piano Course and its Finnish adaptation by Matti Rautio. Aaron's Piano Course, which exists in numerous translations, was the first US contribution to the history of music education in postwar Europe, confronting a variety of established national programmes of education. The overall style of Aaron's original volumes, visually progressive with idiosyncratic American illustrations and titles, as visualized music therapy, might even have been meant to heal wounds in the postwar USA. The use of local images made classical music look more American than usual in the 'classical' domain. The Finnish cultural and mental setting was similar in many respects, so the product was generally adjustable. In the late 1940s, Finland had gone through a challenging economic crisis and started a cultural turn after decades of pro-Luther, -Bach, and -Hegel orientation on a pro-Italian (Roman) ground.