Students' attitudes to aural training in an academy of music

Abstract

Aural training is part of any higher music education. The discipline is compulsory and traditionally aural training is considered a theoretical discipline in spite of its obvious practical character. There is a need for systematic knowledge of the role of aural training. A general question in this article therefore is: How does aural training contribute to the student's musical development? - As part of an empirical study of aural training at the Norwegian Academy of Music (Reitan 2006), a survay was conducted to investigate several aspects of the discipline, its relevance, content, effect and learning outcome, and also its relation to other subjects in the curriculum including theoretical as well as performing subjects. The study involved 104 students in the 1st and 2nd year of study. - The results show that, in the students' experience, aural training is to a high degree an important subject (93%) and a useful subject (84%). Aural training leads to a great variety of practical/oral/written skills and to theoretical knowledge appreciated as useful and transferable to musical praxis. The study shows that aural training also leads to more accurate comprehension and more focussed awareness of music in general. It is suggested that aural training contributes to the development of skills such as inner hearing, audiation and categorial perception. Keywords: aural training, relevance, inner imagination, awareness, audiation