Charles Leonhard
American music teacher (1915-2002)
Charles Leonhard (December 8, 1915 - January 31, 2002) was an American music educator and academic. He was one of the first to argue for a focus upon aesthetic education within music education. For most of his career, he was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Life and career
Born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, Leonhard was the son of Morris and Dora McRae Leonhard. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma (Bachelor of Music in piano) and Teachers College, Columbia University (Master of Arts and Doctor of Education). Many of Leonhard's teachers were former students of John Dewey, whose ideas influenced Leonhard throughout his career. During his doctoral program, Leonhard studied aesthetics with Susanne Langer. In 1953, as the music education profession was just beginning to rethink its philosophy, Leonhard published his article "Music Education—Aesthetic Education." In this article, Leonhard urged music educators to eschew the instrumental values of music education and to stress the aesthetic value of music.
While a graduate student, Leonhard concurrently worked as an instructor and assistant professor of music education at Teachers College. He had previously served in the United States Army during World War II as a field artillery officer.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Leonhard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.