Jeanne Bamberger

American music teacher, music education researcher and child prodigy pianist Jeanne Bamberger was born Jeanne Shapiro on 11 February 1924 in Minneapolis, where she performed with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra when still a child. Her parents were from an Eastern European Jewish background, and her mother was very interested in child psychology.  Jeanne studied with Artur Schnabel in New York City from 1943. She also studied philosophy and music at Minnesota and Columbia Universities, then music theory with Roger Sessions at the University of California at Berkeley, and (on a Fulbright scholarship) with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud in Paris.

Whilst studying, she played in chamber ensembles and as a soloist, concentrating on music by young composers from the USA.

From 1955 until 1969 she taught art, music and literature at the University of Chicago, and became interested in children's education and the Montessori method. From 1970 until 2001 she taught in the Music and Theater Arts section at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and in April 1970, after attending a seminar on 'Teaching Children Thinking', she decided on her career path of changing how music is taught, using computers and developmental psychology.

From 1972 until 1975 she worked with colleagues in the computer science department at MIT to develop the procedural computer language MusicLogo, which meant that students could write code to create tunes which could be played out aloud straight away, freeing them from learning music notation or how to perform.

Later she developed an easier to use system called Impromptu which was accessible to teachers and young students.

From 1975 until 1995, Bamberger taught courses called 'The Role of Metaphor in Learning and Design' and 'Developing Musical Structures'.

Jeanne Bamberger (1924-2024)
Jeanne Bamberger (1924-2024)

 

From 1985 she developed and launched 'The Laboratory for Making Things' - a pilot programme in a local school which used Lego, other toys and her MusicLogo system, training teachers to help pupils to use them, with an emphasis on comparing the different worlds of constructing things in the visual and aural worlds. This led to her creating and directing the Teacher Development Program in MIT's Department of Urban Studies, directed at undergraduates wanting to teach maths and science in schools.

After she retired from MIT, Bamberger taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and then at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught a 'Music Cognition' course in the music department.

Jeanne Bamberger died at her home on 12 December 2024, aged one hundred.

 

A selection of articles about Jeanne Bamberger

Classical music news. January 2025 Newsletter - Watch and listen to our January 2025 video newsletter - Music and the Visual World

Classical music news - December 2024 Obituaries - Our summary of those the classical music world has lost this month