Jeanne Bamberger

Jeanne Bamberger ( Shapiro; February 11, 1924 – December 12, 2024) was an American music educator who was Professor of Music and Urban Education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests included music cognitive development, music theory and performance, teacher development, and the design of text and software materials that fostered these areas of development.

Early life and education Jeanne Bamberger in Mothers and Music Lessons by Margaret M. Carlson, Good Housekeeping Magazine, December 1931 Born Jeanne Shapiro, Bamberger was a child prodigy pianist in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she performed with the Minneapolis Symphony before she had reached adolescence. Her mother, Gertrude Kulberg Shapiro, was from a Romanian Jewish family that had immigrated to Minneapolis. Gertrude had studied with Florence Goodenough, a pioneer in the systematic study of children, and had a strong interest in child psychology. Her father, Morse Shapiro, was from a Lithuanian and Polish Jewish family that had immigrated to Minneapolis via New York City. He was a pediatric cardiologist.

In Minneapolis, Jeanne studied piano with Joanna Graudan, who was married to Nicolai Graudan, the principal cellist of Minneapolis Symphony, and who had been a student of Artur Schnabel in Berlin. When Schnabel came to play with the Minneapolis Symphony, Joanna arranged for Jeanne to play for Schnabel and he agreed to accept her as a student.

Bamberger went to New York City in 1943 to study with Artur Schnabel. a notable fellow student in Milhaud's class was Pierre Boulez. During this time, she also performed extensively as a piano soloist and in chamber music ensembles, focusing particularly on music by young American composers.

Career After a brief stint at the University of Southern California, Bamberger's first longterm academic appointment was at the University of Chicago where, between 1955 and 1969, she taught a freshman seminar in Art, Music, and Literature together with Leonard Meyer and Howard Brofsky. In Chicago, she became interested in the education of young children, and particularly in the Montessori method.

MusicLogo and Impromptu Bamberger worked in Papert's Logo Lab in the Department of Computer Science from 1972 to 1975. Together with a colleague Hal Abelson and a student Terry Winograd, she developed MusicLogo to allow students to actively participate in the learning of music making.

Jeanne Bamberger died at her home on December 12, 2024, at the age of 100.

Awards and honours Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research SEMPRE Lifetime Achievement Award (2019) Edith Ackerman Award (2017) Guggenheim Fellowship (1998) to write a book on musical intelligence and its development Fulbright Scholarship (1951–1952) to study Aesthetics with Olivier Messiaen in Paris, and to play concerts of young American composers

Publications Books by Jeanne Bamberger:

Recent chapters in books: (2016) “Growing Up Prodigies” In: G. McPherson (ed) The Child as Musician: A handbook of musical development. Oxford University Press. (2007) “Restructuring Conceptual Intuitions Through Invented Notations: From Path-Making to Map-Making” In: E. Teubal, J. Dockrell & L. Tolchinsky (eds) Notational knowledge: Developmental and historical perspectives. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (2007) “Changing Musical Perception Through Reflective Conversation.” In: R. Horowitz, Talking Texts. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Assoc. (2006) “What develops in musical development?” In: G. MacPherson (ed.) The child as musician: Musical development from conception to adolescence. Oxford University Press. (2005) “How the conventions of music notation shape musical perception and performance.” In: D. Hargreaves, D.E. Miell, R. MacDonald (eds) Musical Communication. Oxford University Press. (2000) “Turning Music Theory on its Ear: Do we hear what we see; do we see what we say.” In: Multidisciplinary perspectives on musicality: The Seashore Symposium. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Articles, a selection: (2018) "Action knowledge and symbolic knowledge. The computer as mediator". / Conocimiento basado en la acción y conocimiento simbólico. El equipo informático como mediador, Infancia y Aprendizaje (Journal for the Study of Education and Development), 41:1, 13-55, DOI: 10.1080/02103702.2017.1401316 (2015) "A Brief History of Music, Computers and Thinking: 1972-2015". In: Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education, 2015:3. (2011) “The Collaborative Invention of Meaning: A Short History of Evolving Ideas”. In: Psychology of Music, Volume 39 (1) 82–102. (2010) “Noting Time ”. In: Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online, Vol. 8. (2004) “Music as embodied mathematics: A study of a mutually informing affinity”. (with A. diSessa) In: International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning. 8: 123–160. (1996) “Turning music theory on its ear: Do we hear what we see:; do we see what we say?” In: International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning. Volume 1 #1: pp. 33–55.