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The present special recognition of musical education at Spanish schools is based upon the approval of a law from 1970. However, this law was not implemented. The reason was the lack of a specialist teacher in the field. The implementation depended in many instances on voluntary initiatives and sporadically on teacher’s sensitivity to musical matters. In this article we wanted to examine the work which has been done by the Spanish musician and teacher Baltasar Bibiloni. His work, as a teacher in the field of teacher’s training and musical adaptations and arrangements for primary education, will become a benchmark for music on the Balearic Islands. Furthermore, it will be an important factor within legal constraints, which are currently being discussed. Focal points of this article are three aspects of its ideology: the importance of musical education in schools, specific proposals for implementation and teachers willing and able to apply it.Received: 24/04/2013 / Accepted: 11/06/2013How to reference this articleGelabert Gual, Ll. (2014). Ideario y aportaciones metodológicas de Baltasar Bibiloni a la enseñanza musical en las Islas Baleares. Foro de Educación, 12(17), pp. 147-163. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/fde.2014.012.017.007

Singing in a choir comprises a number of specific musical aspects including the technical part of the singing voice; vocal ensemble; harmonies; aesthetics and musical taste. In practice, however, there are many cross-cutting elements that are not specifically musical but do play an important role in a choir. The preparation and development period for a concert is, in essence, a process of collective growth, where each component becomes an important foundation to enhancing the ensemble performance, and to a greater or lesser extent, offers a wide range of parameters in which to work. This procedure is a recurrent theme in early childhood education and primary teaching, but appears to occur less frequently during the training of music teachers or in higher-grade musical education. In this vein, a group of undergraduate students on the Degree in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education at the University of the Balearic Islands participated voluntarily in a collective singing trial. In consequence, they came to recognise the special psychosocial and attitudinal value of the experience. The opinions in this article are based on existing documents and relevant studies regarding the importance of collective singing. In the process, we also set out the experiment carried out at the University of the Balearic Islands.