The Changing Role for the Composer in Society: A Study of the Historical Background and Current Methodologies of Creative Music-Making (review)

As a composer working in teacher education, I have found it increasingly frustrating that young musicians preparing to enter schools in which they will be expected to teach composition often have so little experience of improvising, or of directing or performing contemporary music. In addition, while the UK National Curriculum specifies that creative activity should play an important part in what is taught in schools, there seems to be little collective understanding of the cultural and educational processes out of which this position evolved. At worst, this lack of perspective can lead to a rootless approach to students' creativity in the classroom, the symptoms of which are prescriptive painting-by-numbers exercises that provide few opportunities for authentic self-expression, and an obsession with concepts delivered and assessed in the medium of language. There are pockets of first-rate practice in many parts of the UK; but one wonders why there is a common assumption among teachers and musicians that composition in school is not all it should be. Given the leadership in this field provided over the last fifty years or so by composer–teachers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, George Self, Wilfrid Mellers, David Bedford, Trevor Wishart, Nigel Osborne, George Odam, and Peter Wiegold, it seems anomalous that the philosophical position that has defined the place of composing in the curriculum for ages 5–14 and in the requirements of GCSE and A level examinations has so lost touch with the innovative practices they pioneered.

Jolyon Laycock's book, based on the Ph.D. thesis he submitted at the University of York, is the first systematic attempt to trace the development of creative leadership in education and community projects that has arisen out of movements in schools and youth groups and in the outreach of performing ensembles since the 1960s. Laycock sees the roots of this movement in the educational compositions of Holst and Britten—perhaps unaware of the attempts Walford Davies made to encourage composition in his music broadcasts for school between the wars (Gordon Cox, 'Towards a Usable Past for Music Teachers', History of Education, 28 (1999), 449–58). Laycock's initial historical review draws parallels between the classroom innovations of composer–teachers (those mentioned above, plus the influential R. Murray Schafer in Canada) and the prevailing technical and philosophical approach to group music-making of composer–performers such as Cage, Berio, Rzewski, Cardew, and Stockhausen. Laycock devotes little space to contact between these figures and rock musicians working in a similar manner, such as Pink Floyd, the overlap in sound system requirement developed by The Who, Intermodulation, and The Soft Machine, or the flirtation with the classical avant-garde of Frank Zappa, the stories of which have yet to be told. But his account does provide a basis for future research into the strange phenomenon by which a movement largely confined to the UK sought to convince that everyone can compose.

The book moves from this historical background into developing analytical tools for revealing the nature of creative and organizational processes involved in the kinds of project that put this agenda into action. Laycock traces how some practices arose within schools, whereas others developed under the auspices of arts organizations seeking new audiences or, as policies developed hand in hand with practice, securing capital funding dependent on a commitment to outreach. These sections of the book are likely to be perceived differently according to who the reader is: the deconstruction of planning and delivering projects, exemplified in case studies of a variety of contexts, provide useful guidance to teachers; and Laycock's illustration of the problems of evaluation and of the need for systematic documentation of what has been achieved will be of value to researchers who follow in his wake, as well as to policy-makers and those who control...