Transforming Music Education

4. Transforming Music

4 Transforming Music What is meant by the word music? How is music transformed? And what are the practical implications for music education? In previous writing I suggested that music was a social phenomenon and examined some of the ways in which groups form around particular beliefs and practices.1 While these insights are helpful, they constitute part of a complex and ambiguous phenomenon. As a way of teasing out some of these ambiguities and tensions , I sketch five images of music that together illustrate the many ways in which musicians and music educators conceive of and practice music.2 I then outline three ways in which music is transformed. The chapter concludes with the practical implications of this analysis for music education. The word music is a Western construction, and some societies do not have an equivalent word in their vocabularies. While they might do what we in the West call music, they do not think of what they do in the same way. If we could go back to the ancient Greeks, we would find the same situation , in that their notions of music were far more integrative with other arts and quite different in emphasis than ours. Still, one is a creature of one’s time and place. If one is writing from the perspective of, and position in, Western culture, it is perfectly appropriate to ask what is now meant, at least in the West, by the word music. The question of whether this Western word ought to be used in societies for which there is no equivalent word is quite another matter that lies outside the scope of this writing. I neither claim nor deny that my analysis relates to other musical and cultural traditions and perspectives. The relevance of these ideas to different musics suggests commonalities as well as differences between musical traditions and practices. The word music is used variously as noun, verb (“to music”), and adjective (“musical”), in both the singular and plural, and is associated with other notions on which it is contingent such as ability, perception, understanding, skill, symbol, and sign. This ambiguity necessitates clarifying the different PX017A_04_77-117 17/10/02 15:44 Page 77 78 Transforming Music Education ways in which the word is understood and used. My own approach to this ambiguity is a dialectical one that invokes different images to suit particular purposes. Analyzing the various ways in which the word music is understood by musicians and teachers alike is an important step in developing a conceptual framework that can be compared to other approaches, fleshed out, criticized, expanded upon, or modified in the future. Beyond this theoretical interest is the important practical matter of how teachers invoke these images in music instruction. For this reason, my examples come mainly from various music curricula that indicate the intentions and instructional practices of music teachers.3 Focusing on the practical ways in which teachers use these images also reveals how teachers reconcile musical dialectics in their own teaching. The story of Western classical music has been told principally in regard to the specific styles that characterized music of a particular time and the people who made it. Less has been said about the social process of musical transformation, about how and why music changes in the context of its practitioners and public, and why some music has been preserved more or less unchanged for long periods of time while other music has changed rapidly .4 Rather than offering a detailed account of the ways in which Western classical music transforms itself, a project that lies outside the scope of this chapter, my central point is to show that whether they realize it or not, music teachers are engaged in the process of musical transformation. In earlier writing I discussed the impact of cultural institutions—family, religion , politics, music profession, and commerce—on musical ideas and practices and the effect of music, in turn, on the nature of those institutions.5 Rather than traveling over this ground again, my present focus is on the work of musician-teachers, who are at the very center of the musical enterprise and whose efforts are crucial to preserving and transforming musical traditions. Whether a musical tradition lives or dies depends on the effectiveness of the process whereby music passes from one generation to the next, and on those in the position to shape future musical beliefs and practices.6 Not only is this an educational matter, but the musical challenge for...