British Journal of Music Education最新文献

This article documents the lives of three female cathedral choristers and the impacts of cathedral choral training on their subsequent lives and careers. The participants reported the acquisition of musical skills such as sight-reading and knowledge of liturgical repertoire as key. Extra-musical skills were also reported, including being organised and flexible, focusing on details, working hard, behaving in a professional manner and taking up leadership roles. In addition to the many positive experiences, the choristers identified a need for targeted pastoral care in their cathedral choral training. Further research needs to investigate the environmental structures and supports in cathedral choirs and the dynamics between conductors and child female choristers.

At present, in music education scholarship, there is a renewed interest and enthusiasm in materiality motivated by theories that gather under the title of ‘New Materialism’. Beyond the field of music education, doubts and reservations towards new materialism are being discussed, but these discussions are not yet entering music education debates. There are reservations concerning the lack of continuity with ‘old’ materialisms, some internal inconsistencies within the theories, problems that arise when new materialist concepts of agency and decentring are applied, and propositions that new materialism is not emancipatory, as claimed, but represents a further twist of Neoliberalism.

In the words of Eric Lewis, “approaching Afrological musics from the theoretical perspective of a Western aesthetic…yields not only a lack of understanding…but can have pernicious political and social results.” In this paper, I demonstrate the relevance of this statement to the British Music classroom. In Part One, I outline the current state of the UK’s Model Music Curriculum and seek to identify its underlying ideology. Part Two offers a survey of how the universal understanding of music as a series of autonomous products generates a prescribed set of criteria for musical evaluation. By ascribing idiosyncratically European notions to our evaluation of music on a universal scale, we are left with an incomplete understanding and appreciation of music not conceived according to this ideology. Looking to the future, Part Three suggests how we might approach music in a fair and germane way via a transfer of emphasis from the musical product to the people involved in the musical process. I name this an outside-in approach to music, and consider it a universally applicable and fruitful mode of musical analysis—people are, after all, the common denominator for music-making. By beginning with the social and cultural conditions in which musicians create, students are equipped with a multiplicity of lenses through which they can better appreciate the value and beauty of musical cultures both near and far.

This study investigates the extent to which a group of Australian preservice and early career secondary school music teachers of East Asian heritage are likely to teach aspects of their heritage music. It is positioned against a background of national multiculturalism and approaches to cultural inclusivity in Australian society, as well as the long-standing notion of ‘Asia literacy’ in Australian education and the national cross-curriculum priority (C-CP) of ‘Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia’. The study’s findings indicate that the participants identified with their ancestral cultures to varying extents, generally had very limited knowledge of and experience with their heritage music and in general were reluctant to teach their heritage music. The authors suggest that the slow rate of progress towards culturally diversifying Australian music classrooms is related to complex matters and attitudes surrounding race in the country. The study proposes developing Cayari’s concept of ‘Asian spaces’ as a means of increasing the presence of East Asian music in Australian schools and of supporting teachers of East Asian heritage in the workplace. Finally, the authors emphasise that culturally diversifying the content of music classrooms can be undertaken by teachers of any cultural background.

Instrumental tuition is by many seen as the cornerstone of higher music education (HME) performance programmes. An increasing body of research looks into its strengths and weaknesses and calls for development in a number of ways. This study contributes to this debate by exploring the ways in which international instrumental tuition practices are different, however limited to Western classical music practices. The article reports on a qualitative interview study of 12 students with experiences from 11 countries across America, Europe and Asia. Analysis of the interview data suggests that instrumental tuition practices are different when it comes to teacher positions, lesson formats and social organisation, responsibility and student voice and subject matter foci. These differences seem to correspond to social, musical and pedagogical structures and assumptions, and they could, as a result, be seen as differences on an international, institutional and individual level. The study suggests further that instrumental tuition practices could be seen as various manifestations of and negotiations between two broad archetypes in education: a teacher-centred archetype and a student-centred archetype. Increased knowledge about the variety of instrumental tuition practices is potentially a crucial matter in the field of HME, not the least due to power issues, and the study provides an analytical framework to analyse international, institutional and individual practices.