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This chapter offers a panoramic survey of topics and issues in developmental psychology. While emphasizing cognitive aspects, it also incorporates sociological and cultural aspects. The discussion is closely tailored to the questions frequently asked by music educators, such as what results of developmental psychology parents and teachers should be aware of and what they should know about the development of musical abilities. Developmental psychology of music should not focus only on those cognitive or instrumental abilities that are readily measured. Instead, the ability to experience music, musical skills, and attitudes are also part of the musical development. Furthermore, changes of musical desires, interests, and motivations take place throughout life. Thus the meaning of musical development may be entirely different at different stages of life.

This book has offered a reasoned summary of over 150 musical lives, showing how each has unique and complex paths to varying types of participation from listening to performing. This chapter concludes by examining the ways in which these stories might assist us to bring a more coherent and informed agenda to understanding musical ability, development, and identity.

One of the distinctive features of the current longitudinal study is a tracing of many points along musical lifelines from childhood to early adulthood. This has allowed researchers to identify specific developmental periods where participants' musical learning appears most influential or most open to change. This chapter draws upon the many varied developmental periods that have emerged during the musical lives of music learners, and relates these to the extensive theoretical explanations offered throughout the text as a means of framing more generalizable hypothesizes about musical development.

This chapter focuses on two study participants who have both acquired high levels of expertise in traditional Western classical musicianship along unique syzygistic trajectories. The analyses are framed according to Gagné's model of musical talent and giftedness on the one hand, and by adapting Abbott and Collins' model of talent development in sports on the other. It shows how a wide range of promotive factors facilitated the development of expert musical talent.

This chapter has two main topics: Firstly, music-making (in terms of singing and playing instruments) is described as an activity that has to be seen in the context of the general human (musical) development and that is subject to specific changes during the course of life. Secondly, the connection between music-making and health is portrayed as an interaction in which music affects health and vice versa, music-making exerts an influence on health. The effects and the extent of this interaction depend largely on the kind and context of music-making.

This chapter discusses the vast and interrelated topics of developmental social psychology of music and music education. This chapter has two broad sections: the approach adopted in the chapter to musical development literature and how social perspective has influenced developmental psychology and education as a whole; and the chapter's views on musical development from infancy through to adulthood. The chapter also comments on some of the main theoretical models of musical development and evaluates their usefulness from a social psychological standpoint. The chapter discusses its outlook on the formal and informal learning processes in the field of music education. The chapter examines the international variations in music educational practices and institutions. Finally, the chapter deliberates the processes of learning and teaching music in different learning environments and the role of teachers and pupils in setting the music learning agenda.

This chapter examines how the detail of social, biological, and psychological experience — personal relationships, institutional and domestic beliefs and practices, personal appropriations of music's communicative potential, music's place in personal and social identity, and the strategies that are adopted to cope with investment demands — pushes people away from musical engagement as well as pulling them towards it. It focuses on the experiences of two young musicians, whose musical journeys were deprived of empowering syzygies.

This lecture discusses the prehistory of Chinese music theory. The earliest texts about the music theory in China are the inscriptions of the musical instruments found inside the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng. The lecture describes these inscriptions and tries to identify what sort of musical development lies behind them. It determines that bells were the main influence on Chinese music theory. Bells introduced Chinese theorists to the chromatic scale and made absolute pitch important.

This chapter considers the concept of diversity and the social groups associated with musical engagement during childhood and adolescence. In particular, it focuses on new directions that the concept of diversity provides in guiding the thinking about musical development from a number of different perspectives. It then outlines a theory of generativity that provides a framework for examining how generative processes influence young people's conceptions of themselves as music-learners and the implication of these processes for music educators. Before considering these issues, this chapter summarises a key perspective that is receiving increasing attention in child and adolescent developmental theory and research. This perspective, known as positive youth development, provides a vital framework for considering young people's musical development and positive engagement in musical activities.

This chapter reflects upon the young musicians initially surveyed and the research evidence discussed along the way. It examines these early theorizations and predictions in light of the current lives of these participants based on longitudinal data that has permitted researchers to trace them, some eleven to fourteen years after their first interviews, depending on individual participants and the number of follow-up interviews after a survey that was administered in 2008. Through a survey, interviews, and some observations, a descriptive profile of the participants' musical lives was developed: the length of time they were or are still engaged in music activities, the reasons why they ceased or continued playing, the nature of their ongoing musical experiences, what they had taken from their previous music learning experiences and their beliefs about music and music education.

This chapter examines how creativity can be understood in relation to children's musical development and the specific lines of development that interact to create the dynamics of change in children's musical creativity. It tries to show that the locus of development, for many children in the 21st century, gives prominence to the influence of peers and other social-cultural influences in children's lives. Similarly, hearing something differently, feeling differently about something, or having new ideas, thoughts, and feelings, can be considered as constituting the development of musical creativity, whereby children construct meaning through a variety of musical experiences situated in social contexts.

Studies of musical development in various disciplines have led to the discovery of a number of ways in which to define musical development and musical competence. Here, the researcher establishes that the psychological definition will be used, as established by psychological research findings, to describe the account of the development of musical competence, focusing on ‘singing’, ‘graphic representation of music’, and ‘melodic perception and composition’. The chapter describes the theory of musical competence that is concerned with the ways in which different cultural groups relate to the music they hear. The researcher believes that the social and cultural context must be identified, in order to go further into describing musical competence in terms of individual psychological developments. The chapter also touches on the subject of education and the generalist–specialist approaches to it, as well as whether there are stages in artistic and musical development. The researcher furthermore attempts to suggest a meeting between theory and practice, one which could shed light on what teachers should adapt as a theoretical framework for how they teach.

This chapter introduces the cohort of students whose musical lives were traced from the age of seven until their early twenties. It begins in 1997 at the outset of the project, when researchers first came into contact with young learners through their primary school instrumental programme. The researchers' first encounter with the students and their parents happened via interviews several weeks before the students began the instrumental programmes. They recruited from eight primary schools in the metropolitan area of Sydney. Following these interviews, a set of protocols outlined in Chapter 1 was established to provide as comprehensive a view as possible of subsequent musical development and of past musical experiences.

Environmental and genetic factors affect individual development from fetus to adult, both generally and in the case of music. This chapter considers the difference between shared and nonshared environmental influences, and different types of interaction between the individual and the environment. Parents, teachers, and peers strongly influence this development. Early nonverbal interactions between child and mother or caretaker, and parental support for music activities in childhood, seem to be of particular importance. These and other influences (e.g., exposure to music through the media) occur in the more general framework of the societal, historical, and generational context. Environmental conditions for musical development may be optimized by paying more attention to shared music experiences between child and parents (e.g., parent-baby singing), and exposing the child to a wide variety of music.

What has rarely been considered is how advances in music technology might help to support practically the actual developmental understanding of music in children. This chapter reviews important aspects of musical development in terms of music perception, performance, preference, and creation, and links these to music technology. After a summary of music technology history in the last thirty years, it draws connections between the literature on musical development and music technology — particularly music software. It also offers a brief review of studies that have used technology to understand more clearly aspects of music learning. It concludes with thoughts about future directions in considering music technology and the understanding of musical development.

This chapter presents the reflective musical life-story of Tristram. His musical life seems to capture what the changing self might look or sound like musically, from his early sampling of musical instruments, his rejection of drumkit ‘coolness’, his strong sense of being a mallet percussionist, his impressive journey as a bassoon player and composer, only to make a dramatic realignment as a young adult as an aspiring writer, dancer, and singer, having rejected instrumental music almost entirely — for the time being.

This chapter discusses the processes and factors involved in the development of an individual's musical skills throughout his life. It also takes into consideration the maturational processes that the individual goes through and the possible decline in his physical skills as he matures. The chapter talks about how these may affect his musical skills. This chapter contains an interesting discussion on the maturational process in acquiring music and musical identity, and learning from exceptional musical development. It also takes a closer look into a musician's mind. The chapter ends with how an individual ‘loses music’ as he grows old. Inasmuch as it provides details on how music can be acquired during the period of infancy, the chapter also gives details on how musical faculties can be lost due to age-related factors.