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Among the most conspicuous contrasts between David Elliott's praxial philosophy of music education and the version of aesthetic education best known to North American music educators is the role each envisions for musical performance. For many (if not most) adherents to the aesthetic rationale, musical perception and response as manifest in listening are educationally paramount. Elliott implicitly assumes that musical practices draw upon dispositions and executive abilities that are relatively widely distributed in societies and that performance is not a rare capacity or an undertaking accessible only to exceptional individuals highly endowed with “talent”. Thus, the development of musicianship through active engagement in various kinds of musical production is both educationally practical and well suited to most people's interests and abilities. However, Elliott takes his arguments a step further by insisting that musicing — active practical experience in productive musical engagements — is crucial to any instructional program that is truly musical or musically educational.

The life and learning experience of a cathedral chorister is a unique one. The domain of musical practice in which the cathedral chorister participates has been shaped around the sound of the boys' voice prior to adolescence and the attendant physiological changes that occur at that time. Unlike other musical practices in which young people participate, the performance peak for a chorister occurs around the ages of twelve or thirteen years. Once the processes of voice change commence, the unique sound qualities of the cathedral chorister can be overlaid by the unpredictable ‘cracks’ and ‘swoops’ of the developing male voice. Nevertheless, in a relatively short period of time — about five years — many cathedral choristers develop musical expertise and perform at the highest levels. How does this occur? What individual, social, and/or cultural conditions support the development of this early expert performance? What might we learn about the acquisition of expertise through the study of this practice? This chapter explores these questions through an account of a longitudinal narrative case-study investigation of life and learning in an English cathedral choir.

This chapter sketches key contexts (both global-political and scholarly) for the research presented by this book. By way of introduction to the individual chapters in the book, a number of connecting preoccupations are identified: debates over artistic experiment and populism, and over the handling of cultural difference; the diverse motivations for communist organisations to become involved in music, and their anxieties about such an involvement; attempts made to evade the grasp of political and economic structures (state and commerce especially) that communists typically opposed; and experimentation in alternative forms of musical practice that were imagined better to reflect communist ideology. The irreducible plurality of positions staked out by communist musicians and groups is emphasised.

This chapter examines the phenomenon of Western European organ improvisation. It illustrates how organ improvisation has a historical background founded on a body of repertoire and liturgical practice; contemporary musical practice comments on and develops the historical tradition through a close connection to written music; the epistemological and creative spaces offered to organists are shaped by the sociocultural performance contexts of the liturgy and the concert; and individual organists with this background are presented with a variety of creative choices.

This chapter explores the notion of a ‘community of practice’ in relation to children's music-making in informal settings. It illustrates recent research in children's communication of musical practice that investigates the communicative processes that hold between persons and practices in these communities, and the nature of musical engagement in these settings.

In his 1995 book Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education, David Elliott targets formal music education more than nonformal music instruction, or what many people now call community music (CM). The spirit of Elliott's praxial philosophy and many of his basic principles have been welcomed warmly by CM practitioners around the world. A key concept behind CM is that much music teaching and learning is facilitated by excellent musicians who may or may not call themselves teachers and who do not hold official teaching certification. This chapter fuses narrative inquiry, ethnography, and conceptual analysis to examine “hidden” or nonformal musics, processes, and frames of reference as well as contemporary concepts and articulations of CM and compares them with details of Elliott's praxialism. Elliott's concept of musical practices is also discussed, along with the importance of context in music, development of music curricula in relation to the contexts of musical practices, and values and goals of music programs.

This introductory chapter discusses recordings and other media in American musicology. It reveals that there is no vernacular practice for the so-called classical music, and introduces the concept of vernacular art-musical practice. The chapter provides an account of absolute music during the second half of the twentieth century, showing how it has changed as an aesthetic paradigm, and then explains the role of technology in music and discusses media. It also provides several details on the topics discussed in the book.

While part of a global community of Eastern Christians, Orthodox believers in Saatse and elsewhere in Setomaa maintain distinctive musical practices and oral traditions, commemorate local saints, visit local holy places and village chapels (tsässonad), celebrate together at village parties (kirmaskid) and calendric festivals (praasnikud), and integrate Orthodoxy into cultural activism and plans for regional development. The acoustics and geopolitics of Orthodoxy in Setomaa register how particular musical practices are efficacious and make the region integral despite competing territorial claims made by the Estonian and Russian states and Orthodox churches. With this in mind, this chapter examines the liturgical singing of choir members, congregants, and priests at parishes in Setomaa to document their critical, agentive, embodied engagement in Orthodoxy and the geopolitics of postsocialism. By concentrating on sound in the making, experience, and expression of Christianity and the establishment of sacred, social, and moral orders, it expands upon salient themes in ethnomusicological work on global Christianities.

This chapter explores the discursive space in which the concepts of “blackness” and African American music have been produced and analyzes how these concepts function in James Brown's 1970 recording Superbad. It examines African American music as a historical discourse based on anecdotal accounts and surviving musical practices, which are seen as implying a layer of transhistorical musical features. It summarizes some aspects of the discourses that have circulated about African-American music, including those on the status of the black community and its relationship with the white community, on musical aesthetics, on the impact of ethnicity on aesthetics, and on the impact of community on reception.

This chapter includes family reflections on musicking in both school music and private lessons, because these settings represented the main areas where parents viewed others as playing a primary role in their children’s music education. Issues of parental decision making, child agency, and family logistics are discussed. These factors were raised by many of the parents in this study when discussing school music and private lesson opportunities, often in recognition of the need to resist using music as a tool for advancement. This chapter argues that a combination of parenting musically and musical parenting skills was needed to navigate and sustain a family’s involvement and experience in music programs. There were four themes that arose from the data related to school and lessons: uneven access to formal music education, the complexity of parental decision making, the role of performance, and the challenges and rewards of home practice.

This chapter pursues an archaeology of emotions, situations and materials, pinpointing when songs were sung and how, in the plays. It determines the instruments used, and the meanings attached to them, that single out for comment vocal forms (the madrigal and the ayre), composers and genres and the part played by musical references in theatrical production. It addresses the relationship between the music and songs of Shakespeare's plays and early modern music and musical practice. The use of song as interjected distraction or entertainment is rare in Shakespeare. The physical sound of instruments in Shakespeare's theatre had two functions: one to accompany entrances and exits, the second to add symbolic significance. Shakespeare cites vocal and instrumental genres of contemporary music and dance; he employs performed music from both art and popular cultures as mimetic and non-mimetic kinds. Music for Shakespeare was an essential part of his dramatic and thematic material.

Informed by a review of recent attempts in cognitive science to overcome head-bound conceptions of the mind, this chapter investigates the contribution of ‘situated’ approaches to understanding music and consciousness, focusing on musical experience. It develops a systematic framework for discriminating between situated approaches, and based on this framework and an analysis of specific scenarios discusses the ways in which musical experience may be conceptualized as ‘situated’, elucidating the implications and explanatory potential of different approaches. Finally, there is a consideration of the framework’s value as a research tool for the analysis of situated aspects of musical practices. The aim is to advance an understanding of music and consciousness by contributing to conceptual clarity and by enriching the relationship between theoretical considerations and observation of musical practice.

This chapter examines the curious place music and musicians occupied in the May uprising. Here as elsewhere, a principal concern is the reciprocal relation that exists between musical practices and social identity. The chapter explores how traditions were mobilized and used as a resource in individuals' self-fashioning as political actors, but emphasizes the heterogeneity of traditions that were available to individuals during May and June of 1968. It was in large part the multiplicity of available political identities that led to conflicts within the musical field, and within the larger social movement which emerged during May '68. Three traditions stand out in particular: those of working-class culture, as embodied in the students' embrace of “The Internationale” and other tokens of the French revolutionary heritage; the historical avant-garde, evinced in the utopian calls of “cultural agitators” to radically reconfigure the artistic sphere, leading ultimately to its reintegration with everyday life; and what might best be referred to as trade union culture, which acted as a critical resource in enabling the musicians' participation in the strike movement. As these three instances make clear, the symbolic repertoires that individuals could draw upon went beyond the purely musical plane and embraced a range of extra- or para-musical practices.

Practicing is an activity that accounts for the highest levels of musical expertise, but one that many musicians do not typically—or at least consistently—carry out. Most people have done some kind of independent practicing (or academic studying or athletic training) in their lives and have likely heard platitudes such as “Practice makes perfect.” Such folk knowledge tends to suggest that quantity of practice is the most important factor. Unfortunately, popular handling of psychological research has largely reinforced this misconception. More careful consideration of the research, however, shows that although developing musicians certainly must make time for practice, the efficiency and deliberateness of time spent are also crucial. This chapter begins by defining “deliberate practice” as the type of practicing that optimally contributes to musical skill acquisition. Through consistent practice over time, skills that began as highly conscious and effortful progress to ultimately becoming fluently and automatically performed. Rather than striving to simply amass hours of practice time, musicians are encouraged to be more productive and efficient by strategically planning, executing, and reflecting on their practice.

This chapter studies the origins of the republican ideology that is empowered by utility. It discusses certain qualities in music and musical practices that helped the ideals of revolutionaries develop and the specific national needs that they expected music to address. It also examines when, why, and how music came to be a part of public policy and the public lives of the people in France.

This chapter analyzes the rise of North American gospel music in Trinidad, investigating some of its connections to transnational and neo-colonial processes and cosmopolitan dreams along the way. It suggests that the historical trajectory of North American gospel music was essentially contemporaneous with the emergence of gospelypso. It discusses the ways that transnational and neo-colonial issues are often discussed with and through the ethics of style in order to demonstrate the powerful counterprocesses that Trinidadian Full Gospel believers put into play, both in discourse and through musical practice.

Our contemporary sound world is ever expanding, driven largely by advances in modern technologies that continue to expand a child’s ability to engage with music. This chapter explores how musical practices have responded to the changing technocultural context and describes conceptual frameworks designed to assist with understanding these practices. The chapter outlines modes of creative engagement that provide a guide to the range of musical activities that a child can undertake. It explores contexts for meaning that highlight the value of undertaking activities across private, social, and cultural settings. The final section discusses four perspectives of a sound musicianship—sonic, psychological, embodied, and cultural—that define particular dimensions of a child’s musicality and highlight the types of skills and understandings that can be developed through their engagement with music.

This chapter examines the musical practices of hunter-gatherers and the evolution of instrumental music. It analyses whether fossil and artefact record of claimed musical instruments were intentionally constructed for musical performance and discusses the analogy between origin and development of instrumental music in southern Africa and rock art. It also suggests that musical instruments were made as extensions of and replacements for the human voice adapted simply from materials in the surrounding environment. This chapter also provides observations the links among pitch, timbre music, and social organization.