Music education liberated from new praxis

K. Swanwick
Institute of Education, University of London, UK

This article is in response to that of Robert Walker (IJME, 27, 2-15). It is

proposed that attempts to define music in terms of either sonic material or
socio-cultural acoustic phenomena are inadequate. Furthermore, it is important
to distinguish between the view that all music is culturally rooted and the
doubtful assertion that all music is uniquely reflective and expressive of a
culture. This form of referentialism overlooks the transactional nature of musi-
cal discourse. The concept of discourse suggests a group of principles for music
educators: care for music as conversation, care for the autonomy of students,
teaching for expressiveness and promoting fluency before literacy. These com-
plement the main dimensions of a formal music curriculum: analysis of cosmo-
politan musical elements (by participation) and involvement in local musical
events.

In a recent issue of the IJME, Robert Walker challenges music educators

to realign fundamentally their ways of thinking about both music and
music teaching (Walker, 1996). He asserts that concepts of ’music’ and
the ’aesthetic’ must be seen as western constructs and that to believe
they are ’universals’ retards the development of contemporary music
education. For Walker the way forward lies in contemporary practice -

in ’what musicians are actually doing now’ (p. 13) and in the power of
information technology which may help music educators ’leap over
several centuries of curriculum st~~nat~on9. This he sees as ’a new praxis’.
I shall leave aside the question of how new all this really is. Walker
himself draws attention to several influential music educators who have
proposed pedagogies for the 20th century and once we step beyond the
confines of North America we are likely to find these ideas being put to
work. For example, in the best British classrooms and not are all good -

of course students regularly compose in contemporary musical idioms

-

and use information technology.

My here, though, is to some extent with the illogicality of
concern
Walker’s attempt to demolish musical universals while at the same time
trying to create them. In so doing he appears to leave a vacuum where
some sense of what counts as ’musical’ ought to be. I wish to go beyond
any form of relativism where qualitative evaluations of musical practice
have to be avoided and instead put forward some principles for music
education which may be shared by teachers in very different cultural
and educational settings. In doing this I am of course aware that accu-
sations of cultural colonialism may be made. I hope that readers will
avoid making such an unnecessary inference.

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BEYOND SOUND
In trying to step beyond the western concept of the ‘aostbetic’ Walker
would have us reject a view of music as ’autonomous transcultural sonic
materials’ and see these activities instead as ’socio-cultural acoustic
phenomena’ (p.11). In so doing he fights with shadows rather than
engages with specific references. In what meaningful way could sonic
materials ever be thought to be autonomous? Who is supposed to believe
that sound as such is transcultural? Music, on the other hand, certainly
can be both transcultural and autonomous, in that music produced in
one cultural setting can turn up in quite another, there to be recycled to
some extent independent of cultural origins. The human activity some
of us call music and which can roughly be defined as expressively
organizing undesignated sounds, is rarely if ever totally constrained
within a particular cultural context but gets shared around across differ-
ent comnmnitiesi yes, some musical processes can indeed transcend
cultural locality. This is why Walker is able to recommend that music
educators give special attention to those composers whose work demon-
strates cosmopolitan elements (p. 13).
The fundamental problem with the dichotomy offered by Walker is
that neither position fully takes into account the symbolic and trans-
actional nature of a continually evolving discourse., for music is a form
of discourse, part of the network of human ’conversations’ where mean-
ings and positions are presented, negotiated and refmed. The term ’acous-
tic phenomena’ suggests direct apprehension by the senses in much the
same way that the term ’sonic materials’ conveys the idea of musical

significance being somehow essentially inherent in sense data.

Presumably Walker does not intend such empiricism or phenomenalism.,
believing as he does that music (or whatever we want to call it) is ’rooted
in culture and uniquely reflective and expressive of the culture’ (p. 11).
His is more of a rationalist theory, recognizing the human propensity to
construct meaning within a social context. Acoustic properties are thus
construed into patterns and filtered through practice and custom so that,
for example, precise pitch relationships may be central for the music of
one culture and peripheral for another. We should notice, though, that
cultural practices are very local indeed. Thus we may fall into unwar-
ranted generalization and stereotyping if, for example, we speak glibly
of ’Western culture’ or ’Ghanaian culture’, for such terms cover up a
multiplicity of cultural practice alongside a network of ethnic roots.
Furthermore, it is an irrelevance to suggest that because a culture appears
to have no specific word for music that its members have no such
conception. Millions of people use gerunds in their speech every day
without troubling to name and analyse them.
Walker believes not only -

rightly and obviously that all music is -

culturally rooted but also that it is in some way ’uniquely reflective and
expressive of a culture’. This second assertion is indicative of a much
more problematic position, one having about it the lingering shadows of
old fashioned referentialism, where music is seen as inevi tably sympto-
matic of other cultural values. We really should abandon the idea that

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music stands in a direct relationship with a socially independent reality,
as though it were only a kind of mirror. Musical 6~a~c~n~ng’ is not inherent
in acoustical properties nor totally located within the subjectivity of any
individual. Nor is it inherently social in the deterministic sense of
representing or ’reflecting’ society. Of course there are obvious connec-
tions between the music of particular groups and their life style and
social position. But this is not to say that music in some way embodies
a reified social order. Music, like all discourse, occupies the space
between individuals and communities. Distinctive musical styles are
maintained and developed through give-and-take in an interpretative
community. Music always takes place within a cultural environment but
often without being culturally determined, as Peter Martin, writing about
popular music, reminds us:
Artworks are the product of activities shaped by a constant process of decision-
making, of innumerable choices through which their creators imaginatively take
account of the likely responses of others. This does not imply that artists will
simply conform to such expectations on the contrary, they may consider their
-

whole purpose to be the challenging or subverting of established conventions.

(Martin, 1995, p. 193)
Far from being just a mirror of cultural practice, music can also be a
window through which we can look at the world outside. This dynamic
realm of ideas has been well described by Habermas in his discussion
of the concept of the ’lifeworld’:
The lifeworld is, so to speak, the transcendental site where speaker and hearer
meet, where they reciprocally raise claims that their utterances fit the world
(objective, social or subjective) and where they can criticize and confirm these
validity claims, settle their disagreements and arrive at agreements. (Habermas,
1981/1987, pp. 126-7)
As individuals moving within these ’lifeworlds’ we do not make fixed
responses to socialexpectations and cultural norms. In these negotiations
divergencies can occur which may become important for individual and
cultural survival and development. Variations emerge which change the
potential of individuals and communities. These variations depend on
systems of discourse where ideas can be challenged, changed and elabor-
ated, affirming and liberating social conventions. ’In the case of social
evolution the learning process takes place not through changes in genetic
makeup but through changes in knowledge potential’ (Habermas,
197~/19919 p. 171).
This margin of manoeuvre is kept open by symbol systems which
facilitate the growth of knowledge for individuals and through individ-
uals to society. In music its essence is multi-layered, engaging us with
the particularity of sensory experience, through expressive metaphors to
the relationships of repetition and contrast which form the basis of
structural coherence. In any of these layers, the interaction of individual
subjectivity and musical traditions is potentially rich in bringing about
variations and divergencies in thought and behaviour, essential for any
kind of development, whether social, psychological or physiological.
Within a nexus of cultural conventions the interchange of musical ideas

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invites individuals to make their own unique contributions. It is
this potential for the creation of new meaning that accounts for the
great value placed upon music and the related activities of dance,
drama, ceremony and story-telling which we find in many if not all
cultures.

THE CONVERSATION OF EDUCATION

As civilised human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about

ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a
conversation, begun in the course of centuries....Education, properly speaking,
is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation...
(Oakeshot, 1992, pp. 198-199).
Music is one strand of this conversation. It is, as I have written elsewhere:
one important and universally evident way in which people symbolically articu-
late their response to experience and thus are able to share their observations
and insights with others. It has something, though not everything, in common
with the other arts, in that it is particularly well-adapted to illuminate those
elements of human feeling which are fleeting and complex and universal aspir-
ations which most people seem to share, whatever their culture. (Swanwick,
1994, p. 38)
Walker concede that he relies ’on the possibility of a universal analytical
approach which must be our only hope for developing world understand-
ing’ (~.~.1). From a general educational perspective this approach seems
inescapable but there is always the problem of the detail of curriculum
structure. Whether the music curriculum is determined mainly by teach-
ers, by government agencies, or by students themselves, setting up a
course is an exercise which inevitably transplants music from a cultural-
context to an educational setting, a shift from the locally situated and
intuitively perceived towards the more generalized and analytical.
Formal or institutional education, with its tendency to analysis and
explanation can appear to be cultural colonialism among social groups
for whom these forms of discourse may be alien.
There are no easy solutions here, but we might consider seriously
what might happen if music were to be associated with schools rather
than always taking place in them. Schools would then be seen as import-
ant market places, agencies where musical ideas are traded and where
contacts can be made with musicians out there in the local communities.
We might also consider what it might be like if formal music education
was considered to be more a series of encounters than a chain of instruc-
tion. Above all we do need to have at least a provisional view as to what
counts as music, an issue which inevitably shapes what counts as music
education.

AT COUNTS AS MUSIC AND MUSIC EDUCATION

I start from the basic premise that music educators will respect and
promote music as a form of discourse. Here we can certainly agree with
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Walker that the vitality of this discourse depends on recognition of its
plurality. This has a number of consequences in terms of certain ’prin-
ciples’ for music educators, fundamental values that may not be elevated
into a ’praxis’ or ’new philosophy’ but, notwithstanding the absence of
utter novelty, may still stand us in good stead in the future. One is that
we care for music as conversation, not just for sonic or acoustic phen-
omena or for inert information about the historical or social context of
musical activities. Teachers and students would have to be receptive and
alert, really listening if they are to be in this ’conversation’.
A second consequence is that we should care for the pupil, for his or
her autonomy. Discourse is never a monologue. Each person brings with
them a realm of musical understanding and we have to try to organize
for this, to make room for various and often unexpected modes of
articulation, respecting individual participants in the conversation,
avoiding forms of cultural stereotyping. A third principle is that we
teach for expressiveness. The phrase or musical gesture rather than the
pulse or the measure is the smallest meaningful unit. Musical conver-
sation is not empty ’talk’ but significant utterance, and music has poten-
tially unique expressive power. Fourthly, we shall want to promote
fluency before literacy. Musical utterance must have precedence over
musical reading and writing, especially in the early years. On an analogy
with language development the sequence is that we listen and articulate,
then read and write. We might consider how this would affect the first
few piano lessons, classroom instrumental work, choral and band
rehearsals, composing, appraising the work of others.
We can see how these principles inform curriculum development. For
example, if we take the necessity of broadening the cultural range of
music teaching, of engaging in inter-cultural work or ’world musics’,
then caring for the particularity of musical experience will help us steer
clear of seeing multi-cultural resources as a kind of musical world ’coach-
tour’. Having fairly recently escaped from the clutches of propositional
knowledge associated with the history of western classical music we
must be careful not to replicate this state of affairs with the history and
social context of music from India, the Caribbean, Africa, China and the
Pacific. If a belief in the cultural situatedness of music leads to a prolifer-
ation of more talk about music rather than engagement in it then we
shall have reverted to a form of music education from which some of us
thought we had escaped. This is one worry I have with Walker’s vision
of teams of ’experts’ (p. 12) who will bring to music education a variety
of knowledge about cultures. Contextual information can so easily be
substituted for musical engagement.
In keeping ourselves open to music we may sometimes have to shift
away some of the barriers of tribal possessiveness and exclusiveness.
Otherwise we are likely to reject whole areas of musical activity simply
because of their cultural labels. (One school student I was sitting next
to recently at a rehearsal of Steve Reich’s City Life saw the stage being
set up in the concert hall with synthesizers and keyboards and com-
mented ’I don’t like this kind of rnusic - opera and jazz’.) One ’cosmo-
politan’ educational strategy can be to recognize that, in spite of the
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great diversity of music, we can still identify elements which, though

they may appear in quite different contexts, are common to much music:
repeated melodic, timbrel or rhythmic patterns, the use of scales or
modes, of chorus or antiphonal effects, call and response, dance rhythms,
drones, deliberately attention-getting changes of texture, timbre or loud-
ness. We can quite easily extend the idea of what Orff called ’limited
structures’ to take in ragas, whole-tone scales, note-rows, jazz and blues
chord sequences and so on. In these ways we expand our analytical
ability and our expressive range, and in handling these elements come
to have a better understanding of the minds of other people as we enter
into their musical procedures. We understand a culture through its music
and other forms of discourse. It is a mistake to assume that we can only
understand music through some form of explanatory cultural study. Any
history or sociology of music is surely best approached through the doors
and windows of particular performances.
Music beyond the western classical tradition has a great deal to offer
us on the principle of the supremacy of musical fluency. We are

impressed by the aural abilities of imagining and recalling music coupled

with the skills of handling an instrument or the voice that characterize
jazz, Indian music, rock music, music for steel-pans and folk music from
everywhere. These musicians have much to teach about the virtues of
playing ’by ear’ and collective improvisation and composition.
What are we to make of the power of the microchip? (perhaps the
colonization of music education by multi-national companies?). How do
these technologies stand up to the test of our principles? We can see the
contribution of micro-technology in two broad areas. One obvious devel-
opment is the extension of individualized learning. Another is the exten-
sion of instrumental resources in a radical way, giving instant
accompaniments, creating quite new tonal effects and undreamed of
combinations of sounds, assisting the processes of musical composition
and performance, and this without the high-wire act of bringing it all
off in real time. There is also the encyclopaedic function of CD ROM in
accessing music and information about music so that each individual
may be able to find a personal way through the ~rorld’s musical network.
In some of this the principle of expressiveness seems most at risk. Pre-
recorded loops and patterns, whilst they may serve the purposes of
instant music-making, do little to extend expressive range. It becomes
very easy to mechanize human diversity out of existence. But the com-
puter can also stimulate compositional processes, can translate visual
metaphors into sound. Technology can release teachers and students
from the drudgery of hand-notation and part-copying. It enables us to
edit ’by ear’, either instantaneously or in virtual time. It can give an
instant idiomatic ’feel’ to fairly simple, even embryonic ideas.
Whatever the curriculum approach, we have to be careful not to reduce
all musical activity to the norm of individual work-stations. Music in
schools also has a part to play in the creation of lively events, promoting
conviviality. Musical discourse is very often celebratory, not merely
reflecting but enlivening cultures, even at times creating a new sense of
cultural identity, however transient this may be. These communal activi-

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ties may complement formal music education: we thus can have engage-
ment with ’cosmopolitan’ musical elements on the one hand and
involvement in real and very local musical events on the other. So at
one and the same time a school can be responsive to local community
values, encouraging and supporting musical engagement on or off the
physical premises, and yet retain some cultural ’distance’ by involving
students in musical exploration beyond the conventional the already -

known, engaging them in reflective performance, improvisation, com-

position and in the critical appraisal of the music of others. In these
ways music in schools is neither a musical museum nor a cultural mirror
but a place and space where we facilitate musical conversations and
conversations about music (which are not at all the same tl~~~g~.
There are implications here for the way time is allocated, for the size
of groups and other resources. Music in schools often slides uneasily
between sequential classroom instruction and ’n~cd~al~r’ extra-curricula
events. There are no glib answers as to how these two functions might
be more closely aligned, but we ought to be looking at the whole pattern
of music education, both formal or institutionalized and informal or
community and student initiated. It often seems that available
resources including new technology and musicians in the com-
-

niuniiy - are not being explored simply because the existing machinery
of school timetables is taken for granted.
In conclusion, then, we do need to go beyond the opaque definition
of ’music’ as ‘s®ci®-cult~~°sl acoustic ph~~®~cn~’. This takes us nowhere
near understanding musical practices and applies as equally to spoken

language. It would be better to give up looking for this kind of conceptual

tag altogether. The idea of music as discourse seems more powerful and
does not tie us either to 19th century aesthetic beliefs or to an uncritical
cultural relativism. If Walker finds it helpful educationally to dispose of
the notion of the ’culturally transcendent’ and substitute instead the idea
of ’a truly cosmopolitan approach’ then I must point out that to be
responsive to music in the ’cosmos’ (a very big place) implies that to
some extent there is a human potential for stepping outside of local
cultures, whether or not we use the word ’transcend’. That is what
’education’ means. ~1c surely agree on one thing: all is not well with
music education, and its practice does tend to revert to very limited
ideas of musical experience and associated teaching models. I suspect
that we would both wish to see a similar type of curriculum, one which
strongly connects to the contemporary world beyond the school doors.
For me, though, the pedagogical emphasis would be on music-making
as a way of understanding ourselves and others, on direct knowledge of
music rather than knowing about its cultural genesis, on music as
human discourse - a non-referential activity but one which is highly
expressive.
Whether or not this would be considered ’new praxis’ I dare not say.
But at least it shifts the central focus from concern with a monolithic
set of western traditions or a reification of social origins to engagement
with contemporary cultural richness, to a liberal educational agenda that
aims to develop lively and varied musical conversations.

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References
Habermas, J. (1976/1991). Communication and the evolution of society. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Habermas, J. (1981/1987). The theory of communicative action. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Martin, P. J. (1995). Sounds and society. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Oakeshot, M. (1992). Rationalism in politics and other essays. London: Methuen.
Swanwick, K. (1994). Musical knowledge: intuition, analysis and music education. London:
Routledge.
Walker, R. (1996). Music education freed from colonialism: a new praxis. International
Journal of Music Education. 27, 2-15.

L’6ducation musicale libérée de n~u~re~le~ coutumes

Cet article est 6crit en r6ponse a Robert Walker (ISME, 27: 2-15). Cetessai propose que de
ddhnir les termes de musique de materiel soit soniqe ou de ph6nom6ne acoustique socio-
culturel n’est pas ad6quat. En plus, il est important de faire la difference entre l’id6e que
toute la musique est enracinée culturellement et celle de 1’assertion douteuse que la musique
est uniquement reflective et expressive d’une culture. Cette forme de reference perd de vue
la nature transactionelle de la communication musicale.
Ce concept de communication suggere un groupe de principes pour les 6ducatours en
musique: prenez soin de la musique en tant que conversation, prenez soin de l’autonomie
des 6tudiants, enseignant 1’expression et n’o~zbliant pas de promouvoir la facilit6 d’61ocution
avant de promouvoir le fait de savoir lire et écrire. Ceux-ci compl6mentent les dimensions
principales d’un curriculum formel en musique: 1’analyse des elements musicaux cosmopoli-
tes (par participation) et 1’engagement dans les 6v6noments au niveau r6gional.

von neuer praxis befreit

Dieser Artikel bezieht sich auf den von Rober Walker (IJME, 27: 2-15). Er weist Versuche,
die Musik als reines Lautmaterial oder als sozio-kulturelle akustische Phanomene zu bestim-
men, als inadequat zuruck. Es ist weiterhin wichtig, zu unterscheiden zwischen der Ansicht,
daB alle Musik kulturell verwurzelt ist, und der zweifelhaften Behauptung, daB alle Musik
auf einzigartige Weise eine bestimmte Kultur widerspiegelt und ausdriickt. Solche
Behauptungen ignorieren die zwischenmenschliche Dimension eines musikalischen
Diskurses.
Das Modell des I3iskurses legt einige Prinzipien fur Musikerzieher nahe: Interesse fiir
Musik als Gesprach, Interesse fiir die Autonomie der Studenten, Expression als
Unterrichtsziel und die Befiirderung von Riifiigem Spiel eher als von theoretischen
Kenntnissen. Diese erganzen die Hauptelemente eines formellen musikalischen Lehrplans:
Analyse (durch Teilnahme) von kosmopolitischen musikalischen Elementen und aktive
Beteiligung an lokalen und regionalen musikalischen Veranstaliungen.

La educaci6n musical liberada de la nueva praxis

Este articulo es en respuesta al de Robert Walker (IJME, 27: 2-15). Se plantea que los intentos
por definir la musica en terminos ya sea de material s6nico o de fenomenos acusticos socio-
culturales son inadecuados. Ademas, es importante distinguir entre la idea de que toda
musica esta culturalmente arraigada y la dudosa afirmaci6n de que toda music es singular-
mente relexiva y significativa de una cultura. Esta forma de referencialismo examina la
naturaleza de la transacci6n del discurso musical.

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 El concepto de discurso sugiere un grupo de principios para los educadores musicales:
preocupaci6n por la música como conversacion, preocupaci6n por la autonomia de los
estudiantes, ensenar para la intensidad de expresi6n y promover in fluidez antes que la
alfabetizaci6n. Todo esto complementa las principales dimensiones de un curriculo musical
formal: el andlisis de elementos musicales compopolitas (por participaci6n) y el compromiso
en eventos musicales locales.

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