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Swanwick1999 - Music Closed or Open
Swanwick1999 - Music Closed or Open
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Music Education:Closed or Open?
KEITH SWANWICK
JournalofAestheticEducation,
Vol. 33, No. 4, Winter1999
?1999 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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128 Keith Swanwick
Before everything else, always make sure that the teaching of music is
worthwhile. And there must be no confusion as to what is under-
stood by "music." There are not two classes of music: one for adults,
drawing rooms, and concert halls, the other for children and schools.
There is only one music, and the teaching of it is not so difficult a matter
as scholastic authorities are apt to suggest at their congresses.2
Dalcroze might not have thought the matter quite so simple had he and
his students been exposed to the plurality of music that now surrounds
us. In principle though he is surely right. School and college music educa-
tion can become a closed system that leaves behind, or gets left behind by,
ideas and events in the wider world. It is not difficult to demonstrate this
phenomenon.
For example, beginning in the 1950s, the introduction of Orff instruments
into school music classrooms resulted in the creation of a musical subcul-
ture, characterized by decorative glissandi and circling ostinati, played on
specially designed classroom instruments and based on pentatonic materi-
als. This was music designed for children, music bearing little relationship
to music elsewhere, except when it begins to approximate the Indonesian
gamelan. In the late 1960s came the influence of modernism. In Britain and
elsewhere, we teachers encouraged children to become performers and
composers of "texture" pieces and to use repertoires of aleatoric devices,
randomized lists of numbers, and so on. Pulse, tonality, and modally de-
fined pitch relationships were suspended while students made sound col-
lages, recorded "found" sounds in their environments, and constructed
graphic scores. The word 'music' was frequently dropped altogether from
books for use in schools and the word 'sound' was substituted: for instance,
New Sounds in Class, Sound and Silence, Exploring Sound, Make a New Sound,
Sounds Fun, and Sounds Interesting.
Here was an attempt to begin again, to make a new start without the
clutter of inherited classical traditions which are so easily seen as opposed
to the popular music industry and the alternate musical preferences of
many students. And here was an opportunity to link up with the attitudinal
world of contemporary experimental composers. Metrical rhythms and
tonal pitch relationships were discarded, and attention was switched to lev-
els of loudness, texture, and tone color. But in the evenings, after these dis-
tinctive school experiences, the students went home and played the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones, or perhaps they taught themselves to play the music
that really mattered to them, where metric rhythms and tonal tensions were
the norm.
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Music Education:Closedor Open 129
control, figuring their own way through them, comparing notes with
fellow practitioners, following the example of preferred models.3
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130 Keith Swanwick
But the type which buries itself in instruments is separated from the
understanding of musical knowledge. Representatives of this type,
for example kithara players and organists and other instrumentalists,
devote their total effort to exhibiting their skill on instruments. Thus,
they act as slaves, as has been said: for they use no reason but are
totally lacking in thought.8
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MusicEducation:
Closedor Open 131
it is not the prime source of high aestheticpleasure.The peak of aes-
thetic experience is scaled only when a work relates strongly to the
structuresof our own individual experience,when it calls for a new
way or organizing the schemata, or traces, of previous life events.
This experienceof seeing things by a new light is called by Koestler
"bisociation."It is a "eureka"experience,what Langercalls the tri-
umph of insight: we discover in the work a "point of view" that
seems to us at the moment to be a kind of revelation.12
If this is an instance of Elliott's "distinctiveaestheticexperience,"then I
plead guilty to finding it desirable.Seeing arts activities as part of the aes-
thetic in such lofty terms offers a much needed educational rationale for
subjects that easily become marginalized. Even so, we should recognize
that most artisticmoments are less revelatory,though still valuable in that
they offer elements of insight, alternativeperspectives.However, my point
here is that it is too easy to conflate the aesthetic with the artistic,a well-
known confusion that Elliott rightly castigates. Among other problems,
such conceptual slippage tends to essentialize artistic experience into a
single entity rather than recognize the distinctive forms of discourse that
define the activitieswe call the arts.
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132 Keith Swanwick
of the old and unnecessary division between the "affective" and the "cogni-
tive" lying here beneath the surface. This pulls against the idea of symbolic
forms, a concept that is also important for Abbs. Symbolic forms develop
within traditions of use and must inevitably involve cognitive elements;
among these being proficiency in making connections and comparisons, the
facility to read expressive conventions, and the ability to recognize struc-
tural exceptions and deviations. The division is of course false. As John
Dewey reminds us: "The odd notion that an artist does not think and a sci-
entific inquirer does nothing else is the result of converting a difference of
tempo and emphasis into a difference in kind."16
At a fundamental level, it would be possible to show that all three of
Abbs's distinctive aesthetic characteristics appear to be shared with other
forms of human discourse. The aesthetic is only a strand of artistic experi-
ence, a necessary but not sufficient condition for artistic understanding.
Furthermore, aesthetic response is often an unlooked-for gift having little at
all to do with the arts; the flash of light on water, a sunset, a fine shot in a
ball game, an elegant experiment, a tight argument-all these may qualify
as partaking of the aesthetic. Ross stretches the concept of the aesthetic even
further until it becomes a kind of generic life-force. "A good aesthetic edu-
cation, a healthy aesthetic development, will, by definition, increase the life-
force, empower the life-drive, release all our instincts and savor life and live
life to the full. It will be strengthening-virtuous."17
For Ross, aesthetic education should not be an induction into what he
calls the "artistic predilections of a privileged social minority."
The classes would be jam sessions and the public events community
happenings. Arts lessons would generate an artistic dimension in the
school's life-not merely function as yet another variation on an aca-
demic or vocational theme. There would be room for cartoon, comic
strip, food, film, make-up, D.I.Y., clothing, the fairground, muzak,
Boots Art, pop, electronic games, cars, bikes, hair, graffiti, advertising,
entertainment, politics. The esoteric practices of the studio, the the-
atre, the concert hall, the gallery would be replaced by an altogether
more robust, more plebeian, more ephemeral range of activities-all
imbued with what I have called the vernacular spirit.8
It may be very rewarding and encouraging for arts teachers to see aes-
thetic experience as celebratory, illuminating every corer of life, vitally
pulsing through the curriculum and communities of schools. But this vital-
ity is not necessarily confined to the arts since all lively and significant ex-
perience can be seen as aesthetic. Here again it is a difference in degree
rather than in kind. To the extent that artistic experience includes the aes-
thetic, there can be an intense celebratory quality that runs counter to some
versions of schooling. The emphasis by Ross on day-dreaming, cordiality,
and the vernacular principle is certainly in opposition to educational "stan-
dards," vocational attitudes, subject classifications, student assessment, and
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Closedor Open
MusicEducation: 133
all the other baggage and clutter of the school curriculum.I would guess,
though, that even in the context of contemporaryschools we would all
want to promote eventfulness,if only as an antidote to the low-intensity se-
quences of dull routines.We look hopefully to our institutionsfor evidence
of the aestheticin this wider sense, as indeed did JohnDewey.
The aestheticis a necessarybut not sufficientconditionfor the artistic.In
whatever way the concept may be construed,and certainlyif it centers on
sensory awareness,aestheticexperiencehas to be seen in a dialecticalrela-
tionship with the traditionsand conventionsin which any artworkor event
is located.19This relationshipis not simply a matter of transmittinga cul-
ture or a set of culturalvalues. Thereare of course obvious connectionsbe-
tween the music of particulargroups and their life style, age, and social po-
sition. But this is not to say that music in some way embodies a social order.
As Peter Martinputs it when writing on popular music, "Thereis a rela-
tionship between social class and the hierarchyof musical styles, but this
does not mean that the latter is determined by the former."20Distinctive
musical styles are maintainedand developed through give-and-takein an
interpretive community.Musicianswork in a multilevel dialogue with other
musiciansand with their audiences.
Artworksare the productof activitiesshaped by a constantprocessof
decision-making, of innumerable choices through which their cre-
ators imaginatively take account of the likely responses of others.
This does not imply that artistswill simply conformto such expecta-
tions-on the contrary,they may consider their whole purpose to be
the challengingor subvertingof establishedconventions.21
Music can be seen thus to take its place interactivelywithin a cultural
environment without necessarily being culturally determined. Herbert
Gans also rejectedthe dichotomy of mass culture versus high art and con-
ceived instead of "tastecultures"and "tastepublics,"a multitude of plural-
istic value groups ratherthan a heterogenous society or a simple cleavage
between "mass"and "high"cultures.An individual subscribesto any num-
ber of such groups at the same time and may change allegianceover time.22
This resonateswith the work of JiirgenHabermas,who sees the importance
of culturaldivergence for survival and development. On this culturalanal-
ogy of the Darwinianview, variations occur that change the survival and
developmental potential of individuals and communities. "In the case of
social evolution the learning process takes place not through changes in
genetic makeupbut throughchanges in knowledge potential."23
This margin of maneuver is kept open by systems of discourse that fa-
cilitate the growth of knowledge for any individual and community. For
music this margin consists in being multilevel, engaging us from the par-
ticularityof the sensory, through expressive metaphors,to structuralrela-
tionships.At any of these levels, the interactionof aestheticsubjectivityand
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134 Keith Swanwick
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MusicEducation:
Closedor Open 135
musical process having the potential to involve students in musical idioms
of their choice and to work to some extent in their own way and at their
27
own speed."
Both the activitiesof composing or performingby themselves will inevi-
tably limit our musical experience to what we can ourselves play or sing.
Composing, performing,and audience-listeningeach have their place, and
individuals will find their own balances and preferencesamong these ac-
tivities.If formalmusic educationis to help students into "situated"musical
discourse,it has to offer more than one single entry point.
Thereare many potentiallyopen avenues both within and outside of the
school setting. Fromthe world beyond classroomswe can hear the buzz of
musical "conversation"from many times and places. Access to this should
also be partof the experienceof students in formaleducation.How is this to
be achieved?Therehas to be a radicalrethinkingof how time and resources
are used. I can only hint at them here. Smallergroups ratherthan the whole
class, whole band, or whole chorusare essentialfor student interaction,mu-
sical decision making, and individual choice. Therehas also to be openness
to wider musical encounters,a recognitionof the plurality of musical dis-
course. Curiously, on this issue there are two paralleland apparentlycon-
tradictorystrandsemerging in contemporaryeducation.One is the imposi-
tion of prescriptiveNational Curricula,Guidelines,or Standards;the other
is the growth of ad hoceducationalprojectsinitiatedfairlyunsystematically
by free-enterpriseagencies working outside of the formal educational
framework.
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136 Keith Swanwick
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Music Education:Closedor Open 137
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138 Keith Swanwick
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MusicEducation:
Closedor Open 139
out of existence and to use prerecordedloops and patternsthat, while they
may serve the purposes of instant music making, certainlydo not develop
expressive range. But the computercan also be used to stimulatecomposi-
tional processes, can translatevisual metaphorsof music into sound. Tech-
nological progress may also release teachersand students from drudgery,
leaving people free to create lively events,promoting conviviality, and ex-
tending sensibility.
In summarythen I am saying that
- formal music education runs the risk of isolating itself from the
wider world of music;
-discourse is pluralratherthan monolithic;
-discourse is multidirectional;and
-amid this diversity music education should hang on to the prin-
ciples of care for music, respect for students, and the prioritizingof
expressivenessand fluency.
Conclusion
In conclusion,and returningto the issue of institutionalmusic education,I
cite an instanceof my own writing that, I think, still picks up something of
my own perspectiveand suggests where we might focus in working out the
futurerole of formaleducation.
(The)first and unique aim of music educationin schools and colleges
is to raise to consciousness and purposefully and criticallyexplore a
number of musical procedures, experienceddirectly through the real-
ity of various inter-culturalencounters.A second aim is to participate
in creatingand sustainingmusical events in the community,events in
which people can chooseto be involved and thus contributeto the rich
variety of musical possibilitiesin our society.
In these ways, we avoid transmittinga restrictiveview of music
and of cultureand may help to keep prejudiceat bay. Human culture
is not something to be merely transmitted,perpetuatedor preserved
but is constantlybeing re-interpreted.As a vital element of the cul-
turalprocess,music is, in the best sense of the term,recreational;
helping
us and our culturesto become renewed;transformed.35
This idea is also capturedby MargaretMead, who also worried about
the separationof educationfrom the world of communitiesoutside of insti-
tutions. There is a positive side to schooling! As she says, "Outof the dis-
continuitiesand rapid changes which have accompaniedthese minglings of
people has come another invention, one which perhaps would not have
been born in any other setting than this one-the belief in education as an
instrumentfor the creationof new human values... the use of education
for unknown ends."36
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140 Keith Swanwick
I believe this aspiration is part of what lies behind Bennett Reimer's in-
sistence that music education is aesthetic education. There may have been
some underlying conceptual confusion, and perhaps now the paradigm
may have done its main work. But the emphasis on responsiveness and
openness embodied in his view finds resonances in all who care about mu-
sic and their students. One thing is for sure, the replacement model for mu-
sic education will not be built on any monolithic performance tradition but
will have much more to do with promoting varieties of musical discourse in
diverse educational settings of which schools will be but one.
NOTES
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MusicEducation:
Closedor Open 141
24. Michael Oakeshot,Rationalismin Politicsand OtherEssays(London:Methuen,
1992),pp. 198-99.
25. Elliott,MusicMatters,p. 173.
26. Elliottrecognizes this and advocatesbreakingwhole classes and chorusesinto
smallergroups to encouragethem to identify and solve performanceproblems
for themselves.
27. Where"composing"amountsto no more thanplaying aroundwith sounds, this
activityalso becomes hardto justify.
28. Saville Kushner,"AgainstBetterJudgement:How a CentrallyPrescribedMusic
CurriculumWorksagainstTeacherDevelopment,"International JournalofMusic
Education, no. 23 (1994):34-45.
29. The scheme is being evaluatedover threeyearsby myself and a colleague,Dor-
othy Lawson. Six classes are being followed around the activities over three
years, and their attitudes and musical work is being monitored.Six "control"
groups are also being observedin parallel.
30. This work had been premieredrecentlyin Franceand Germany.
31. The variancelevels are 1.16for the controlclasses and 0.85 for the experimental
group, significantat p<0.01.This compareswith no significantvarianceat the
outset.
32. As they watched the stage being set up with a mix of acoustic and electronic
instrumentsand beforeanyone played anything,one girl remarkedthat she did
not like this kind of music-"opera and jazz!"Afterward,though,she thoughtit
pretty good. The outlook of a thirteen-year-oldhas realignedsomewhat.
33. The concept of music as discourse is furtherdeveloped in my book Teaching
MusicMusically(Londonand New York:Routledge,1999).
34. I define "phrase"very broadly. It is a discerniblemusical gesture. By this ac-
count, the single "A"that opens Wagner'sRienziOvertureis a phrase.
35. KeithSwanwick,Music,MindandEducation (London:Routledge,1988.),pp. 118-
19.
36. MargaretMead, "OurEducationalEmphasesin PrimitivePerspective,"Ameri-
canJournalof Sociology48 (1942):633-39.
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