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THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN MUSIC
EDUCATION RESEARCH. A
REFLECTION ON MUSICAL
EXPERIENCE
Øivind Varkøy
Introduction
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Harald Jørgensen: MUSIC-education, musicEDUCATION, or MUSIC-EDUCATION
Frede V. Nielsen: Music education research
must also be put on the content that is to be
taught; music
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1. The role of theories of musicology in music
education research.
2. A focus on “musical experience” – as the
basis of reflection for music education
research. I choose in particular to focus
musical experience as existential experience.
1. The role of musicological
theorisations in music education
research
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Four main aspects in music education research: the
human being, music, teaching/learning and society.
Music education as a scientific subject is a
multidisciplinary discipline. Music education
researchers relates to a lot of “hyphend-sciences” or
sub-disciplines, taken from both education/pedagogy
as a scientific subject and from music as a subject of
science.
Musicology
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Historic musicology - and systematic musicology
Ingmar Bengtsson:
a) Works with emphasis on musical objects, documents and
sources. Included in this category are instrument research,
notation research, music iconographic research and
bibliographical and documentation research.
b) Works that centre on sound, sound progressions, and
reactions to sound. Included in this category are research on
music acoustics, research on the physiology of hearing,
research on the physiology of vocal production and
instrumental musicality, and research on audio perception
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c) Works with emphasis on the relation between music and
human beings, society and ideas. Included in this area are
music anthropology, music philosophy, music aesthetics, music
education and music therapy.
d) Works with focus on music as expression and/or structure.
Included is research on audio and tone-system, musical
grammar, musical rules and composition techniques, style
analytical research, research on behavioural practice, and
composition-descriptive and composition-interpretive work.
”New musicology” = c)
Christopher Small: Musicking
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"(...) if we think about music primarily as action rather
than as thing and about the action as concerned with
relationships, then we see that whatever meaning a
musical work has lies in the relationships that are
brought into existence when the piece is performed.
These relationships are of two kinds: those between
the sounds that are made in response to the
instructions given in the score and those between
the participants in the performance. These two sets
of relationships (...) are themselves related, in
complex and always interesting second-order ways."
(Small 1998, p. 138- 139)
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“During musical performance, any musical
performance anywhere and at any time,
desired relationships are brought into virtual
existence so that those taking part are
enabled to experience them as if they really
did exist.” (Small 1998, p. 183).
Sten Dahlstedt: Form och funktion
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Two musicological terms, form and function, as centre points.
Music education in the 1950s and 1960s is discussed as an
expression for a particular intellectual and modernist aesthetic,
where form is in the centre of the aesthetic interest.
The notion function broke through in the 1960s, and this
anthropological and sociological notion played an important role
for the liberation of music forms other than the traditional
Western art music. The artistic avant garde, media industry and
the new political left shared a desire for a new culture concept
that should counteract ideas about the autonomy of art and
abstract form thinking.
Digression on “musicology with music education
profile/direction”…
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a) focus on music education research’s link
to the subject of the music education activity;
music and its research subject musicology
b) focus on the connection between the
Music Academy’s artistic activity and music’s
research subject musicology
2. Musical experience
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The first factor I will take as my starting point is
linked to the debate about the actual notion of music
and the interest in the functions of music for the
individual and society. Here music anthropological
perspectives are linked to the area of music
aesthetics and philosophy.
A central point is how Christopher Small gives the
notion “musicking” clear existential overtones.
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The other factor I will take as a starting point in the
second part is linked to what Frede V. Nielsen talks
about as “music’s multi-faceted life-world”.
A layer division in music that focuses on the acoustic
layer, structural layer, bodily layer, tension layer,
emotional layer and spiritual/existential layer.
These layers of meaning correspond to comparative
layers of human consciousness.
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Nielsen suggests that the music education focus is
not always as clear when it comes to communication
between all of music’s layers of meaning and the
human consciousness. There is an inclination to look
away from the profound perspective that can be
found in musical objects, and a lot of educational
activity appears to concentrate on bringing pupils in
contact with the “outside of music”; that which can be
described technically and manageably.
It is legitimate to ask whether the “existential layer” is
a suppressed discussion, a silent voice,
marginalised…
Arne Johan Vetlesen
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Hegel and Gadamer as bearing points
A story about meeting between music – which can affect, and
people – who allow themselves to be affected
Gadamer: “The real experience is the one where a person
becomes aware of his/her own finiteness” (1972, p. 340)
Every single “experience” becomes a kind of “painful
experience”
The (painful) experience, shows that it “only apparently is such
that everything can be repeated over and over again, that there
will be time for everything, and that everything returns.” (Ibid,
p.340)
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These basic conditions, or existential problems, are
about aspects such as dependency, vulnerability,
mortality, the fragility of relations and existential
loneliness
Vetlesen argues that today’s culture does not want
to know anything about these foundational terms
What we can still experience in the musical
experience as existential experience involves putting
aside this usual tendency in our culture of concealing
the problematic human basic conditions
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This is about experiencing a meeting with something
where something happens to me without me
planning it or being able to control it
The moment I am jerked away from what is usual,
controlled and controllable, chosen and planned, I
become aware of my own vulnerability and littleness
in the world; and therefore also aware of my own
general dependency and mortality, my loneliness
and the fragility of my relationships.
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The dimensions of being a human subject that I
meet in a musical existential experience is about
something that largely evades language.
It is this that is science (?): to aspire to putting into
language and making the unconscious,
unacknowledged, non-verbalised areas conscious,
and simultaneously exercising humbleness for the
problematic in this project.
Frederik Pio: “About the unheard. Contribution to
musicality-formation phenomenology”
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I believe that there is both a general educational and
a culture political tendency towards reductionism
concerning the musical experience, a reductionism
that seems to exclude the phenomenon of existential
experience.
And a lack of focus in music educational research on
this tendency to assess musical experiences first
and foremost, or exclusively, as harmonising and
“edifying” experiences.
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Immanuel Kant: One can make aesthetic convictions of both
“the beautiful” and “the sublime”. The experience of the
beautiful is a comfortable and harmonising experience. The
experience of the sublime however, is not an entirely
comfortable affair; it is about being overwhelmed by that which
is great – and therefore in a way frightening.
When both the educational political and cultural political
discourses are permeated with stories and ideas about the
harmonising effect of art – about the effects of “the beautiful”,
then there is not much place for “the sublime”, to relate to art’s
disturbing and shaking potential, in other words; the existential
experience.
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An existential experience is a relation. It appears in certain
moments as a disturbing meeting with something “completely
different”. Such experiences have throughout time been given
religious, metaphysical, psychological, social, cultural,
philosophical and aesthetic interpretations.
It is precisely this multi- facetedness in possible interpretations
of the musical experience that is very important to highlight –
and to take care of also in music education research.
Music education research must turn to the music experience as
wide as possible, with all the conscious, willpower and rational
aspects, but also with the sensual, emotional, personal, and
existential aspects and qualities.
I think we are obliged to look after this multi-facetedness – if we
really want to focus on the music – as a multi-faceted life-world.