Abstract
Since before the turn of the 21st century, musicologists have turned their thoughts with seemingly increasing frequency to some fundamental questions about music and musicianship and to a revisiting of the multilayered question about the meaning of musical ability and its place in 21st-century life. The literature has expanded massively, supplemented by programmes on the radio and television about musical skills and their development, from the assessment of the neurological composition of musicians’ brains and the way musical thought is processed, to sociological issues concerning the apparent elitism and specialness of musical ability. Much has derived from the reflection of a general growth of interest in the way we spend a large proportion of our everyday lives experiencing music of various kinds, whether or not we are consciously attending to it.
Whilst it can be speculated that this growing interest in the nature of musical talent and the increase in musical idolization has sparked the need to investigate the phenomenon further, the enthusiasm can also be attributed to the rise of the popular music industry and a corresponding decline in the Western world of popular involvement in traditional classical music-making. Alongside this is a concurrent drop in the relative significance of music in school curricula, despite some attempts by governments to reverse this trend in recent years as demonstrated by the publication in the UK in 2011 of The Importance of Music – a National Plan for Music Education (Department for Education). The ambitious concept of this book, Music in our Lives, the story of which has its roots in the late 1990s, makes a significant contribution to the rich discussion about musical development and its identity in current sociological contexts.
In his foreword, David Hargreaves helpfully provides a very informative and concise summary of the book’s content and achievements, and states with due justification how cleverly the three authors, Gary McPherson, Jane Davidson and Robert Faulkner, have woven theory into the empirical evidence that has been collected. Indeed, the authors have efficiently brought together many previous writings on the broader subject of musical development. Furthermore, they refer prolifically to research in many other areas that have a significant, though perhaps a more distant, relationship to music psychology, and cover development such as work on talent and giftedness, sport practice and educational principles.
The central theme of the book is a descriptive and very readable account of the musical beginnings of 157 young 7–9-year-olds – 87 girls (55%), 74 boys (45%) from eight primary schools in Sydney – which grew from studies undertaken previously by the authors in their professional research, Gary McPherson in his work on the musical development of children, Jane Davidson (in conjunction with John Sloboda) in her studies of the importance of biological inheritance, and Robert Faulkner in his roles at all levels of music education.
A fundamental question is at the source of the book, namely, ‘Why do some beginner musicians persist to competency while others cease playing within a few months?’, but what is particularly special about this study is that it is carried out over a period of fourteen years and explores the central theme that ‘musicianship takes on different forms in different people’s lives’ (p. 168). A stated important objective is the attempt to increase our understanding of what kinds of teaching and practice strategies and support mechanisms might deepen interest and increase commitment and sustain the musical growth of young beginner musicians.
McPherson and his co-authors have researched the field extensively exploring, it would seem, every avenue that has a bearing on the subject of musical development of young people, and the amount of data accumulated must have been phenomenal. The enormity of the task of covering so many issues cannot be underestimated and it is a credit to the authors that they have managed so expertly to construct such a well organized arrangement of facts and research. For the success of this, they appropriately acknowledge the assistance of a small number of other colleagues and music undergraduates.
Indeed, this feature of comprehensiveness is a core element of the study. Ideas about musical development are considered alongside other research in human achievement, and the study draws much from outside music by exploring parallels in other disciplines including, for example, educational principles, psychology, learning theory, and sports development, the latter especially being of interest given the related issue of talent and giftedness and the processes involved in training, practice, support and provision, motivation and perseverance. The authors have investigated the relevance of a number of theoretical models from Abbott and Collins (2004), Côté, Baker, and Abernethy (2003), Deci and Ryan (2002), Gagné (2009) and Sameroff (2009), adapting these to match equivalent circumstances surrounding musical development, referring also to their own previous projects in the field and forming conclusions based on the evidence generated from the study of the many young musicians.
Written in straightforward language using British English, carefully avoiding musicological journalese, the parameters of the study are clearly defined and identified and this provides the book with a clear and dynamic structure: Chapter 1 lucidly introduces the multifaceted nature of the study outlining the relevant aspects of the task of interviewing and the main practical and theoretical issues of the subject of musical development; Chapters 2 to 5 refer in detail to the participants’ learning practice and the early years of progress, reasons for the gradual drop-out of participants and the fascinating insights into the musical lives of many of the participants; Chapters 6 to 10 consider at length the circumstances governing the selected case studies of a small number of participants, including a complete family, by looking at real life situations over many years; and finally, Chapters 11 and 12 discuss and summarize in great detail the issues raised by the study and offer valuable new approaches and frameworks in dealing with opportunities in music education. There is some useful statistical information in early chapters but emphasis is always placed on its analysis.
The book is a lot more than a well-arranged write-up of a longitudinal study; it is full of captivating and intriguing references to the countless situations described in the interviews which cover also siblings, parents, teachers, music directors, the use of resources such as school reports and so on, but all is described in a readable form addressing numerous questions such as why some children practise eagerly, others find it difficult, to what extent musical development is founded on cultural and environmental background rather than being a part of family heritage, the importance of improvisation and playing by ear, the significance of teacher and parent influence and school circumstances, the manner in which the opportunity to learn an instrument is assigned, assessment issues, the nature of leadership, and many other areas.
Much deeper issues are also investigated, including the consequence of music on mood and emotion and its relevance to beginner musicians, the significance of transactions that assist self-regulation, strategies of support, issues of disillusionment, frustration and disengagement, the question of talent and giftedness, the important social function of music: all and many more are researched and given full theoretical exploration but always interestingly within the context of the study and the participants. Some conversations are quoted verbatim and this gives a bold veracity to the participants’ circumstances to the point that some amusing anecdotes are added such as the boy trumpeter who practises with his pet bird and the parent whose limited support is reduced to the comment: ‘just keep going for 5 minutes. . .’ (p. 29). Indeed, as the authors explain, many of the circumstances described are based on what they term ‘dialogic authority,’ and they express the wish that readers should form their own judgment on the participants’ personal views of their musical lives. From these individual accounts, it is significant how little pleasure many students derive from their practice session, and the final section of Chapter 7 includes the apposite remarks that music in our lives does not happen in a ‘vacuum-sealed compartment’ and that ‘the details of these young people’s musical experiences should leave us in no doubt about the impact of domestic environment on their musical development’ (p. 135).
A further valuable feature of the book is that each chapter is helpfully summarized and the next one anticipated in the way of a story and undertaken as an integral part of the dialogue. Easy reminders are often provided of points made in preceding chapters and frequent references are made to the collective findings of other researchers. The authors underline the fact that the important issue in dealing with musical development is not so much a matter of being something that others ascribe to us [a musician?], but more about one’s own personal identity with music and with whom we identify – ‘musicianship, musician and musical are constructs’ (p. 168), and can be used as such by anyone to mean whatever they believe or may wish them to mean. It is important to note that the study is about the majority of ordinary young, mostly non-specialist musicians in a non-privileged environment, not the relatively small proportion of high flyers who go on to be professional musicians or soloists or choose to follow a career in music, who were primarily the subjects of the research by Sloboda and Davidson (1996). It raises questions more about music education per se, its relevance to the majority of youngsters and its place in the general realm of school and life experience.
Well over two thirds of the original sample were still engaged in the project at the end (aged about 21) and the value of such a longitudinal study is not only by way of the later case study interviews in being able to bring us up to date on the outcomes of several of the participants – not just in the advance in technology whereby participants are using iPods extensively! – but that it enables a comparison to be made between what the young adults once did as children and their current situation. It effectively continues the overall story of the book and, as McPherson et al. state, ‘there is a real sense in which these are the most important views and interpretations of all’ (p. 155). Perhaps it would be unfair to suggest the even more ambitious task of revisiting as many of the remaining participants in a further 20 years’ time, in their midlife, to fully complete the account and establish the total impact of music in their lives! The book, as McPherson describes: ‘remains an interim report’ and the participants only part-way through their ‘complex and dynamic’ lives.
Frequent reference is made to the five ways of defining musical performance – performance (of rehearsed music), sight-reading, playing from memory, playing by ear, improvising – and underlines the authors’ belief that the latter two are more genuinely a criterion of real musicianship than a highly proficient skill in performance. They found evidence that there was a strong correlation between low or dramatically declining levels of practice and learning to play and, as might be expected, that developing skills earlier was important. Although musical ability may rise to great heights, this might happen ‘in spite of the absence of indications of musical giftedness’ (p. 110), thus challenging the common view of innate ability.
McPherson, Davidson and Faulkner emphasize the importance of transactional regulation in which a gradual movement takes place from the early stages of learning to the position of self regulation. They adopt the wonderful term syzygy (used also by Davidson and Faulkner, 2013) to represent the alignment of conditions that allow or give rise to any circumstance. ‘Syzygies are created when transactions align biological, social, psychological experience, present abilities, needs and dispositions, ambitions, aspirations, with the present provisions and resources’ (p. 184). The study demonstrates graphically how the divergent pathways of potential musicians lie and that each individual develops from a wealth of varied influence. Indeed, as Pitts (2012), also finds in her extensive study of the impact of music education, the routes to high achievement as performers and composers can often be radically different and the writers confirm the difficulty of defining musicality, questioning the traditionally held singular view of musicality and musicianship – ‘our data repeatedly confirmed that musicality cannot in any real sense be thought of in the singular’ (p. 181) – and that not only are there many definitions and interpretations of what it is to be musical, the quality is dynamic and changes as life moves on. The authors accept that even their own musical experiences and activities, work and performance constitute a changing image of musicianship and refer to the importance of the technical revolution accompanying these learners and their new ways of using music and developing technical expertise. The final chapter reinforces the importance of the expressive element of music (a point also made by Kirnarskaya, 2009) that ‘enjoyment and having fun were predictors of ongoing engagement from the very outset of our study’ (p. 215).
Despite the thoroughness of the text and methodical presentation, there are occasional weaknesses in the proof-reading process and, although this might be construed as hypercritical, there are some instances of inconsistency, for example in the usage of practice and practise (pp. 122, 123, 139, Etc.) and Cote and Côté (pp. 111–112); the reference to 10,000 hours’ formal practice by the age of 20 on p. 6, by 21 on p. 27; misplaced brackets (Mainwaring 1941, p. 219), omission of apostrophe (band’s, p. 159); no date is given for Cooper (p. 30) and Tsai (2008) is not entered in the references; textural confusion over the terminology in the use of the year of learning the instrument as opposed to age or school year of students (pp. 44–45) remains despite the explanation, and in the use of the word term (p. 189). There is also some difficulty in ascertaining the outcome of the statistical differentiation in Chapter 4 between the numbers who left the study compared with those who merely ceased playing. But these niggles are few and pale into insignificance when considering the main absorbing substance of the book.
As McPherson, Davidson and Faulkner state, one of the greatest challenges for music educators in the 21st century is negotiating the interfaces between music education and the extraordinary role that music plays in young people’s lives. They recommend the revision of educational priorities by utilizing a broader range of learner-centred teaching techniques and learning styles so that greater focus can be made on ways of making music fun, to reflect the way that popular music seems to have inspired young people to enjoy music over the last generation or so. Indeed, a worrying thought underlies the last chapters and seems to have come from the study that formal musical education has actually provided little of the rich musical lives of many of the young people in the study! All music teachers should read this book – it provides a valuable insight into a wide range of issues below the main surface of musical development and early beginner learning, not least in the wide variation in practice strategies, and it is the need to motivate towards self-regulation that is the lasting principal of the book.