Creativity,diversity,and integration: Radical change in the bachelor of music curriculum

Abstract

During 2013–2014, the Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major of the USA’s College Music Society prepared a report entitled Transforming Music Study from its Foundations: A Manifesto for Progressive Change in the Undergraduate Preparation of Music Majors. The report is a call for increased relevance in undergraduate music studies that prepare students for leadership, adaptability, and initiative in advancing the values of music and musicians in a techno-global society. Specifically, the task force recommends that curricula derive from the three pillars of creativity, diversity, and integration, arguing that composition, improvisation, performance, and theoretical-cultural-historic music studies be taught holistically and in ways authentic to the art and practice of music itself. In addition, the report calls for greater participation by students in planning degree programs that provide trajectories in keeping with their goals and interests, and for greater nimbleness that enhances curricular adaptations on an ongoing basis.

Keywords

Bachelor’s curriculum higher music education music major tertiary music study undergraduate

Need for curricular change

In the United States, as in other countries, curriculum leaders in tertiary education are interrogating assumptions underlying existing degree programs and considering assumptions for new programs as well. From May 2013 through November 2014, the Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major (TFUMM), commissioned by the USA’s College Music Society, undertook a critical examination of assumptions regarding higher music education curricula and the knowledge and skills essential for twenty-first century musicians (Myers et al., 2014). Looking at the origins of musician education, the evolution of classical music in America, and issues of global music and contemporary society, the task force focused on the key question, What does it mean to be an educated musician in the twenty-first century? Ancillary questions catalyzed critiques of existing assumptions, articulating new assumptions, and recommending changes in undergraduate degree programs.

An important initial consideration for the task force was the broader picture of curricular reform discourse beyond music. Medical school curricula, for example, are undergoing revisions in keeping with American Medical Association (AMA) incentives to address twenty-first century concerns. The AMA is urging integration of disparate facets of knowledge, educating physicians to be attuned to cultural and generational differences, building physicians’ communication skills, and emphasizing personalized diagnoses and treatments.

According to a recent report on eleven AMA-funded reform projects, “Medicine has changed a lot in the past 100 years. But medical training hasn't … some top medical schools around the U.S. are tearing up the textbooks and starting from scratch.” At the University of Michigan, Erin McKean, a surgeon teaching communication, states: “I was not taught this in medical school myself, [……] We haven't taught people how to be specific about working in teams, how to communicate with peers and colleagues and how to communicate to the general public about what's going on in health care and medicine.” (http://curriculum.med.umich.edu/updates/medical-schools-reboot-21st-century)

In 2006, the Yale School of Management, under Dean Joel Podolny, undertook a complete overhaul of its Master of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum. The goals were to provide a more integrated program among distinct bodies of knowledge and to encourage stronger relationships with society’s interests. Podolny noted that “Business schools provide students with many technical skills, but they appear to do little, or nothing, to foster responsibility and accountability. The traditional MBA curriculum has divided the challenges of management and leadership in a dysfunctional way ….” (https://hbr.org/2009/03/are-business-schools-to-blame.html)

TFUMM was commissioned in part because, like medical schools and business schools, the assumptions, structure, and practices of American music curricula have changed very little over the past hundred years. They arose in tandem with the professionalization of music careers in the US, and, with modest variations from institution to institution, largely represent technical training across disparate areas of knowledge and skill to become either performing musicians or academic scholars of music in the classical Western European tradition. Despite increasing the levels of technical training, little attention has been devoted to the realities of how the vast majority of musicians earn their livings—notably by teaching, which receives little to no attention other than in teacher education programs. Furthermore, the model of musicians who historically crossed the boundaries of performing, composing, teaching, researching, and leading/administering has been subjugated to a specialist model that includes almost nothing about the ways music, especially classical music, functions in real-world contexts.

In contrast to this educational practice, the field of higher music education has witnessed over the past two decades a growing stream of graduates whose careers are marked by initiative, flexibility, and artistry beyond the usual parameters of studio teaching, opera and orchestral performance, and university teaching. Artists are engaging audiences as co-creators, managing their own careers, collaborating with other artists, and crossing roles among creators, performers, and producers of music. Musicians’ work is becoming increasingly rich in stylistic crossovers, incorporation of diverse cultures, and acoustic-technological expressions.

This new breed of musicians frequently reports that their collegiate programs failed to prepare them for the careers they have devised independently. Though prepared with technical skills and knowledge, their educations failed to offer insight into the values of music in society, or into how to share those values and embed them within the core issues and questions of a twenty-first century global-technical society. As Robert Freeman, longtime Dean of the Eastman School of Music, has observed (2014), successful career musicians in the twenty-first century need to be versatile musically, entrepreneurial in spirit, cognizant of music’s historic and ongoing role in human existence and society, adaptable to change, and willing to risk new audience approaches and initiatives.

TFUMM included national experts in music theory, conducted ensembles, ethnomusicology, musicology, performance, and music education. The task force determined that its work would not be limited to potential modifications of the present system. Rather, TFUMM charged itself with rigorous analysis of assumptions underlying the current system and how those assumptions might be recast, or perhaps eliminated, and alternative assumptions articulated. TFUMM chose not to provide formulas for changes in content, pedagogy, or curriculum development, but rather to raise questions, challenge and pose assumptions, and encourage rich discourse around the preparation of career musicians in the twenty-first century. The resulting report, Transforming Music Study from its Foundations: A Manifesto for Progressive Change in the Undergraduate Preparation of Music Majors, offers observations, recommendations, and change strategies for those who plan and deliver undergraduate programs.

TFUMM’s interrogative process

TFUMM’s interrogative process invoked the double-loop learning theory of Argyris and Schön (1978), which supports analyzing the assumptions on which goals, objectives, and strategies are based. The process is intended to help attenuate tendencies to polarize between innovation and convention in change discourse. In single-loop learning, change consists primarily of altering objectives and strategies within existing assumptions. By contrast, a double-loop approach tests assumptions through a process that is dialogical, shared, and rooted in consideration of a greater good. Double-loop learning is creative and reflexive, works against taking existing goals, values, and practice for granted, is open and transparent, and encourages an organization to think about what it is moving toward rather than what it may be moving away from. Thus, higher education analyses may confront the extent to which legacy assumptions are adequate for a changing world and, concurrently, consider new assumptions that both embody transcendent values and reflect era-specific needs of society.

A double-loop curricular process begins by identifying current and likely future needs of graduates as professionals. What are the universal-transcendent values to society that graduates might be expected to fulfill, how might those values be fulfilled in ways relevant to changing society, and how might graduates be equipped to contribute musically toward the public good and to adapt their roles amidst constant change? What musical knowledge is essential? How is music itself evolving and developing as an art form, and how might graduates be best equipped to participate in, lead, and respond to this evolution? What might pondering such questions mean for the assumptions on which we base curricula? How relevant are our curricula to the vibrancy and dynamism of twenty-first century musical worlds beyond the academy, to global musics, to providing opportunities for our graduates and people of all ages and backgrounds to engage meaningfully with those worlds and to travel easily among them? And, in this larger societal and musical context, in what ways does our curricular work equip students for satisfying careers?

What does it mean to be an educated musician in the twenty-first century?

Turning again to parallels beyond music, a 2010 survey of corporate executives by IBM revealed major challenges that leaders will confront throughout the twenty-first century. The most frequently reported challenge was the rapid escalation of complexity arising from increasing global interdependency. (https://www-931.ibm.com/bin/prefctr/ue.cgi?campaignId=253722&currPage=InterceptSmartFormUE&source_cosmetic_id=1784) Asserting that such complexity should be viewed as a catalyst for innovation, the executives agreed that creativity will be the most important leadership trait. (p. 4) Successful organizations will embody creative leadership, reinvent their relationships with constituents, and operate with nimbleness and dexterity.

At present, musician education is often an information-based, didactic process including imitative technical training that incorporates little creativity and does even less to nurture students’ individual and collaborative creativity. Growing emphases on entrepreneurship, for example, have revealed that music students need to develop their creative capacities. Gerald Klickstein, Director of the Music Entrepreneurship and Career Center at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, notes that:

… entrepreneurship grows from creativity, [thus]one of our primary educational missions should be to encourage creativity … music students are so overburdened—say, by being obliged to perform in several ensembles each semester—that they’re unable to pursue goals of individual interest. In effect, some students wind up serving the institutions where they study instead of the educational institutions serving the students’ needs. As a result, many students learn more about conformity than independent thinking. (http://musiciansway.com/blog/2009/10/music-education-and-entrepreneurship/)

Increasingly, in a complex world, musicians must be leaders and problem-solvers. They must advance opportunities for music engagement across social and societal sectors influenced by age, race, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, education, socioeconomic level, professional priorities, and technology. Such ambitions entail intersecting issues of producing a livable income, assuring value and respect for diverse musics through participatory engagement, acquiring knowledge and skills to create and perform an array of musics authentically and artistically, and initiating creative ventures for the public good.

These opportunities comprise exciting challenges to design curricular models that assure alignment between desired learning outcomes and the curriculum. In addition, as musicians educated in more relevant ways transition into the professional world, the ecosystem that incorporates professional and community music organizations, freelance musicians, and higher education will become more relevant to societal concerns and thus more widely valued as a societal necessity.

IBM’s three priorities offer an auspicious starting point for those seeking to enhance the relevance of musician education: creativity; consistency with constituents’ (students’) interests and needs; and the ability to be flexible and nimble. As we consider applications of these ideas in music, faculty must discern between desired music understanding that is fundamental, and crucial, to more advanced understanding and practice versus that which may be fluid in relation to change in musical worlds beyond academe. Foundational knowledge, skills, and concepts represent those dimensions of music understanding that transcend time and place, that are inherent in the nature and structure of music, and that may be referenced descriptively across eras, styles, and cultures. In other words, what concepts and skills are universal and transcendent, despite different manifestations? Such knowledge may encompass sonic systems, the ability to analyze pitch and rhythmic elements, the understanding of how design is manifest in music, and anthropological and aesthetic awareness of music’s function in the human experience.

Change in the realm of music may include new expressive mediums, psychosocial aspects of music making and music learning, growing cross-cultural influences in a global society, technological advances in music, music in relation to other art forms and disciplines, and the ways communities and societies interact with both culturally specific and culturally diffuse music. The TFUMM report argues, for example, that composing and improvising are essential for creativity, and that they must be incorporated into the curriculum. Presumably, all students would learn to compose and improvise in rather basic ways that would build confidence and freedom in experimenting, collaborating, and creating music within specified parameters. In professional practice beyond the academy, this creative knowledge and skill might be applied in a variety of musical and social contexts where it would be adapted to the needs and interests of participants or used in creative ways as part of new artistic expressions.

To be relevant, higher music education must assume an activist role on behalf of music and musicians in society, collaborating with arts, social, business, and philanthropic entities to embed universal access to music in the missions of music organizations as well as in the career development of students. The challenges confronting classical music organizations—funding, attendance, diversity and inclusion, competition from many markets—cannot be solved in isolation. Just as business schools work collaboratively with business and industry to research and develop incubator programs, music schools and musicians, alongside those from other sectors, must work to articulate and demonstrate the place of music and musicians in society, in particular with regard to the issues of growing demographic diversity.

Collaborative approaches to change require synchronicity among organizations, higher education, freelance artists, and funders. Those charged with leadership need to become advocates and facilitators with colleagues in other domains in order to test assumptions and propose inventive strategies that may be implemented and assessed. Such strategies will require intentional intersections among higher education, communities, and professional organizations as well as incentivizing initiatives from government and philanthropic entities.

Implications for curricular change

What, then, do these assumptions regarding educated musicians and their professional development portend for curricular change? How can graduates be imbued with the ability to be both musically and entrepreneurially creative, to assure vital artistic experiences for others, to relate their work in performing, creating, researching, and teaching to the greater good of society? How can they be educated to be collaborative with audiences, to co-construct meaning among composers, performers, and listeners, to work in affiliation with artists from other art forms and with colleagues from other disciplines? How can they develop historical-cultural, theoretical, philosophical, and practice-based knowledge and understanding that nurture their abilities to articulate the value of music in human life and learning, to respect diverse musical expressions, to relate musically with diverse constituents, and to forge value for music and musicians as an inherently worthy part of everyday life?

Two parallel and interactive themes

First, TFUMM refreshed its own knowledge of authentic music engagement as both integrated and differentiated processes of performing, composing, and improvising. Drawing on the work of Ed Sarath (2013), one of its members TFUMM noted that, historically, Western classical musicians were often proficient in all three realms, as many musicians continue to be, whether in classical, popular, or vernacular musics. However, in the typical tertiary music institution, these processes have become highly differentiated.

The student who today seeks proficiency across these three areas, combined with historical-cultural, theoretical, and aesthetic-philosophical understanding, must assure that he or she elects study that permits the inclusion of all three within one educational enterprise. Much like the models in medicine and business mentioned earlier, programs rarely, if ever, offer intentional integration in relation to contemporary problems and issues in music and society. They tend to be taught as isolated components, and are distinct from nurturing students’ applicative capacities for problems such as declining audiences for classical music, implications of access to global musics via technology, or changing demographics in society. And studies are devoid of how music may relate to social-political concerns such as the environment, strife among different ethnic groups, or the potential for shared aesthetic experience to bridge cultural misunderstandings.

For over a hundred years, the education of musicians has focused on interpretive performance, even in the case of academic music studies, i.e., theory and history, which presumably explain the information bases of interpretive performance. This emphasis has educated students to study and emulate the performances of teachers and others rather than to develop individual expressive capacities informed by historical-cultural understanding and the ability to analyze and criticize performances. Moreover, it has stultified improvisation and composition as integral curricular components for all students. The essential role of movement and physically embodied musical expression and responsiveness is nearly nonexistent in tertiary music programs, even though most musics of the world incorporate some dimensions of the concept of ngoma (Gearhart, 2005), or the uniting of movement, music, and drama as an expressive whole.

Theory studies have focused on the common practice period in classical music, rarely or only coincidentally incorporating non-Western musics and often not including music after the early to mid-twentieth century. Theory of non-Western music occurs, if at all, in separate elective courses rather than as part of a cohesive theoretical approach, and common practice techniques are considered prerequisite to, rather than integrated with, broader understanding of music in real-world contexts. Bachelor’s-level students are thus separated from the reality of contemporary musical worlds, finding holistic music experiences that combine performing, listening, moving, and understanding outside their university or conservatory educations. Music history studies are too rarely circumspect with regard to the totality of music worldwide, instead confining students to sequential study of the Western canon, with the now ubiquitous semester or two of “world music” added on, implying that Western European and the world’s music are different things.

Contemporary improvisers–composers–performers

Limitations such as those above motivated TFUMM to adopt the goal of degreed musicians as contemporary improvisers–composers–performers (CICP model). This assumption that musicians must be able to navigate not only interpreting and reinterpreting music, but also creating and improvising in concert with interpretive skills invokes the historic Western European classical musician model and the integration of performing and creating that exists across societies and cultures. In North Indian and Iranian music, for example, composition, improvisation, and performance have traditionally been integrated in ways that render isolated study of these musical constructs completely inauthentic. In other words, TFUMM endorses the centrality of these complementary functions within a holistic perspective that equips musicians not only for confidence, independence, and aesthetic and technical competence, but also for extending their artistry and creativity toward engaging others in socially and aesthetically fulfilling experiences. As the TFUMM report indicates, “Systematic improvisation study may unite multiple improvisatory languages … including style-specific and stylistically open approaches.” (p. 18)

Music and society

In the case of the second theme, i.e., uniting music knowledge and skill with the public good, the task force considered essential synchronicity between broader societal issues and the teaching and practice of music. Curricular change must achieve balance between disciplinary dimensions that transcend temporal and generational evolution and those that require innovation with relevance to the needs, interests, and values of a musically engaged society. Musician education must be tightly tied to this balance if conservatories and schools and departments of music are to remain viable within a diverse, expansive, and expensive higher education system.

In calling for transformative curricular change, TFUMM avoided the pitfall of superficial modifications that fail to address substantive issues and thus compromise the rigorous content considerations we advocate. In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, columnist Timothy Egan (2014: A21) reported observing tourists in Barcelona who were enamored of taking selfies with architectural treasures in the background, thus appearing to be impervious to the artistry and significance of Gaudi’s work. The same thing can happen in curricular considerations: we can become so enamored of the latest development in delivery or learning strategies that we lose sight of the essentials of content. Without attention to the value of the content itself, and the ways delivery systems must derive inherently from that content, innovative delivery systems alone will have little long-term influence on a graduate’s education.

In the same New York Times edition, Ben Brantley (2014: C1) wrote about Blank! The Musical, which adapts improv sketch comedy to instant song and dance shows. The artists collectively engage creators, performers, and audience members, who transcend their usual role divisions and expectations, through improvisatory art-making. This experience cannot be replicated in front of one’s computer; it cannot occur without collaborative decision-making; and it cannot happen if an audience plays only an observational role or artists play only a presentational one. Artists must be leaders, reflectors, and problem-solvers who invite shared participation. Such experiences are consistent with the improviser–composer–performer model and with the anthropologically defined human desire to participate in creating, performing, and understanding music. They are also embodied in the philosophical work of Christopher Small (1998), who asserts that co-construction of meaning is essential in the realization of value in the musical experience, and with the work of Harvard professor emeritus Robert Levin, who engages audiences in improvisation.

Though higher music learning emulates traditional concert-hall performances, research shows that real-world musicians are moving toward alternative experiences and venues that are interactive and socially comfortable. The National Endowment for the Arts in the USA has released a report (2015) that urges artists and arts organizations to re-think audience development in terms of venues, accessibility, learning opportunities, socialization, and engagement. Other recent reports indicate that feeling connected with the creation of art in intimate settings may motivate attendance, particularly among younger people and families. The evolution of performing groups and management models that put these ideas into effect, such as Eighth Blackbird, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and others, are capturing audience interest. Still, tertiary music education lags well behind these innovations. Such issues, combined with exploration and research of contemporary professional efforts to address them, should become curricular essentials for aspiring career musicians.

Change in the wider music industry

Orchestras and opera companies struggle to reconcile their artistic ambitions and expenditures with the realities of their fiscal resources. Subscription ticket sales are declining; and younger donors are more socially than artistically minded, expecting verifiable results for their money. Thanks largely to the Internet, the recording industry is changing in ways that reduce earnings. And through technology, people can access every kind of music on their digital devices, resulting in expanded palettes for diverse musics in and beyond the classical tradition. Venues for live performance include black box theatres, clubs, and physical settings where a glass of wine, conversation, informal attire, and interchange among performers, composers, and audiences are relaxed, comfortable, and preferable to the rarefied and sometimes daunting atmosphere of concert halls. A recent report from the James Irvine Foundation (Reidy, 2014) notes the importance of taking art to the people rather than expecting people to come to the art, particularly given the reluctance of disadvantaged populations or individuals from some cultural traditions to enter the sacred and often intimidating space of concert halls.

In a 2007 New Yorker piece entitled “The Anti-Maestro,” (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/30/the-anti-maestro) Alex Ross profiled changes in the Los Angeles Philharmonic under conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, executive director Deborah Borda, and the Phil’s most recent music director, Gustavo Dudamel. Ross references the 1960s, when Ernest Fleischmann, managing director, urged that the orchestra become far more adaptable, a community of musicians performing new music and chamber music, working in schools, and playing diverse repertoire. With Salonen, the orchestra developed an identity around risk-taking, derived in part from Salonen’s regard for pop artists who represent an amalgam of what Ross calls the brainy and the visceral. Deborah Borda works side-by-side with Dudamel to advance the orchestra’s artistic breadth and cutting-edge programs. Collaboration, creativity, and technology are hallmarks of the orchestra’s programming, and the youthful and dynamic Dudamel helps attract diverse audiences. Yet too many degreed musicians graduate without having learned of, studied, or considered the implications of such important changes for their own careers.

Implementing curricular change

When curricular conversations embrace assumption testing, evidence becomes overwhelming that the programs that served our profession reasonably well in the past will not continue to serve our art, our students, and our society in the future. And they will not serve music schools well in the broader frame of higher education, where students now see the possibility of direct experience and apprenticeships outweighing the time and expense of university education. Moreover, the bureaucratic agendas that too often impede curricular change defy innovation and keep departments mired in political strangleholds rather than aspiring toward relevancy.

Educating brilliant performers and scholars has not included analyses of the economic and relevancy challenges facing professional musicians and organizations. While there are some positive signs in the USA’s Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) data, a close reading of these data offers clear signals that higher education arts programs are not resonant with the realities that passionate career artists face—whether practicing art, teaching art, or researching art. It is urgent that if we believe in the values we ascribe to our art, we must undertake transformative change that aligns higher education with the needs and interests of our students and the place of music and musicians in society.

Creativity, diversity, and integration

TFUMM based its recommendations for change on three pillars: creativity, diversity, and integration. Repeatedly, these three concepts emerged from dialogues converging around the education and work of musicians alongside interrogations of what is universally fundamental about becoming a musician in any era. To create new music and creative performances of extant repertoire, to embrace diverse musics and peoples, and to integrate content around the larger themes of music in culture and society are inherently musical propositions.

Research-based learning and teaching

TFUMM recognizes that teaching and learning are informed by unprecedented research that renders much traditional music instruction at odds with what we know about perception, cognition, and motivation to learn. TFUMM thus urges far more student engagement with curricular planning, as well as preparation that logically fits with the likelihood of professional opportunities for gainful employment. Such curricular content may include the ability to talk about as well as perform music, to share research in understandable ways, to value and engage with diverse constituencies in terms of age and cultural background, to lead in developing new models of concert performance that bridge performer–audience barriers, and to offer policy and programmatic leadership for arts organizations seeking to diversify audiences.

In light of these considerations and motivations, the report offers recommendations for change that encompass every facet of the curriculum—from private lessons to large ensembles, from foundational theory and history to the transfer of creative, diverse, and integrative understanding in the academy to applications in career contexts. TFUMM believes that these changes will serve the greater goals of widespread valuing of, and commitment to, the role of music in the process of being both human and humane.

Engaging students in curricular planning

Suggesting a curricular structure that dramatically enriches students’ understanding of music in the first two years of study, TFUMM urges learning that acknowledges and begins from both the knowledge that students bring to music studies and the forces that impel them toward music careers. Theory, improvisation, and composition should form a composite of creativity that concurrently informs interpretive performance. Ensembles should encompass both large and small groups, Western and beyond-Western musics, and creative performances that incorporate audience engagement with strong artistic achievement. Performance venues should be diverse, and students should learn how to invite interest and involvement without compromising artistic standards. Movement should be central in musical development. And historical-cultural-aesthetic studies should involve diverse musics, more opportunities to relate these studies to varied practices of music, and significant cross-arts learning.

Out of this rigorous introductory period should develop greater depth of study in areas of particular interest to students. Curricular planning should be shared among students and faculty, realizing that choices may portend certain professional directions but that they are not so tightly bound as to preclude the breadth necessary to assure continued learning and career development. Across institutions, strengths associated with faculty expertise and available financial and cultural resources should be exploited to develop distinctive programs.

Referring again to changes in medical education, one important curricular ingredient is understanding the “system” of medical care in the US. Recognizing that no one can predict exactly what that system will be like in the future, Dr Raj Mangrulkar, associate dean for medical education at The University of Michigan, states, “… we need to give students the tools to be adaptable, to be resilient, to problem-solve—push through some things, accept some things, but change other things.” (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/04/09/390440465/medical-schools-reboot-for-21st-century) Such is TFUMM’s belief about the education of musicians within music’s broader ecosystem.

Change strategies

TFUMM believes that musicians must initiate, adapt, problem-solve, and differentiate between fundamental understanding of the nature and structure of music as sonic expression, as well as the technical ability to perform music, and the application of such knowledge in teaching, practice, and research of music in society. Its report therefore urges that faculty undertake a strategy of “new conversations” for curricular change, raising a series of guiding questions intended to elevate critical discourse. Such discourse will provide opportunities to consider convention versus change: those dimensions of music study that transcend time and place and are therefore essential for every musician, and those that are more fluid, more responsive to societal and musical change, more likely to differ over time, more likely to be applied differently in differing career contexts.

The questions posed by TFUMM ask curriculum planners to reflect on how issues such as creativity and diversity in global context may argue for changes in music degree programs. They also suggest thinking about the European tradition of the holistic improviser–composer–performer musician and why interpretive performance may have come to dominate music studies. And they urge consideration of how a transformed program might look and how change would occur, e.g., across a school or department, within a given area or department, or in specific courses.

A second strategy calls for option-rich curricula that involve student choice in tandem with carefully planned curricular options. Rather than choosing a program as a complete entity, students would have options for meeting objectives and requirements via a variety of avenues, all rigorous, that are consistent with interests and capacities. Such options may spur integration of content knowledge and skill across disciplinary domains in a way that also challenges faculty to be more creative. To gain space for increased options, curricula may need to move away from strict credit-hour approaches and focus more on content and skill development through a variety of approaches. And a wider array of coursework might be allowed in order to meet goals such as broad cultural-historical understanding. Given that two or three semesters of sequential music history cannot cover an ever expanding canon, it may be more useful to have students explore cultural-historical foundations through repertoire they are performing, or to use comparisons of music from different eras and cultures to develop understanding in global context. Potentially, an option-rich approach might allow students, within appropriate parameters, to plan programs that blend course work with real-world experiences, incorporating projects and analyses that assure students’ readiness for adaptability and continuing growth.

Finally, concurrent with “bottom up,” or option-rich strategies generated by student interests and capacities, TFUMM calls for “top-down” approaches, leveraging institutional structure to generate change rather than monitoring and sustaining the status quo. Michigan’s Dr Mangrulkar notes that “Being in an environment where change is happening is really important for your future training.” Similarly, as the worlds of music beyond the academy are constantly evolving, it is important to have sufficient flexibility to permit faculty and student decision-making, not only about how best to confront change, but how to lead change as a positive dimension of career development.

Career preparation must consider the place of educated musicians in a complex society that may not recognize music’s value without expert and engaging leadership. TFUMM proposes that African-derived musics, including jazz, offer unparalleled opportunities to fashion the identity of the globally oriented improviser–composer–performer; however, it also argues that the inherent capacities to understand music more completely must be illuminated across all styles and genres of music.

Leadership for change

Achieving aims such as those described above requires its own form of curricular and academic leadership. Administrators need to empower faculty to enter into conversations that recognize changing music practices and content knowledge for students’ career success, and to consider how students may best learn in an environment characterized by creativity, diversity, and integration. Institutions may need to develop broader criteria for the employment of faculty, emphasizing commitments to the values embodied in the TFUMM report, even as new generations of musicians are educated to become faculty in future years.

Building on the cultural-historical ideas suggested above, structured learning and teaching might emanate from students’ own creative practice, exploring questions and problems that arise in the creation of music, the social and cultural influences that may obtain, and the technical knowledge needed to share one’s work with others. Such questions and problems may generate understanding of how these issues were addressed in different historical eras and in different practices by different musicians, building a knowledge base derived from creative and analytical thinking and a “need to know” that motivates independent, self-directed learning.

Similar approaches might be taken with theoretical understanding, so that as students are increasingly self-motivated to develop their own inquiries they may acquire more comprehensive understanding in shorter periods of time than in lecture-style formats. History, ethnomusicology, and theory might well be replaced by integrated, inquiry-based courses and pedagogies around themes such as comparative design and texture across styles, or antecedents of culturally infused styles in contemporary music. Differentiated individual and group projects could bring knowledge from an enormous array of sources and experiences, all emanating from student choices within rigorous thematic frames. And projects could be publicly presented via engaging programs for diverse audiences.

TFUMM offers recommendations for rethinking assumptions, classes, courses, and degree programs, as well as for implementing a change process, but it is not prescriptive, nor does it claim to have the right or best answers for every situation. The task force encourages individuality to suit the resources, expertise, and interests of faculty and students across a diverse array of institutions. What it does insist on, however, is that undergraduate music studies must be far more process-oriented than at present, and that students must engage in the fundamental acts of creating music to better inform interpretive performance as well as theoretical and historical-cultural understanding. In addition, it urges a richer, more rigorous, and deeper understanding of the process and practice of music as explored through its products, rather than emphasizing extant knowledge of music products as the starting point in the curriculum. In this, it sees the acquisition of knowledge and skill as constantly dynamic and evolutional, flexible in terms of the range of content and experiences students may pursue, and founded on those processes and practices that are inherent as music in all times and places.

The International Contemporary Ensemble is an example of a twenty-first century music organization that embodies the integration of artistry, engagement, and entrepreneurship. Speaking at the University of Minnesota in 2013, Claire Chase, founder of the group, suggested the following as important principles of music study:

To perform is to teach, to teach is to perform;

To learn is to be creatively engaged;

Nurturing new audiences is a shared responsibility of all those claiming the profession of music;

Artistry, engagement, and entrepreneurship are inseparable;

The Twentieth Century was the century of specialization; the twenty-first Century is the century of integration and collaboration;

Ultimately, curricular decisions must be local—made in light of the resources, institutional contexts, and opportunities identified by those responsible. What can and must be universal, however, is a commitment to the highest ideals of music education carried out in a milieu of higher education’s relevance to the musical worlds in which we want our graduates to thrive. We must prepare our students not simply to survive in, but to shape, the worlds they will inhabit.

Footnotes

Author’s note

This work was presented as part of the Reflective Conservatoire Conference, Guildhall.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

David E Myers is Professor of Music Education and Creative Studies and Media at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. He writes, speaks, and consults widely on curricular issues in higher music education and chaired the College Music Society's 18-month Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major. Professor Myers's research interests focus on lifespan music learning and policy considerations across higher music education, community music, and professional arts organizations. For ten years, he was a national evaluator for the League of American Orchestras and previously taught at the University of Sydney (AUS) and Georgia State University in Atlanta.

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