Music, Metaphor, and Ideology: Toward a Critical Theory of Forms in Music Education

MUSIC, METAPHOR, AND IDEOLOGY: TOWARD A CRITICAL THEORY OF FORMS IN MUSIC EDUCATION

(Spine Title: Music, Metaphor, and Ideology)

(Thesis Format: Monograph)

Joseph Paul Louth

Graduate Program in Music

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty of Graduate Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada

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CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION

Supervisor Examiners

Dr. Paul Woodford Dr. Susan O'Neill

Joint-Supervisor Dr. Jay Hodgson

Dr. Kevin Mooney Dr. Teresa VanDeven

Supervisory Committee Dr. Estelle Jorgensen

Dr. Norma Coates

The thesis by

Joseph Paul Louth

entitled:

Music, Metaphor, and Ideology: Toward a Critical Theory of Forms in Music Education

is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Date Chair of the Thesis Examination Board

ii Abstract

This theoretical study is concerned with the problem of ideology in music education. Building on a Critical Theory framework, the author maintains that systematic musical and educational thought, when allowed to "harden" through reification to the point where it is accepted as a true (or "given") representation of reality, becomes inimical to critical thought and can become a means by which the ideological representations of others may come to dominate one's thinking. Examples of this problem in music and music education are examined in some detail. Negative dialectics, through its endless cycle of negation, provides an appropriate model for understanding the paradoxical nature of reification, which is an inescapable part of consciousness and, by extension, learning. An awareness of the inescapability of reification enables one to avoid extreme subjectivism, or the belief that the objedification of knowledge can somehow be transcended and the cycle of reification broken.

Adorno's form/content dialectic is presented as a key way of thinking about phenomena that may allow music educators to explain the process of reification, with the hope that students might find such insights applicable to their experiences of the world in general. Specifically, forms are explained as the historical sedimentation of socially constructed ideas. Consequently, critical music educators should turn their attention to forms of all kind, not only musical forms but the forms of music instruction, especially those whose systematization makes them appear natural or unassailable.

The notion of the frozen metaphor is advanced as a particularly helpful concept for understanding the ways in which forms of musical understanding become reified. In order that the processes through which their social contingency is constantly masked

iii might be revealed, these forms, and by extension all musical subject matter, should be taught from a historical perspective whenever possible. Specific examples of reified forms in music education (theoretical systems, tonal hierarchies, historical or repertory canons, linguistic frameworks, and theories and methods of music education) are examined. And numerous suggestions as to how they might be interrogated and historicized are offered. The study concludes by discussing the potential challenges to critical practice facing music educators.

Keywords: music education, critical pedagogy, Critical Theory, ideology, dialectics, metaphor theory, critical music education, ideology critique, music education philosophy.

IV Acknowledgments

I must first of all acknowledge the crucial assistance of my advisors, Dr. Paul

Woodford and Dr. Kevin Mooney, who are both truly critical thinking individuals in the best possible sense of the word. Dr. Mooney has helped me to negotiate the perilous waters of Critical Theory for two years leading up to this project and during the two years

I spent searching for the right words, and hopefully asking the right questions. He has enabled me to foster a much healthier appreciation for nuanced ideas. And Dr. Woodford, who has constantly provided me with guidance and support over the past six years, has taught me the importance of trying to make nuanced ideas accessible to as many people as possible.

I also wish to thank my parents, Joseph and Christina, without whose love and support I would never have been in a position to undertake graduate studies. And finally,

I thank my wife, Melanie, who provided me with constant encouragement and critique, and who has lived with this project for as long as I have.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of Examination ii

Abstract iii

Acknowledgments v

Table of Contents vi

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Problem and Review of Literature 1 Critical (Social) Theory: A Historical Overview 8 Distinguishing Critical Theory from Radical Poststructuralism 12 The Culture Industry Argument 16 Intersecting Voices: The Work of Gramsci & Bourdieu 17 The Emergence of Critical Pedagogy 19 Relevant Music Education Literature 24 Rationale and Delimitations 39 Overview 44

Chapter 2: Theoretical Foundations 47 Adorno and the Culture Industry 48 Negative Dialectics 57 The Double Meaning of Autonomy 60 The Culture Industry Argument in Context 64 The Dialectic of Art: Against the High/Low Dichotomy 66 The Dialectic of Form and Content 68 Toward a Critique of "Objective" Musical Forms 75 The Emancipatory Potential of Adorno's Theory of Form 82 The Role of Immanent Critique in Critical Music Education 84 Some Implications 89

Chapter 3: The Perpetual Cycle of Reification: Music, Education, And Frozen Metaphors 95 The Inescapability of Reification 96 School as the New Culture Industry 98 Metaphor Theory and Reified Linguistic Frameworks 106 Frozen Metaphors and Music Education Discourse 115 Two Cases of Structural Metaphor & Their Importance to Music Education 116 Metonym and Synecdoche 126 Music as Frozen Metaphor: A Brief Overview of Musical Reification 128 An Illustrative Example: Jazz & the Perpetual Cycle of Reification 143

vi Chapter 4: Toward a Critique of Forms in Music Education The Assessment Paradox 159 Part I: Critiquing the Discourse of Music Education 162 Applying Critical Discourse Analysis 162 "Hearing As" 167 Technologized Discourse: Recognizing the Danger of Standardized Speech 171 Problematizing the Authority of Texts 174 Part II: Problematizing Musical Forms as "Given" 177 Teaching Music History as "Fractured" 178 Discussing the Socially Constructed Nature of Performance Ideals 187 Approaching Improvisation Pedagogy Critically 191 Depicting Music Theory as Dynamic 204 Analyzing "the Gaps" for Concretization 214 Exploring the Limits of Notation 220

Chapter 5: Problematizing Method in Music Education 224 I. Overview: The Method of Theory 227 II. Avoiding Totalized Theoretical Views of Music Education 232 MEAE and Praxialism: A Case Study 233 Attempts to Historicize the Polemic 238 Music Education Theories and Dominant Paradigms 244 III. Methods of Music Instruction as Reified Forms 247 Gordon's Music Learning Sequences 248 The Kodaly Method 253 Summary 257 IV. Music Education and the Reification of Technology 258 Questioning the Technological Imperative 260 Prescriptive versus Holistic Technologies 261 Public Music Education and Private Interests 267 Underlying Causes of the Technological Imperative 270 The Secondary Effects of Technology 275 Toward a More Critical Stance 277 V. Conclusion: Why Are We Not Teaching the Conflicts? 279 A Place for Authority 292 In Defense of "Critical Formalism" 294

Bibliography 296

Vita 317

vii 1

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM AND REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Introduction to the Problem

There is in the field of music education today a tendency to be uncritical of methods, theories, and approaches to teaching, a situation that has been commented on by various scholars as of late.1 Newer approaches have sought to replace authoritarian pedagogies with open dialogue in an attempt to address the problem of ideology. The term ideology here is employed in the neo-Marxist tradition to mean a false or illusory way of thinking that is brought about by presenting a socially generated view of the world or parts of it as naturally occurring or given. An example in general North

American education is the way in which schooling is increasingly "rationalized" and administered so as to silently reinforce and reproduce current myths about the supreme

importance of efficiency, utilitarianism, and technology. In music education, ideology refers to, among other things, the way in which the Western European art music tradition

is often perceived as "fixed and objectified" in the sense that its pre-eminence tends to be unquestioned.4

1 See, for example, Richard Colwell, "Can We Be Friends?" Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 166 (Fall, 2005): 75; Estelle Jorgensen, Transforming Music Education (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), x; Gerard L. Knieter, "Teaching and Learning Philosophy in the Music Education Doctoral Program," in Philosopher, Teacher, Musician: Perspectives on Music Education, ed. Estelle R. Jorgensen, 259-275 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 261. Thomas Regelski "Critical Theory as a Foundation for Critical Thinking in Music Education," Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 17 (1998): 13; Paul Woodford, Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of Practice (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 23. 2 David Macey, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (London: Penguin Books, 2000), s.v. "ideology." 3 Dieter Misgeld, "Education and Cultural Invasion: Critical Social Theory, Education as Instruction, and the 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed,'" in Critical Theory and Public Life, ed. John Forester, 77-120 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1985), 89. 4 Andrea Rose, "Music Education in Culture: A Critical Analysis of Reproduction, Production and Hegemony" (Ph.D. diss., The University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1990), 209. 2

These ideas derive from Critical Theory5 (sometimes known as Critical Social

Theory), a non-prescriptive and often abstruse body of work produced mostly by a group of German intellectuals who were concerned with the fact that subordinate groups in society often unwittingly contribute to their own subordination by accepting the current state of affairs as fixed and unalterable. In the field of education, Critical Theory manifests itself as the conviction that there is no such thing as a neutral form of teaching.

If we accept Critical Theory's central tenet that cultural trappings represent the interests of dominant groups, then for ethical reasons it is imperative that we unmask our guiding methods and approaches that appear to be neutral, fixed, and immutable, so that they can be subjected to critique and, if necessary, altered or abandoned.

There have been some attempts to bring this problem to light in music education.

However, there is a secondary problem. Most academics who have thus far recognized the need to question our profession's generally uncritical acceptance of traditional authoritarian and systematic teaching practices have responded by calling for a breakdown of the traditional power relations between teacher and student in favor of radical constructivist approaches that border on "laissez-faire" relativism.7 Yet educational theorists, such as Michael Apple and Henry Giroux, who are concerned about ideology in North American education as an outgrowth of ever-expanding capitalism, identify both the school and society as responsible. Therefore, while radical constructivist

51 will use capitals throughout to distinguish Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School from other theories of a critical nature, such as (critical) feminist theory, for example. 6 See the discussions of work by Regelski, Rose, O' Toole and others, below. 7 For example, O' Toole is primarily concerned with "overturning the power relations" in traditional choral pedagogy, yet she advances no alternative to conventional truth but a plurality of "alternative meanings." Patricia O'Toole, "I Sing In A Choir But I Have 'No Voice!'" The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning, 4-5, nos. 4/1 (Winter-Spring, 1993): 68. Bowman similarly advocates that we accept the "ambiguity" and "plurality" of musical values. Wayne Bowman, "Sound, Sociality, and Music," The Musical Quarterly 5, no. 3 (Fall, 1994): 66. 3 approaches recognize the socially constructed nature of knowledge and the consequent need to respect students' individual understandings of the world, they address only part of the problem - ideology that is perpetuated by teachers and school administrators.

Because they (correctly) call into question the traditional authority of teachers' knowledge, yet propose nothing to replace that authority except open dialogue, radical constructivist approaches fail to take adequate account of and to critique knowledge that students bring into the classroom from the outside world. As Apple, Giroux, and other critical pedagogues argue, ours is a world in which group consciousness is manipulated by ideology, particularly that of the marketplace, perpetuated through the onslaught of images, ideas, and common practices that make up the progressive corporatization of day to day life.

On one hand it would seem that an active strategy that calls students' attention to ideology is in order. On the other hand, if a particular strategy to alter students' consciousness in order to foster an awareness of ideology is accepted as an unproblematic truth, it will inevitably become just another form of ideology, regardless of good intentions. This is a crucial and paradoxical problem that music education has yet to address comprehensively, but one with which (in a broader form) Critical Theory has grappled since the 1930s with varying degrees of success. For this reason, it seems the most appropriate framework in which to explore the problem. Thomas Regelski and

Andrea Rose have discussed the potential of Critical Theory for music education,8 and several music education scholars have employed it as a lens through which to view

Regelski, "Critical Theory as a Foundation for Critical Thinking." particular problems.9 But thus far, there has been no attempt at a thorough application of

Critical Theory to the problem that can now be crystallized in one question: how can we prepare music students and preservice music teachers to express themselves as creatively and authentically as possible without either: a) educating them prescriptively, and thus risking indoctrinating them into an ideology of some kind, or b) adopting a constructivist approach that leaves them ignorant of their susceptibility to "outside" ideology, that is, all ideology that is not engendered by the formal education process itself?

Students (like the rest of us) are susceptible not only to the forces of traditional, authoritarian pedagogy, but also to charismatic personalities, their peers, and above all the marketplace. They will more likely fall prey to such forces if we, in our urge to embrace constructivism, place students' embodied or socially constructed knowledge outside the boundaries of critique. Given the widespread acceptance of social construction theory among music education scholars, this is arguably the central problem currently facing our profession. It is also the central research problem that this philosophical investigation will attempt to address and one that, admittedly, has no easy solution. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine ways in which a crucial outgrowth of Critical Theory, the negative dialectics of Theodor Adorno (in conjunction with a key idea from his aesthetic theory that derives from the former) might be applied to music education theory and practice in order to address this problem.

Negative dialectics is a modification of the Hegelian Dialectic, an important part of Hegel's philosophy that states that seemingly contradictory statements are not simply

"truths" and "untruths" but, when viewed as thesis and antithesis, can be brought together

9 See the discussion below on John Berns's examination of Elliott's and Gordon's theories in which he attempts to use critical theory as a partial framework, and Sture Brandstrbm's application of Eric Fromm's ideas to the problem of passive learning among piano students. 5 as partial truths that belong to a greater whole: the synthesis. The synthesis, in Hegel's method, then becomes a new thesis and, when introduced to its opposite claim, becomes synthesized into an even larger unit of understanding. This process continues until some point at which all "partial views take their places within the scheme of totality."10 The early critical theorists, particularly Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, were wary of the idea of any ultimate synthesis that might lead to true understanding. They argued that notions of synthesis could result in what they, following Marx, called "false consciousness." Their solution was that this process should become a perpetual cycle of critique, hence the term "negative dialectics." Adorno and Horkheimer, realizing that all theorizing, including their own, could easily become ideological, found that a continuous pattern of negation was the only way to pursue a truth concept without allowing it to objectify in the manner described above.

There are many ideas and theoretical constructs that we subtly teach students to take for granted in music education, such as the idea that tonality represents the apex of some evolutionary process, or the notion that music is somehow superior or more substantial when notated than when transmitted orally. If students accept such socially constructed ideas as "objective" reality, they will fail to perceive the political connections between dominant cultural values and the dominant groups in society. In the following chapters I intend to demonstrate that a key idea from Adorno's aesthetic theory, the form

<- -> content dialectic, can provide the basis for a way of thinking that may enable music educators and students to critique the apparent solidity of a number of phenomena that are susceptible to reification, including but not limited to the following: socio-musical constructs (theoretical structures, analytical tools, ways of understanding music,

10 Joseph B. Burgess, Introduction to the History of Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), 441-442. 6 etcetera), dominant theories, methods, and techniques of music education, and prevalent attitudes toward music education. Because this idea is based on negative dialectical thinking, the hope is that music educators will embrace such self-reflexive, critical thinking (as opposed to unquestioningly embracing yet another pedagogical concept in the hopes that it might prove "useful," for this would be the worst possible outcome in terms of the purposes of this project). The goal of developing a means of critique based on negative dialectics is to discourage the natural tendency of critique to objectify into another form of the ideology it sets out to attack.

There are of course apparent limitations associated with negative dialectics, specifically, the inability ultimately to escape one's own categories of thought and flee to a "bird's eye" position from which to critique. Hence the endless cycle of negation is said to lead only to aporia or paradox. I will deal with these issues in this study, but they will not be resolved. In fact, the inescapability of reification constitutes a crucial part of my argument, and this paradoxical problem forms the main theme of the third chapter. It is this author's contention that awareness of the inescapability of one's own categories of thought is far preferable to an unflinching belief in positivism, on the one hand, or subjectivism, on the other. And in this sense, embracing paradox seems preferable to

"clear, logical thinking." This position will continually resurface throughout this study in various guises.

A negative dialectical approach calls for a disruption in the process of internalizing and normalizing musical values that are often taken for granted. As an example of how such norms operate, Scott Burnham has shown how the values of

Beethoven's musical style shaped the theoretical discourse that would underwrite those 7 values by making them the measure of all Western art music.11 The goal of the present study is to reveal this process of normalization in the hopes of disrupting it, and an explanation of the form <- -> content dialectic can be adapted to many varying situations to help accomplish this goal. For example, structured listening exercises might allow for a comparison between the forms of music that students initially perceive and the forms that are generally accepted as "given," whether they be sonata allegro or the twelve bar blues. Similarly, the continual struggle to "say something new" in jazz or popular music improvisation may be presented in a way that sheds light on the cycles of commodification that occur in the context of composers/improvisers, the public, the marketplace, and the evolution of style categories. It will also be argued that music educators can encourage a sense of critical consciousness simply by interrogating the language that they and their students use to describe musical phenomena, and by interrogating the language and assumptions underlying texts, methods, and techniques related to music teaching and learning.

In these ways, prospective critical music students, not to mention preservice teachers, might engage in music making and listening activities, as well as fruitful discussions, that will enable them to question the stability of conventionally accepted musical values. This will hopefully lead to a more important goal, which is understanding our tendency to judge socially constructed musical values as objective. I shall argue that it is far more desirable for educators to focus on the reasons for this tendency than simply to draw attention to particular musical qualities that they deem ideological. The latter approach not only presumes a superior position from which to judge (which may or may not always be the case) but it risks excluding the student from the actual process of

11 Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 8 critique. After furnishing an overview of Critical Theory and its impact on educational theory, the remainder of this chapter will explain why it is the most appropriate framework for addressing this problem.

The reader should note that I am discussing ideology here primarily in the context of institutionalized music education. However, this is not to imply that the term music education is limited to such formal practices and sites. Further, classroom pursuits through which the ideas that follow might be explored will necessarily vary with the level of schooling under discussion, as ideology manifests itself quite differently at each level.

Critical fSociaD Theory: A Historical Overview

The term critical theory can be employed quite loosely; however, its specific sense refers to lines of thought derived from "The Frankfurt School," an unofficial term for those associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in

1923. The institute's most significant members were Max Horkheimer (1895-1973),

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), and Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), as well as Adorno and

Horkheimer's student, Jtirgen Habermas (1929-). In brief, Critical Theory sets itself apart from traditional theory in that it considers itself in relation to its object of inquiry.

Because it is particularly skeptical of knowledge systems, its own assertions are often fraught with tensions and paradoxes.

Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School is based on a theoretical movement called

Western Marxism that was developed primarily by Georg Lukacs (1885-1971), a

Macey, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, s.v. "Frankfurt School." 9

Hungarian leftist intellectual.13 Lukacs' interpretation of Marx led him to conclude that

Marx did not believe class consciousness was determined solely by concrete economic conditions, as Louis Althusser and later "scientific" Marxists held. Lukacs argued that a close reading of Marx suggests the Hegelian idea that consciousness is plastic and

"manipulable." This is significant because, along with state intervention in the economy

(through Keynsian economic policies), which functioned to create a relatively comfortable working class, post World War I capitalism (sometimes known as "late" capitalism) additionally staved off crisis by employing ideology in the guise of culture in order to engineer society's consciousness. Thus capitalism and the various forms of oppression that accompany it became perceived as inevitable, natural, and rational.

Lukcas felt that this made late capitalism less susceptible to critique and thus more dangerous.14

Ideology had, in Marx's day (1818-1883), been more open to critique by counter- factual claims because it had been more explicit. For example, the Bible had at one time been the primary ideological text. In late capitalism, however, ideology becomes insidiously transformed into accepted wisdom or the common sense of everyday experience that "stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of man."15 Lukacs cites the journalist who professes to be "neutral" as the "most grotesque" example of this

Andrew Arato lists Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and, to a lesser extent, Karl Korsch (1886-1961) as co authors of Western Marxism or what he calls the first phase of "critical Marxism," the second comprising the Frankfurt School and the third its second generation followers. Andrew Arato, "Political Sociology and Critique of Politics," in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhart, 3-25 (New York: Urizen Books, 1978), 5. Ben Agger, by contrast, cites only Lukacs as the forerunner of the Frankfurt School. See Critical Social Theories: An Introduction (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 79. 14 Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1976), 86, 100. Originally published in 1923. 15 Ibid., 100. 10 process that, following Marx, he calls reification.16 Reification is a process predicated on a kind of blindness to context, resulting in the false objectification of something that, because it falls within the realm of human relations, is inherently subjective. The outcome is a "natural" idea that appears to lie beyond the realm of any socio-historical frame of reference. The notion that ideology could be instantiated in everyday experience was first advanced by Marx. He pointed out that capitalism portrays human relations as if they were merely relations between material objects, such as when workers exchange their labor for wages. Marx referred to this phenomenon as commodification. Lukacs, however, broadened the concept, using the term reification to explain how cultural practices and discourses reflect ideology in all sorts of routinized ways. Later, the Italian

Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci (whose ideas are strongly associated with those of the Frankfurt School) coined the term "hegemony" to refer to the way society may be reproduced by the wholesale acceptance of reified, conformist ideas in the realms of politics and culture.18

Domination

The Frankfurt School theorists often use the word "domination" to indicate an idea similar to hegemony. By the late 1940s, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse had expanded on Lukacs' idea of reification. They maintained that the rationalization of society through science and technology had become so pervasive as to objectify thought

16 ibid. 17 Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital," in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, Volume I (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1950), 76. Originally published in 1847. 18 Antonio Gramsci, A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings: 1916-1935, ed. David Forgacs (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 194. At times, Gramsci distinguishes between cultural hegemony and other types, such as economic or political. See, for example, Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 172. 11 itself, so that reflective ways of thinking were barely possible.19 In other words, not only was society viewed as an immutable object, but the objectification of ideas caused formerly autonomous subjects to become estranged from their own powers of reflective and critical thought. This assertion was a reaction to (among other things) the extreme political passivity of post-World War II society, a situation that reflected an even later stage of capitalism than that which Lukacs had addressed. Significantly, contemporary critical theorists support the notion that Western societies are increasingly affected by capitalist ideology. For example, Agger believes that we are currently experiencing a third stage of late capitalism, which he refers to as "postmodern capitalism." This stage is characterized by ideology that is "so deeply implanted in everyday culture that almost no one, including critical intellectuals, can get a grasp on the difference between truth and falsehood ...."20 The exacerbation of this problem was precipitated by the "crisis in representation," which suggests we can no longer know the world in such a way as to distinguish between true and false, reality and illusion.21 For support of this position one need look no further than Giroux's recent observation that, in the wake of government and media response to the atrocities of September 11, 2001, it has become widely accepted by many Americans that dissent is inimical to democracy, rather than an essential component of it.22

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adomo, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 21 mdpassim. Originally published in Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklarung undSchriften 1940-1950, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Frankfurt: S. Fishcher Verlag GmbH, 1987). 20 Agger, Critical Social Theories, 83. 21 Ibid., 84. 22 Henry Giroux, The Abandoned Generation: Democracy Beyond the Culture of Fear (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 23. 12

Distinguishing Critical Theory from Radical Poststructuralism

It is important to distinguish Critical Theory from poststructuralist critique. The latter is a broader, and some would argue less overtly political, term that refers to the implications of a shift in our understanding of the relation between language and knowledge that began approximately forty years ago. By the late 1960s, Jacques Derrida and other French postmodern theorists, simultaneously building on and reacting against structuralism, argued that ideas cannot possibly be communicated directly without being mediated by interpretation. Therefore, they concluded that meanings cannot be fixed, even with regard to other words within a system of language, as structuralism had insisted. Structuralism is a worldview derived from Saussurean linguistics. Ferdinand de

Saussure (1857-1913), reacting against the outmoded idea that words can refer precisely to objects or concepts that they represent, had argued that words are non-referential.

Words, according to structuralism, are never meaningful in and of themselves, but only in relation to one another with respect to their differences within a closed system.

Structuralism's central tenet is that the relations among phenomena are more important than the phenomena themselves.

Unfortunately, this idea, when rigorously applied to the social sciences, minimizes the role of human agency in favor of viewing underlying structures as causal.

Its rival concept, poststructuralism, shares the belief that words are not referential but goes further in insisting on a plurality of meanings that precludes the "discovery" of any fixed structures.23 In the poststructuralist view, all ideas must manifest themselves in the form of texts to be read, and reading (according to deconstruction theory) is always active in the creation of meaning, this owing to language's inability not only to be faithfully

23 Macey, Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, s.vv. "poststructuralism," "structuralism." 13 representational, but even self-referential, as structuralism had maintained. Thus any attempts to clarify meaning such as those undertaken by Anglo-American positivists must, according to Derrida, result in further problems of interpretation.25 When this line of thought is pushed to its limit, philosophy and theory are seen simply as narratives, not bodies of work that have special status over fiction.

The prospect of abandoning objective representation altogether, however, is extremely bleak from the perspective of Critical Theory or any theory that purports to criticize society. This is because the result would be a radical relativism that precludes attempts to correct or improve the status quo, thus resulting in a form of conservatism.

Norris makes this case convincingly. The claim that everything is simply a matter of interpretation amounts to what he calls "a leveling consensus view which works to impose its own covert norms." He argues that theories of consensus (such as those of post-modern philosopher Richard Rorty - arguably a radical relativist) are "designed to maintain the existing institutional arrangements."27 Norris points out, however, that

Critical Theory is quite compatible with versions of deconstruction and poststructuralist theory that are not utterly relativist. In fact, he argues that deconstruction was never intended to devolve into relativism.28 Giroux concurs; although he appreciates the insights that poststructuralism has afforded, he maintains the importance of "false

Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 281-293. Derrida argues that the language of philosophy (which he calls metaphysics) is not inherently superior to the language of other texts because it is unable to escape metaphor. 25 Ibid., 292- 293. Derrida (at least in his early work) does not commit himself to the extreme relativist implications of his deconstruction theory, saying that "we must try to conceive of the common ground" between meaning in language as perpetual "play" and a theory of interpretation that "seeks to decipher." 26 This is only one of two possible implications of Derrida's work, it should be noted. As Felpernin points out, Derrida's famous phrase, "there is nothing outside the text," could just as easily lead to the conclusion that 'all texts are political,' as the converse. Howard Felpernin, Beyond Deconstruction: The Uses and Abuses of Literary Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 29. 27 Christopher Norris, Contest of Faculties: Philosophy and Theory After Deconstruction (New York: Methuen, 1985), 185. 28 Ibid., 227-228. 14 consciousness" and the testing of truth claims, and warns us against supporting a

"mystifying form of cultural relativism."29

Although some neo-Marxist authors, such as Zavarzadeh and Morton, claim that poststructuralism's tendency to reduce the political to the merely figurative renders it "a politically oppressive form of eclectic pluralism,"30 other critical scholars feel differently.

Some who embrace the term refuse to accept the notion that it must necessarily devolve into relativism, or at least admit that it makes no sense to align the word

"poststructuralist" with the word "criticism" if that is the case. Cleo Cherryholmes, who self-identifies as a "critical pragmatist," makes the case succinctly, arguing that poststructuralist critique must reject relativism

because it precludes judgments about how things could become better or worse, undercutting any sense of crisis itself. Along this line and somewhat paradoxically, poststructuralist thought is not possible without structural and analytic arguments that propose standards that distinguish valid from invalid arguments, even though these standards themselves are never unambiguously foundational.31

Thus, there are important points where Critical Theory and poststructuralist critique intersect. One can safely conclude that there are some interpretations of poststructuralist theory which, along with Critical Theory, share a belief in the need to maintain some sense of objective reality (although always subject to revision) in order to resist the complete collapse of the categories of true and false that deconstruction can imply. In the sense that reason resists this collapse - a collapse that would annul critical

Henry A. Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 125. 30 Mas'ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton, Theory as Resistance: Politics and Culture after (Post)structuralism (New York: The Guilford Press, 1994), 17. The authors feel so strongly that poststructuralism leads to the same ideological effects as structuralist assumptions that all references to the term include parentheses around the prefix "post." 31 Cleo H. Cherryholmes, Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), 183. 15 thought - by trying to organize and make sense of the world, it can be freeing.

Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse supported reason for its liberating potential despite the fact that their writing foreshadowed the coming postmodern crisis in representation.

What they objected to was instrumental reason, a product of the Enlightenment by which reason, in the form of science, technology, and a growing technical or administrative view of the world, became synonymous with the domination and objectification of the natural and social environments.

This is one of the major arguments of the Frankfurt School, articulated by

Horkeimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), and it may explain the root cause of what Wayne Bowman calls "the highly practical or instrumental nature of North

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American musical instruction." Essentially, Horkheimer and Adorno attempt to show that in the race to replace myth with reason, a race that began with the ancient Greeks and was taken up by the Enlightenment, reason itself became elevated to mythical status in the West.34 Hence, they argue, attempts to dispel myth through reason are always accompanied by a return to myth in the form of an unflinching belief in positivism. For this reason Adorno and Horkheimer wish to "humble" reason, but they take pains not to seek its total demise. Thus they envision a society in which technology and science are

"nonalienating," or mastered for humane purposes. Transferring this argument to music education, the uncritical acceptance (and, in some cases, the worship of) specific pedagogical techniques and methods can be seen as symptomatic of a mythical belief in

Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 23 and passim. 33 Wayne Bowman, "Educating Musically," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, ed. Richard Colwell and Carol P. Richardson, 63-84. (New York: Oxford, 2002), 65. 34 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 20 and passim. 35 Ibid., 19. 16 efficiency and productivity, and a conviction that a given method is the most efficient and productive way to teach music. These ideas will be explored at length in chapter 5.

The Culture Industry Argument

A second major argument of the Frankfurt School was that entertainment and mass media had become full-fledged industries after World War II, and that they were primarily engaged in disseminating what Marcuse called "affirmative" culture. According to this thesis, late capitalist ideology transforms itself into cultural products that are consumed en masse. These cultural products act as narcotics that divert attention from real political and sociological problems and affirm the status quo by representing present experience in a pleasurable form.36 Art is perceived as the last bastion of social critique, yet it loses this potential once it becomes absorbed into the "culture industry." This argument became a cornerstone of social critique for the Frankfurt School, as well as a source of considerable controversy. As Agger points out, the stance has "drawn fire from all sides."37 Leftist cultural studies theorists suspect elitism in the idea that only non- commodified art has critical potential, while conservatives resent the pairing of high art and politics altogether, and orthodox Marxists resent the appropriation of their argument from an economic battlefield to a cultural one.38

The viewpoint was also opposed by Walter Benjamin, a Jewish-German philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School. Benjamin famously took issue with

Adorno on the grounds that mechanical reproduction technologies had the potential to

36 Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (London: Free Association Books, 1988), 95. 37 Agger, Critical Social Theories, 91. 38 Ibid. 39 Max Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and Music (London: Kahn and Averill, 1996), 13. 17 redefine art in terms that would promote the interests of the working class.40 He disagreed with Adorno's assertion that art ceases to be art and abandons its critical potential once it

"speaks" to society in the dominant discourse. Thus, Adorno and Benjamin disagreed on the role of the culture industry because they possessed quite different conceptions of art.

In general, disagreements over the role of the culture industry in perpetuating ideology amount to disagreements over the extent to which popular culture is imposed from above or generated from within the working class. Adorno is generally considered the spokesperson for the former position, whereas cultural studies programs often focus on the latter viewpoint. As Agger summarizes, Adorno's critics are correct in saying that he overlooked the critical potential in some forms of popular culture, yet Agger also points out that Adorno and Horkheimer were equally correct in condemning the culture industry, which

has become a crucial political and economic factor in late capitalism, diverting people's attention away from their real problems, offering false solutions projected onto the 'lives' of fictional characters and encoded in the sweet harmonies of music ...

This view is contrasted, however, with current cultural studies agendas that focus on the critical potential of certain forms of (even) commodified art.42

Intersecting Voices: The Work of Gramsci and Bourdieu

Two other theorists should be mentioned at this point because they have made significant contributions to critical thought as it applies to culture and education. Antonio

Gramsci (1891-1937), the Italian Marxist whose major contribution to Critical Theory

40 Ibid., 18. 41 Agger, Critical Social Theories, 91. 42 Ibid. 18 was completed while he was imprisoned by Mussolini (1926-1937), was one of the founding representatives of Western Marxism.43 As already suggested by the previous introduction of his concept of hegemony, his work influenced and intersected with that of the Frankfurt School. Additionally, he was concerned with the way the Italian state was perpetuating the socio-economic division of classes by instituting growing numbers of vocational schools for the working class that taught students an increasing number of specialized, technical skills to suit the marketplace - a concern that is strikingly relevant in today's political climate.44 A half century before Bourdieu, Gramsci noted the positive correlation between a student's family environment and successful integration into either the elite academic domain or the factory.45 He also opposed reforms that ostensibly improved Italian education by advocating an open dialogue between teacher and student, but which in reality precluded any sense of student empowerment by suspending issues of power differentials in society and denying students the literacy needed to critique societal problems.46 Unfortunately, as Giroux points out, Gramsci's work has recently been misappropriated by neo-conservatives who equate his concern for intellectual rigor

(in order to critique ideology) with current rhetoric supporting technocratic "skills-based" schooling.47

Though more recent than the work of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, the scholarship of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) has had a strong impact on critical educational theories. This is owing to Bourdieu's interest in the school as a

43 Macey, Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, s.v. "Gramsci, Antonio." See also footnote 8. 44 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans, and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 41. 45 Gramsci, A Gramsci Reader, 320. 46 Ibid., 314. 47 Henry Giroux, Stealing Innocence: Youth, Corporate Power, and the Politics of Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 116-131. 19 means of reproducing social inequities, which it accomplishes in his theory by acting as a giant sorting mechanism that links scholastic aptitude to cultural heritage. Thus dominant groups in society, who at one time occupied the role of nobility, can use the education system to maintain their positions in a hierarchical society that claims to be meritocratic.48 The factor that decides how students will be "selected" is "cultural capital," defined as a set of cultural goods whose value increases with its proximity to the ruling class, although this fact must remain hidden.49 The set of values associated with these cultural goods must then be internalized so that members of the dominated classes do not recognize them as arbitrary. This internalization takes the form of what Bourdieu famously calls the "habitus" - a set of cultural sensibilities that people come to perceive as "appropriate" for their particular social positions.50

The Emergence of Critical Pedagogy

The project of critical pedagogy, which emerged in the 1970s,51 is committed to uncovering and analyzing the role of education in cultural production and reproduction that lead to hegemony.52 One of the key intellectual influences on this movement is the

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1998), 22. Education is only one way, however, that Bourdieu envisions dominant classes reproducing hierarchy through the family, others being fertility, marriage, economic strategies, etc. Ibid., 19. 49 Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977), 30. 50 Ibid., 31. See also Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 8. 51 In his preface to a work of Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz cites Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America (New York: Basic Books, 1976) as the seminal work in critical pedagogy since it was the first work to link schools "inextricably" to the industrial/economic system. Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling, 1. 52 The fact that critical pedagogy is a recent area of study might lead one mistakenly to believe that schooling has only functioned as a means of inculcating students with societal norms, and thus reproducing societal values, in modern times. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Catherine Atherton shows, for example, in her study of ancient grammarians, that the complex rules governing language that students in early Greco-Roman cultures were taught were intended to acclimatize them to the parallel norms governing elite society. "Children, Animals, Slaves and Grammar," in Pedagogy and Power: 20

Brazilian revolutionary educator Paolo Freire (1921-1997). Freire's Pedagogy of the

Oppressed (1968), which was quickly translated into English (1970), has had a profound impact on North American education. Freire maintains that "liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information."53 He dubs the latter approach the

"banking model" of education because teachers treat student consciousness as a depository in which information must be stored. In this way students are objectified and, as mere "things," they cannot perceive the systemic oppression under which they suffer.54

His proposed solution is an intersubjective approach to education in which

(revolutionary) teachers and students engage in dialogue in order to "de-mythologize" their perceived reality.

Two of the most prominent North American educational theorists to apply the ideas of critical theory to pedagogy are Michael Apple and Henry Giroux. Repeated throughout their work is the assertion that it is far too simplistic and structurally deterministic to assume that schools exert total institutional domination over students.55

Both embrace the Western Marxist tradition in rejecting overly reductive theories of education in favor of the belief that schools are complex dynamic sites of both domination and resistance. Above all, their work seeks to challenge "the encroachment of

Rhetorics of Classical Learning, ed., Yun Lee Too and Niall Livingstone, 214-244 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 241. 53 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: The Seabury Press, 1970), 67. 54 Ibid., 48, 57-59. 55 See for example Michael Apple, Cultural Politics and Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), xvii, and Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and The Process of Schooling, 15. Interestingly, Apple discussed in 1981 {Education and Power, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul) how his position had evolved in the course of two years from an emphasis on structuralism to a more flexible and less reductive stance. In this regard, he criticized certain aspects of his earlier work in Ideology and Curriculum (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). 21 corporate power" so that democracy remains "a defining principle of education and everyday life."56

Apple, who employs more economics in his arguments than Giroux, maintains that "correspondence principles" that link the activities of schools directly to the needs of a corporate economy overlook two factors that greatly complicate the process of cultural reproduction in schools. First, the state mediates some of the effects of domination by allowing a certain amount of conflict and compromise in education. It does this because hegemony involves the consent of subordinated groups, therefore it must appear to be legitimating "ideologies of equality and class mobility" so as to be "seen positively by as many classes and class segments as possible."57 Second, Apple provides evidence of resistance not only from students but from people in the workplace, where one would expect to find hoards of docile workers if schools merely reproduced given economic conditions.58

The reason why schools may appear to reproduce dominant economic conditions more efficiently and mechanically than they actually do is because when students do resist, often their resistance, ironically, causes reproduction of the dominant ideology.

For example, Apple cites Paul Willis's study of working class school boys in an industrial part of England to demonstrate that the acquisition of cultural autonomy can, paradoxically, lead to reproduction of the status quo. By rejecting mental labor through resistance to the school, Willis' study participants unwittingly embrace the artificial separation of mental from manual labor that helps to perpetuate the system that controls

Giroux, The Abandoned Generation, 188. See also Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, xv-xvi. Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, 29, 58. Ibid., 74. 22 them. This phenomenon is dubbed "reproduction through contradiction." It is an example of how students' "own culture [can be] the most effective agent of social control."61

Additionally, Apple analyzes various ways in which the corporate process of

"deskilling" has begun to enter the classroom. Deskilling is the separation of conception from execution such that a worker no longer controls the entire process of his or her work. The increasing use of prepackaged curricula (developed by the private sector) that specify "appropriate" classroom activities, teacher directives, student responses, and evaluation methods, shows that the art of teaching has already been significantly deskilled.Di In music education, "method books" that are "teacher proof (i.e., provide elaborately detailed lessons attempting to account for every possible scenario) as well as highly prescriptive teaching methods can lead to music teacher deskilling. For example, both the Kodaly method and Edwin Gordon's theory (whose work the profession agrees to call "Music Learning Theory," as if there were no other) are highly prescriptive; if taken at face value, they leave little room for critical thinking and soon become elevated to unquestionable status. These issues will be discussed in chapter 4.63

Giroux maintains that students receive large amounts of their education through what he calls "public pedagogies," that is, sites of learning created largely by electronic

59 Ibid., 99, 103. 60 Ibid., 101. 61 Ibid., 111. 62 Ibid., 32, 144-146. 63 See, for example, Paul Woodford's discussion of Kodaly, in which he criticizes the cultic attitude of music educators toward a method that is highly prescriptive, based on a questionable Piagetesque notion of stage development, and inherently biased toward Western musical genres and values. Paul Woodford, "Is Kodaly Obsolete?" Alia Breve. Special research edition of the newsletter of the Kodaly Society of Canada 24, nos. 1/2 (June, 2000): 10-18. Elsewhere, Woodford notes that Gordon's theory "may be inimical to the development of independent thinkers." Paul Woodford, "Evaluating Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory from a Critical Thinking Perspective," Philosophy of Music Education Review 4, no. 2 (fall, 1996): 83. These issues will be explored in detail in chapter 5. 23 technology and media that shape children's reality and that we, as educators, have an obligation to address.64 He is in agreement with Adorno, however, in insisting that the problem is not popular culture per se but the insidiousness of the culture industry which appropriates it for its own purposes.65 He argues that liberal and conservative intellectuals are quick to blame popular culture for the loss of both innocence and intellect among youth, while conveniently glossing over the role that corporations play in this process. To cite but one case, phenomena such as internet pornography are portrayed as threatening to childhood innocence; yet these criticisms do not seem to apply to "the corporations and their middle-class shareholders who relentlessly commodity and sexualize children's bodies, desires, and identities in the interest of turning a profit."66

Although Giroux is more optimistic than the Frankfurt theorists about the critical potential of much popular culture, he agrees that the (adverse) pedagogical role of the culture industry is often overlooked. Giroux claims that the most influential teachers today are those who control "advertising, radio talk shows, the malls, and the cinema complexes." In the spirit of the Frankfurt scholars, he refers to the anesthetizing influence of commodified culture: the manner in which it idealizes the present state of affairs, thus distracting us from the underlying realities of poverty, greed and injustice.

Central to his project is a focus on agency, that is, a refusal to consider the products of popular culture as merely free-floating objects under no one's control. This is because one of the strategies that corporate culture uses to deflect criticism from itself is

4 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 30. 65 "The culture industry is not the art of the consumer but rather the projection of the will of those in control onto their victims." Theodor Adorno, "Transparencies on Film," in The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein, 178-186 (London: Routledge, 1991), 185. Originally published in New German Critique 24-5, Fall-Winter (1981-2): 199-205, trans. Thomas E. Levin. 66 Ibid, 17. 67 Henry Giroux, Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 45. 68 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 63, 66-67. 24 to dissolve the political into the purely representational. For example, Giroux argues that the mid-1990s trend of "heroin chic" that arose on billboards and in fashion magazines was a case of the corporate fashion world attempting to dissociate images of emaciated and addicted humans from the social conditions that have historically created such images by "aestheticizing" them.69 This is a perfect example of reification. And it also highlights Giroux's insistence on avoiding forms of analysis that depoliticize their objects of inquiry. As perhaps the foremost North American proponent of critical pedagogy,

Giroux has argued against, on the one hand, iron-clad structuralism that negates agency in favor of "rules" and "scientific" explanations of social relations, and on the other hand, interpretations of post-structuralism that devolve into relativism and reduce human agency to "a function of shifting signifiers."70

Relevant Music Education Literature

Despite the emergence of a vast critical pedagogy literature, there is as yet very little music education scholarship that directly employs a Critical Theory or critical pedagogy framework. There is, however, considerable scholarship that purports to critique the status quo in music education. Such research often draws on ideas that are closely related to Critical Theory/pedagogy. Both categories of literature will now be briefly and critically examined. A third category of literature on critical thinking (a phrase that is often unfortunately likened to the mere fostering of problem solving skills) deals with a broader category of concepts that will not be discussed here.

Ibid., 68, 79. Giroux, Disturbing Pleasures, 114. 25

Perhaps the first individual to investigate closely the relationship among music, ideology, and educational contexts was Lucy Green (1988).71 Green provides a comprehensive theoretical treatment of the subject of musical meaning and ideology, which has strong implications for music education, most of which are in line with those of the present study. Although she rejects Adorno's criticisms of popular music, Green upholds the following Adornian notion, which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter: that music's inherent, or seemingly autonomous, qualities are fundamentally inseparable from its delineated, or socially constructed, context-bound aspects.72 Green is primarily concerned about the widespread tendency of people to associate the former qualities exclusively with Western European art music, while consigning the latter qualities to popular and folk musics. As she explains, this tendency is an outgrowth of musical fetishism, which

posits delineated meanings as the only ones that are communicable [and therefore] simultaneously posits inherent meanings as autonomous essences. We have access to the former but the latter, it appears, elude us. Whereas this is true in so far as we communicate about music in natural language, it is untrue in so far as we also communicate through music via musical inherent meanings. Because it ignores this, ideology posits humanity as the slave of a music that has its own natural and unalterable laws, not as raw sonic material, but as pre-extant musical meanings.73

As a result of fetishism, music's inherent meanings are perceived as timeless and unconnected to the delineated meanings that we supposedly "attach" to music, as if either

Lucy Green, Music on Deaf Ears: Musical Meaning, Ideology, Education (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1988). 72 Describing it only as "dialectical," (Ibid., 96) Green does not specifically identify this position with Adorno, probably because his own analyses and criticisms suffered, as she explains, from an overemphasis on the power of inherent musical meanings to shape consciousness to the point where he views humanity "as a passive recipient of social structures and ideology" (10). Concerns about the "undialectical" nature of Adorno's music criticism, which have been an ongoing cause for debate, are discussed in chapter 2. The extent to which Adorno's music criticisms are off the mark, however, has no bearing on his dialectics. Negative dialectics in fact provides the foundation for Green's suggested strategy, which amounts to maintaining constant tension between objective and subjective poles in order to thwart ideology. 73 Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 87. aspect could be appreciated in isolation. Consequently, those values traditionally associated with the Western art music canon (such as unity, complexity, and organicism, which are delineated meanings that have arisen in specific, socio-historical contexts) become reified. They "appear to spring directly out of inherent meanings."74 And in fact, these preferred delineated (i.e., socially-constructed) meanings become substitutes for inherent meanings. As the reader will presently see, one of the primary goals of a critical theory of music education is to "de-mythologize" these reified ways of understanding music by locating them in their socio-historical contexts, thus revealing that they are neither natural nor timeless.

As stated above, an unfortunate side effect of perceiving inherent and delineated musical meanings dualistically (i.e., assuming that one can exist in the absence of the other) is the tendency to assign higher value to examples of music that are perceived as being more autonomous, such as Masterworks of art music, insofar as they seem to possess qualities that set them apart from the everyday, functional, context-dependent meanings associated with popular music, for example.76 As a result, popular music tends to be described overwhelmingly if not exclusively in terms of delineated meanings (the contextual approach), which is unfortunate because this only serves to reinforce the mistaken notion that it is lacking inherent meaning.77

Green condemns as ideological any educational views, such as that of Keith

S wanwick, that attempt to "raise the status of some supposedly purely musical

74 Ibid., 96. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 87. 77 Ibid. More recently (2003), Green has shown this to be a problem with regard to implementation of the relatively new national music curriculum in Britain, in which popular music must now be taught. "Why 'Ideology' is Still Relevant for Critical Thinking in Music Education," Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education 2, no. 2 (December, 2003): 13, http://act.maydaygroup.org/ articles/Green2_2.pdf. The results of her research are taken up in chapter 3. 27 elements."78 Such views lead to a false assumption that one can "gain pleasure from music itself," as if some examples of music are unencumbered by historical associations or social conventions.79 This confusion arises from the fact that, "try as we might, we cannot put an inherent meaning in any medium other than music, and even its description or explanation becomes, itself, a delineation."80 Over time, we collectively forget that such statements are mere descriptions (of Beethoven's music as heroic, for example), shaped by the socio-historical conditions under which the music in question was received, and they eventually assume the form of timeless explanations of the inherent qualities in works of art.

The great value of Green's work is her articulation of a dialectical view of musical meaning, inherited from Adorno and the Frankfurt scholars, according to which neither extreme position - music as possessing only objective meanings, or music as possessing only delineated meanings that are subjectively rooted - is plausible. Green maintains that one must attempt to keep these two positions in constant tension to avoid the kind of ideological effects described above.82 This view has many variations, one of which - the idea that music's form cannot be conceptually separated from its content without risking similar ideological problems - provides the basis for arguments in the following chapters. It is important to note that the present study differs from Green's in two important ways, however. First, it borrows more heavily from Adorno in the hopes of advancing beyond arguments about his music criticism to grasp the potential of his

78 Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 95. 79 Ibid., 97. 80 Ibid., 84. 81 As the reader will discover in chapter 3, it may even be ideological simply to use the term "possess" in relation to such qualities. I do so here for convenience. 82 Ibid., 96 and passim. 28 negative dialectics as a way of thinking through and de-mythologizing reified ways of understanding music. Second, it attempts to broaden the idea of de-mythologizing, to demonstrate how it might be applied not only to reified musical meanings, but to reified music education methods, techniques, and attitudes as well.

Andrea Rose, in her 1990 dissertation entitled "Music Education in Culture: A

Critical Analysis of Reproduction, Production and Hegemony," attempted to create "an initial and guiding step towards the development of a critical theory of music in education."83 The first North American doctoral dissertation to apply concepts of Critical

Theory directly to music education, Rose's work is important in that it questions the

"common sense" assumptions underlying traditional content and methods. Her case study supports the conclusion that the pre-eminence of Western European art music - its acceptance as fixed and objective - appears to be ubiquitous.84 She discusses how the unquestioning acceptance of the Western canon leads to a form of "reproductive music education," which marginalizes other musical cultures - in this case, traditional

Newfoundland folk music.85 While admitting that her study drew on only a few aspects of Critical Theory, she raises the crucial issue of how "imposed traditions, practices and curricula can be resisted and changed."86 She recommends that teachers draw on various musical traditions to create hybrids that will lead to productive, as opposed to reproductive, music education practices.87

Rose performs invaluable service in speaking of the need for music teachers to understand the ways that musical canons and practices shape culture so that they can

83 Rose, "Music Education in Culture," 6 84 Ibid., 192. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., 193. form "a liberating social consciousness." Her proposed solutions, however, emphasize the need to supplant current ideology (in the form of the Western canon) more than they emphasize the need to question the very notion of canonization. She neglects to address how one might prevent the "lived cultures" of students, which should form the basis of a new "productive" curriculum, from crystallizing into yet another canon. In this sense, and despite her seemingly radical intentions, she largely advocates what Zavarzadeh and

Morton call a "traditional" or "humanist" critical pedagogy, that is, one that calls for the replacement of a high culture canon with what will inevitably ossify into a popular culture canon. Any resulting changes are thus merely "superstructural."

In 1996, Rose and Thomas Regelski, another critical educator, both presented papers suggesting what a music education that employed Critical Theory might look like.

Regelski suggests that applying Critical Theory might address the problem of the unquestioning obedience that music teachers seem to give to specific methods of musical training. Music teachers often simply employ whichever methods they themselves were subjected to, regardless of whether the outcomes appear to be good for their students or not.90 Additionally, Regelski uses Critical Theory's arguments against positivism to attack (what were at the time) the pre-eminence of quantitative, empirical research and the unquestioned dominance of Bennet Reimer's philosophy of aesthetic music education in our field.91

8S Ibid., 192. 89 Zavarzadeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 16. 90 Regelski, "Critical Theory as a Foundation for Critical Thinking," 16. The original paper was presented at a Symposium for Critical Thinking in Music Education held at the University of Western Ontario in 1996. 91 Ibid., 13-14. Regelski articulates an impressive series of goals that are all related to the idea that music educators can and should become aware of the false consciousness that ideology can engender. The main criterion according to which critical educators should make decisions is a synthesis of Habermassian and Aristotelian concepts that he calls

"right action." This is defined as "rational action that satisfies criteria of right results for the clients served, our students." However, although he mentions empowering students in his conclusion, his suggestions only address how teachers might become critical.

Specifically, Regelski wants to dispense with both "authoritarian control" and "the hegemony of leading ideologies," but he seems to be suggesting that teachers strive for a state of enlightened consciousness and then use their authority to dispense with ideology and do what is best for their students. However, unless students are involved in the process of critique, this can lead right back to ideology.

Ironically, Regelski provides an example of this himself in his suggestion that teachers "problematize" issues. Instead of simply using threats or rewards to entice

"appropriate" practice habits, teachers should "prove" the intrinsic benefits of practicing to students by "clearly demonstrating]" the "necessary relationship between practice and its intrinsic rewards." Unfortunately, such an approach is not necessarily less authoritarian than traditional pedagogy since the teacher has decided beforehand that the student must arrive at a predetermined conclusion. In fact, using logic to convince students of something when we have an agenda is the very definition of instrumental reason, even if we believe the outcome is in their best interest. Regelski's assertion that posing the question, "Why don't students understand the value of practicing?"

92 Ibid., 16. One might question Regelski's inadvertent use of corporate imagery in referring to students as "clients," as it seems to run counter to his critical goals. 31

"problematizes" the issue, is questionable because it presupposes a value that students ought to accept. Using reason to get what we want from students is simply strategizing if the latter are not given the opportunity to make critical decisions based on rigorous engagement with an array of options.

Rose's article from the same year outlines the rationale for the Reflective and

Critical Internship Program for pre-service teachers, a project that was based on the tenets of Critical Theory. Rose also includes and discusses the reflective comments of preservice teachers who were involved in the program. Like Regelski, she is concerned that music teachers who practice critical pedagogy "integrate theory and practice, analyze critically their roles in schools and in culture, and implement change."94 She stresses the need for new music teachers to be reflective, self-critical, and question taken-for-granted assumptions about their knowledge by "problematizing dominant practices and discourses."95 Notably, the pre-service teachers' comments indicate that the program helps new music teachers to achieve a more critical stance. Like Regelski's, though,

Rose's work does not yet specifically address the problem of how we are to create critical students, apart from endorsing a co-operative, non-authoritarian learning environment.

Sture Brandstom (1997) drew on the Critical Theory of Erich Fromm, another member of the Frankfurt School, in designing and implementing a program for piano students in Sweden that attempted to challenge "the existing pedagogical tradition in higher music education."96 Fromm's concept of "spontaneous activity," activity that

94 Andrea Rose, "Exploring Music Teacher Thinking: A Reflective and Critical Model," Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 17 (1998): 25. 95 Ibid., 35. 96 Sture Brandstr6m, "Critical Thinking in and about Music Teacher Education," Canadian Music Educator 38, no. 2 (Winter, 1997): 29. Originally presented at the 1996 symposium at the University of Western Ontario mentioned above. 32 breaks out of patterns suggested by society and thus leads to increased personal freedom, was the inspiration for a program of study in which students set goals, calculated time needed for lessons, and helped to choose repertoire.97 Regrettably, the methodology seems aimed at offering merely superficial choices to students who, at the university level, will already be under the influence of dominant ideas that will guide their decision making. Brandstrom alludes to this problem, saying that freedom is never absolute because of what Bourdieu calls the habitus (see p. 19). But his reservations are seriously understated. Further, his advocacy of a "new music pedagogy" based on the humanist ideas of individual experience and spontaneous expression 9 is also problematic from the point of view of a truly radical or oppositional critical pedagogy. As Zavarzadeh and Morton point out, pedagogies that presuppose the existence of a unique and individual "voice" through which the student can "spontaneously" express herself, mask the cultural, historical, and economic conditions through which all "personal" experience is mediated.1 ° This problem will be discussed in detail in chapter 2.

Carol Beynon (1998) undertook a study in an attempt to learn how exposure to

Critical Theory might influence the development of preservice music teachers' critical thinking skills in the hopes that fostering such skills "may lead to critical practice ..."101

Notably, in linking the two concepts Beynon employs an operational definition of critical thinking that includes a "political inclination," thus bringing it more in line with Critical

97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 30. 99 Ibid., 31. 100 Zavarzadeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 93-94. Green also makes this point using Britain's "creative music" as an example (Music on Deaf Ears, 126). This will be discussed further in chapter 2. 101 Carol Beynon, "From Music Student to Music Teacher: Negotiating an Identity," Studies in Music from The University of Western Ontario 17 (1998): 83. 33

Theory insofar as the term "critical" denotes a struggle over issues of truth and power.

Using an ethnographic approach, she followed the path of six music student teachers from the beginning of their preservice year to shortly after their entry into the profession.

Beynon identifies two major problems with regard to the reproduction of dominant attitudes and practices in the music teaching profession. First, preservice music teachers are socialized to the norms of the profession at an early age. In many cases, candidates are attracted to the profession on the basis of positive student experiences in their school cultures, where they have already been exposed to thousands of hours of teaching. Second, the manner in which teacher education is structured is not conducive to change. As Beynon explains:

If field experiences in schools are for student teachers to practice and be evaluated on their ability to convey the codes of the system to students, then student teachers who understand the structures and codes of the dominant society in education are better able to demonstrate these particular attributes and will be more successful at teaching.104

In other words, those preservice music teachers possessing appropriate amounts of cultural capital tend to be most successful, thus reinforcing the importance of said cultural capital and reinforcing the status quo. There is a certain level of risk associated with questioning the norms of any system to which one is attempting to gain access.105

Moreover, in Beynon's study, preservice teachers tended to overvalue knowledge that is of immediate, practical use at the expense of theoretical knowledge, a situation that encourages a kind of "anti-intellectualism" that makes critique of prevailing assumptions

102 Ibid., 84. 103 Ibid., 83. Beynon cites Dan Lortie, who reports that the average student will have been exposed to 15,000 hours of teaching and learning by the time she enters a teacher education program. Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). Cited in Beynon, "From Music Student to Music Teacher," 83. 104 Ibid., 86. 105 Ibid. 34 and practices extremely difficult.106 These results were congruent with the findings of previous research.107

Although Beynon's study participants were somewhat more open to the idea of critical reflection by the end of the study, she concludes that change "seems impossible given the ways in which music teacher education is currently structured."108 Indeed, her description of the study participants' relationships with their associate teachers is a litany of conformity:

Their formative beliefs about teaching became consonant with their associate teachers' beliefs about teaching. They never questioned to any extent what they observed or practised and they were satisfied to follow their associate teachers' models. Acculturation to the existing system felt natural and the associate teachers, as experienced professionals, used their roles as school-based teacher educators to hand over the existing practices of the system to the novices to emulate.109

Beynon's conclusions indicate that systemic change cannot be initiated solely from those responsible for music teacher certification.110 There are administrative factors that would prevent this. For example, preservice teachers are required to be evaluated "using norms that are antithetical to the discussion at hand."111 These conclusions support the notion that critical music educators must find ways to engender a critical stance in students as well as teachers. Given that music students constitute future music teachers, a sense of critical consciousness among the youngest members of "the system" would improve the

106 Ibid., 92-93. 107 Ibid., 94. 108 Ibid., 98, 99. One important factor to bear in mind is that, unlike in many American school districts, preservice teachers in Ontario are evaluated on their practical sessions by on-site mentor teachers and not by representatives of the degree-granting institutions. According to Beynon, this was a factor influencing the degree to which the preservice teachers in her study conformed to their new environments. 109 Ibid., 97. 110 Ibid., 99. 111 Ibid., 100. 35 likelihood of systemic change in the long term (of course, such change should always result from critical reflection and not be instigated for its own sake).

John Berns (2000) uses critical pedagogy and social constructionism as lenses through which to view the socially constructed nature of two bodies of work: the music education philosophy of David Elliott and Gordon's Music Learning Theory. Berns offers some valuable insights into the relation between theories of music education and the socio-historical conditions from which they are generated, which enables the reader to historicize the theories of Gordon and Elliott by understanding the influences that shaped them. This positive contribution will be taken up in chapter 5.

Unfortunately, however, Berns often conflates his two primary terms, noting that the only difference between them is that critical pedagogy is concerned with power relations that underlie socially constructed knowledge and that, as such, it is a "more specific application of constructionist perspectives."112 He claims repeatedly that constructionism rejects any sense of objective reality and implies that critical pedagogy does also.113 The idea that social constructionism necessarily implies a radically relativist stance is debatable. More problematic, however, is the association of critical pedagogy with the notion of relativism, which the preceeding discussion has attempted to demonstrate. His failure to note that critical pedagogy, being grounded in Critical Theory, maintains a belief (however problematic) in objective reality in order to maintain a position from which to criticize is problematic.

John M. Berns, "A Critical Analysis of Gordon's Music Learning Theory and Elliott's Philosophy of Music Education From the Perspectives of Social Constructionism and Critical Pedagogy" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 2000), 7. 113 Ibid., 7, 34. Although not drawing on Critical Theory directly, Patricia O'Toole (1994) completed a doctoral dissertation that examines and questions the (hidden) power relations in choral pedagogy settings. Emplyoying "feminist, poststructural theory" as her framework, she identifies traditional choral pedagogy practices as ideological, claiming that they present such ideas as discipline, competitiveness, and authoritarianism as natural.114 Traditional choral pedagogy thus stifles students' inherent creativity by enticing them to become docile,115 while asserting the superiority of Western values through both its form and content (i.e., "good" vocal tone and the presence of the canon).116

O'Toole brings to light some crucial problems, but while her research shares many of the goals of Critical Theory/pedagogy, her (poststructuralist) insistence on locating all meaning within a constantly shifting universe of free-floating signifiers threatens to nullify the critical impulse within her work. Her assertion that "meaning ... arises out of difference"117 indicates that she is, in the words of Zavarzadeh and Morton,

"replacing conflict with pluralism."118 When meaning becomes free-floating, it can no longer be connected with anything political. It is unclear how a multiplicity of meanings can serve as a criterion for the renegotiation of teacher-student power relations, which is her intended outcome once students have "subverted" the traditional arrangements.119

Ideology acting on students from outside the formal learning environment cannot be critiqued from a student-centered pedagogy that confuses authority with authoritarianism.

114 Patricia O'Toole, "Redirecting the Choral Classroom: A Feminist Poststructural Analysis of Power Relations Within Three Choral Settings" (Ph.D. diss., The University of Madison-Wisconsin, 1994), 18-26. 115 Ibid., 20, 24. 116 Ibid., 26-27. 117 Ibid., 12,63-64. 118 Zavarzadeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 42. 119 Ibid., 71. 37

Another music education researcher whose interests strongly intersect with

Critical Theory /pedagogy is Julia Eklund Koza (2002, 2003). Koza has written critically about various partnerships established between The National Association for Music

Educators (MENC) and major corporations such as Disney, PepsiCo, Texaco Inc., and

Yamaha.l As public funding for education has dwindled progressively, corporate partnerships with educational institutions have multiplied at an astounding rate.121 Koza argues that although such partnerships may seem like godsends to music educators, a considerable body of research suggests that these seemingly philanthropic gestures either cost little or in some cases generate profits for corporations whose activities erode the public tax base and therefore constitute a major part of the funding problem that they are supposedly helping to remedy.122

For example, Koza cites twelve examples of "corporate welfare" in which Disney aggressively pursued deals through which it was able to legally avoid paying its share of taxes to various locales, in exchange for jobs and economic stimulation that would result from projects it intended to undertake.123 In some cases, Disney "requested" that the cost of infrastructure development be underwritten by massive public funds, and that various other incentives such as free government advertising be included before the corporation

Julia Eklund Koza, "A Realm Without Angels: MENC's Partnerships with Disney and Other Major Corporations," Philosophy of Music Education Review 10, no. 2 (Fall, 2002): 72-79. For a more in-depth discussion focusing on Disney and music education, see chapter 1, "No Hero of Mine: Disney, Popular Culture, and Education," in Stepping Across: Four Interdisciplinary Studies of Education and Cultural Politics, 1-61 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). 121 Koza cites Jay Taylor, saying that such partnerships "quadrupled between 1982 and 1992 [in the U.S.]" Jay Taylor, "Desperate for Dollars: In a Barren Budget Year, Schools Must Look Far and Wide for Alternative Funding Sources," American School Board Journal 179, no. 9 (September, 1992): 24, 21. Cited in Koza, "A Realm Without Angels, 73. 122 Koza, "A Realm Without Angels," 72. 123 Koza, "No Hero of Mine," 36-49. 38 would deign to locate one of its theme parks in the area under consideration.124 Yet

MENC has made deals to promote Disney films such as Mr. Holland's Opus and Music of the Heart,115 in which the plight of public music education is featured prominently, in exchange for having the message of advocacy for music education heard by a massive audience.126 But Koza questions the nature of that message. The films both promote private sector solutions to public funding problems. In essence, the audience is told that music teachers should seek out private funds through undertakings that amount to "grand- scale bake sales."127 Additionally, the films arguably project gendered representations of teachers and students, and "erase" the root causes of public funding crises by portraying lack of public funding as a seemingly permanent, status quo situation.128

Koza's overall agenda is congruent with that of Critical Theory: to encourage people to question apparent stable truths (such as the "common sense" assumption that public education will always be under-funded and that any solution must be found in the private sector) and to realize that they are merely the socially constructed representations of others. Koza tries to accomplish this by historicizing Disney's position on school music funding by locating it within the larger socio-economic and political realm of

Disney's corporate activities and thereby demonstrating the hidden agenda involved. The issue of public funding is a perfect example of how ideology, perpetrated in this case by corporate interests, can cause music educators to accept certain "common sense" truths - that may in fact ultimately undermine the project of publicly accessible music education

124 Ibid., 43-44. 125 The films were actually produced by subsidiary companies of Disney, Hollywood Pictures and Miramax Films. 126 Koza, "No Hero of Mine," 2-3. Other "perks" for educators include a "classroom-ready Teaching Kit" for non-specialists and the establishment of a '"Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation,' which provides musical instruments to school programs" (p. 6). 127 Ibid., 30. See also "A Realm Without Angels," 76. 128 Koza, "No Hero of Mine," 28. 39

- to be second nature. Such "common sense" truths include: the idea that being a "good" music teacher involves fundraising efforts to "help" one's program; that students should be encouraged to participate in instrument rental programs; that school concerts should be a source of revenue for necessary expenses (either through corporate advertising or admission charges); or that user fees are an unavoidable expense in programs such as music.

Rationale and Delimitations

As the above discussion of literature has attempted to demonstrate, there is an inherent danger in considering the teaching of music (or any subject matter) as a neutral endeavor. Giroux sees this outlook as capable of producing "epistemological and ethical violence" in the sense that it leads to the creation of professionals but not public intellectuals.129 Thus, as music educators, we have an obligation to assist students in perceiving the objects of their study as social constructions that are tied to and reliant on particular world views. The problem of unmasking ideology has never been more urgent.

Consider, for example, the current encroachment of private interests into the domain of public schooling and the subsequent erosion of the public educational infrastructure under the guise of "common sense" (to borrow the slogan of a recent neo-liberal government that successfully assailed public education in this writer's home province of

Ontario for several years).130 Giroux refers to the current American trend toward privatization as "the most powerful educational reform movement to come since the

Giroux, Disturbing Pleasures, 167. 1301 am referring here to the activities of the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris and then Ernie Eves. Woodford discusses the plight of Ontario in general under this government in Democracy and Music Education, 129 (endnote). 40

Sputnik crisis [of the 1950s].131 And much the same has been said of the situation in

Great Britain and parts of Canada.132 If one considers this situation in light of such examples as Koza's exposure of a corporate agenda to present the privatization of school music programs as unassailable truths, it seems that ideology critique has never been more sorely needed in music education.

What is lacking at this point are approaches to music education that enable students to become more critical, not only of traditional pedagogy but of the culture industry that plays a large part in shaping their beliefs. Regelski, Rose, and others focus on undermining traditional forms of pedagogy, which is an important starting point, but they do not deal with the problem of outside ideology. For example, while Rose insists on the importance of respecting and working with students' culturally constructed knowledge and values, or what she calls their different forms of cultural capital, she maintains that critical pedagogues should "denounce social practices that subjugate, violate, and oppress."134 Yet she also states that critical music teachers should not "ignore or disaffirm a certain cultural capital or way of knowing"135 We cannot have it both ways.

As Giroux points out, "critical educators must be aware that the forms of domination that bear down on young people are both institutional and cultural." (emphasis added)

Students' "ways of knowing" are largely the result of a constant barrage of corporate

131 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 86. 132 Woodford, Democracy and Music Education, 60, 66, 129 (endnote). Woodford, citing Gregory Jay, refers to the manner in which the New Right, since the era of Thatcher and Reagan, has "hijacked" the public domain in the West, beginning with schools, in its bid to privatize as much as possible. 133 Rose uses the term slightly differently than Bourdieu, who equated all cultural capital with dominant values and therefore spoke of different classes possessing different amounts of it. See, for example, Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 20-24. 134 Rose, "Exploring Music Teacher Thinking," 38. 135 Ibid., 32. 136 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 29. 41 ideology in the form of commodified culture and, as such, they must be susceptible to critique.

What is needed, then, for music education to be better informed by Critical

Theory is an approach that deals with not only the ideology of traditional teaching practices, theories, and attitudes, but also the ideology of the consumer-based society in which we live, and one that does so without being ideological itself. Finally, as a truly critical pedagogy, it cannot be based upon what Giroux calls the "bloodless" apoliticism of indeterminacy, that is, the tendency to perceive everything as merely a "text" to be read in myriad different ways, all of them equally valid.137 This is because, as I have already claimed, indeterminacy does not afford a position from which to critique society.

It is for this reason that the present study will draw primarily on the negative dialectics of the Frankfurt School theorists, as opposed to theories influenced by radical interpretations of post-structuralism.

Negative dialectics was the response of the Frankfurt theorists to the problem of objectification we have been discussing, that is, the mistaking of human ideas for material realities, such that the ideas become perceived as sacrosanct objects. Realizing, through critique, the impossibility of a true relationship between material reality and human ideas thus became the goal. Problematizing "positive" knowledge about the world took the form of negative thought, which, for Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse became a newer, more honest way of conceiving of reason. Reason, in other words, only really exists as a constant critique of its own products. Adorno, of the first generation of

Frankfurt theorists, was the thinker to examine most thoroughly the role that culture, and

Ibid., 28. 42 specifically music, should play within this dialectical framework. For this reason, his work will play a large role in the present study.138

Adorno's work has evident weaknesses. Scholars agree that his ideas of how commodified music acts upon the consciousness are overstated and he is often criticized for eurocentrism and lack of empiricism, the former of which causes him to position

Austro-Germanic art music at the apex of historical achievement. More problematically,

Adorno often seems to have assumed that music only exists as a "work concept." This explains in part his unmitigated disgust for jazz. He could not conceive that jazz might simultaneously exist as praxis ("becoming") and object ("being") depending on one's viewpoint, such as, for example, when trumpeter Miles Davis constantly abandoned his improvisational statements soon after creating them, even as they became objectified into cliches for fans or other musicians who listened to Davis' records.140 Over-emphasizing the object aspect of music appears to have been a critical "blind spot" for Adorno, despite the fact that it makes much of his music criticism on jazz and popular music seem rather

"undialectical."

Further, although objectification was, for Adorno, an active process,141 he seems to have assumed that it acts similarly upon everyone. As educators, we cannot afford to make that assumption when attempting to engender a critical stance. Although Adorno's

In addition to critiquing the culture industry, Adorno attacked what he considered to be "commodified high art music," such as Stravinsky's, which he accused of objectifying itself by presenting itself as "being" (fixed and immutable) rather than "becoming." See chapter 2. 139 See, for example, Tia DeNora, After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 26, 28-29. Also Theodor A. Gracyk, "Adorno, Jazz and the Aesthetics of Popular Music," The Musical Quarterly 76, no. 4 (Winter, 1992): 527. 140 This is well illustrated by Davis' comment, "I don't keep any of my records. I can't stand to hear them after I've made them." Miles Davis, "Self Portrait" in Bill Kirchner, ed., A Miles Davis Reader (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 478. 141 Denora, After Adorno, 5. 43 critique fits well with current concerns about society's "Disney fication," if we follow his lead by critiquing what we identify as commodified or ideological music we will not necessarily engender a critical stance in students. Such moralizing action would simply contribute to ideology because, as DeNora states, discourse about music contributes greatly to our "objective" understanding (hence, our objectification) of it.143 This is a problem that some feminist scholars, in presuming to speak authoritatively about the effects of music on others' consciousness, seem to have overlooked.1

Notwithstanding Adorno's weaknesses, however, he has sown the seeds of a critical approach to music education in the apparently simple idea that form and content mediate one another and that their relationship must always be understood as one of dialectical tension. It will be argued in the following chapters that exploring this dialectical tension between music's subjective (i.e., particular, social, concrete) meanings and its objective (i.e., formal, structural, abstract) meanings, and discussing and demonstrating how they can only ever be understood in relation to one another are key activities in revealing the manner in which the reification of musical concepts occurs. To focus on the dialectical relation of form and content is to emphasize the process (as

142 Ibid, 20. 143 Ibid, 27. In other words, any discourse that paints a particular music as functioning ideologically is also part of what DeNora calls "the material and linguistic cultures that come to frame musical texts." Thus our moralizing about music's ideology becomes identified with music itself, and helps to objectify it further. This is the problem with which the Frankfurt theorists struggled and that led to their rejection of overtly political art. 144 For example, Susan McClary, in building on Adorno to unmask the ideological position that so-called absolute music is free of narrative agendas, presumes to speak from the same privileged position that Adorno tried to inhabit when she implies that 'gendered' narratives continue to be "reproduced and transmitted in part by prestigious public texts such as symphonies." Indeed, to view the symphony as a text would be to introduce all the problems of indeterminacy that reading a text entails. Moreover, McClary does not acknowledge the role of her own moralizing discourse in constructing a (potentially ideological) view of absolute music as necessarily inhering specific narratives. Susan McClary, "Narrative Agendas in 'Absolute' Music: Identity and Difference in Brahms's Third Symphony," in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie, 326-344. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 343. 44 opposed to the products) of reification. If educators historicize particular "frozen" musical concepts and modes of musical understanding, students may begin to understand reification as an ongoing (and, to some extent, inescapable) process and may therefore develop a more critical stance in relation to it. One of the key concepts that may assist in this endeavor is the frozen metaphor. It will be argued in chapter 3 that most of the musical knowledge that we take for granted in fact consists of dead or frozen metaphors and that recent scholarship in the area of metaphor theory can help to shed light on the manner in which socially constructed musical knowledge becomes so easily mistaken for natural truth. The argument will then be broadened to include music education concepts.

One of the implications of this approach is that (at least to some extent) a trans- disciplinary approach to music education is needed that always seeks to situate music and music making activities within some socio-historical context.

Overview

Chapter 1 offered an introduction to the problem, followed by a historical overview of Critical Theory, a discussion of the distinction between Critical Theory and poststructuralist approaches, a summary of critical pedagogy, and a critical review of relevant music education literature. It culminated with a discussion of lacunae in the latter literature, specifically, the problem of how to attempt to engender a critical stance among students without such actions becoming ideological. It argued that an approach informed by negative dialectics may resolve this problem.

Chapter 2 contains an explanation of the theoretical ideas underpinning the study.

Specifically, it focuses on the notion of the form <- -> content dialectic and how it 45 emerged from Adorno's negative dialectical thinking. This is prefaced by a discussion of

Adorno's views on the culture industry in order to show that focusing on these (often misunderstood and oversimplified) views may distract us from seeing what is of great value in Adorno's thinking. In keeping with the theme of historicization (a crucial concept in Critical Theory), a relatively substantial historical context is provided for the information in this chapter, so that the reader may hopefully gain a more nuanced understanding of the ideas being advanced.

Chapter 3 focuses on the theme of reification, arguing that it is always to some extent inescapable owing to the necessary relation between consciousness and objectification. I argue that we must maintain an awareness of this paradoxical need for consciousness to struggle against reification, which it needs in order to advance thought, and that it is this very awareness that can prevent our attempts at thwarting musical or educational ideology from hardening into new ideology. The concept of the frozen metaphor is introduced as a potentially helpful tool in understanding how many of our musical concepts and ways of understanding music become reified. Numerous examples of frozen musical and educational metaphors are offered, and the chapter closes with a case study of jazz reception in order to demonstrate how easily the ongoing cycle of reification is overlooked.

Chapter 4 attempts to ground the theory of the previous three chapters by offering various suggestions as to how an awareness of the form <- -> content dialectic might be brought to light in the music classroom. The importance of language as a meta- framework is established, and ideas from Critical Discourse Theory and elsewhere are employed to suggest ways to interrogate language use in the classroom. Various sub- 46 disciplines of music teaching are examined (listening, performance, history, theory, analysis, improvisation) in terms of their ideological potential, and numerous strategies are suggested for countering reification, if only in some cases by acknowledging it.

Chapter 5 applies the central argument in a somewhat broader manner by examining evidence of the reification of music education theories, methods, and attitudes.

I argue that these phenomena should be properly considered as reified forms, ideas whose socially constructed origins tend to be forgotten. I further argue that the notion of method has been highly overvalued in music education as a result of that concept's supposed close association with science. This is shown to be ironic, since the notion that rigorous method is necessary to the advancement of knowledge is highly dubious. The reception of MEAE and praxialism are examined, as well as the Kodaly method and Edwin

Gordon's Music Learning Theory. Additionally, the technological imperative, an attitude toward technology that precludes critique, is discussed as an example of a reified attitude toward music instruction. The conclusion suggests reasons for what appears to be the continuing avoidance of critical approaches in music education, and discusses some of the obstacles that critical music educators must overcome in order to affect change. 47

CHAPTER TWO THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

The dialectical postulate that the universal is the particular has its model in art.1

In chapter 1, Theodor Adorno was introduced as a key theorist of the Frankfurt

School. Of all the critical theorists, he has written the most extensively on the topic of music and is perhaps best known for developing, along with Max Horkheimer, the critique of the culture industry. He is a controversial figure for having steadfastly maintained that mass culture, including popular music, affirms the status quo by presenting its products as pleasurable anesthetics, free of internal tensions, that engender passivity as opposed to a critical stance. This view, albeit in modified form, has been adopted by critical pedagogues, and particularly by Giroux. Although Adorno's provocative position on popular culture merits debate, such debate must be situated within the context of his larger critical project: the crusade against all forms of totalizing knowledge through the critical framework of negative dialectics.

This critical framework is potentially valuable to music education because it can function as a counterweight against the tendency of ongoing reification that is particularly strong in formal educational settings. The present chapter attempts to provide a theoretical account of the effects of negative dialectical thinking on Adorno's views of music and lays the foundation for my argument that this way of thinking can be beneficially transplanted to the secondary and post-secondary music classroom. Of central interest here is how two musical categories that are normally considered binary

Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor, ed., Gretel Adorno and Rolf Teidemann (London: Continuum, 1997), 265. Originally published as Asthetische Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970). 48 opposites - form and content - can be mediated, or understood as manifestations of each other. The goal of this study is to investigate how this idea may be incorporated into a critical theory of music education. Although the form <- -> content dialectic is the theme of this chapter, some explanation of ostensibly peripheral ideas is necessary, as most of

Adorno's concepts are highly interdependent.

For example, a summary of the culture industry argument provides an appropriate context for Adorno's thoughts on music. I then situate that argument in the context of negative dialectics by examining passages from Adorno's various writings on aesthetics and drawing on relevant secondary sources. This illustrates the value of Adorno's culture industry argument if considered as an exemplar of dialectical thinking, rather than a set of truth claims. Max Paddison has argued that it is impossible to present Adorno's ideas in linear sequence "without distorting [their] dialectical character."2 Following Paddison's lead, I attempt to draw out some of Adorno's important themes while continually bringing negative dialectics to the forefront of the discussion so as to remind the reader of how these themes are interrelated. This approach will inevitably involve some revisiting of concepts.

Adorno and the Culture Industry

The term "culture industry" was first introduced in 1947 by Adorno and

Horkheimer in Dialectic ofEnlightment? The concept's development, however, can be traced back to some of Adorno's earliest writings from the 1920s.4 Adorno felt that popular music, along with other forms of mass culture, simultaneously fulfills basic

2 Max Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 20. 3 Ibid., 201. 4 Ibid., 26-27. 49 psychological needs for both differentiation and conformity, while turning individuals into slaves of consumerism. It accomplishes this by offering up products that appear different on the surface, rendering them attractive, but that resemble one another at their core to the point of being interchangeable.5

Adorno arrives at these unfavorable conclusions about popular music (with which he controversially associates jazz and folk music) through a process he calls "immanent critique." Sometimes also translated as "immanent analysis," this is an extremely close reading of specific musical works whose structural characteristics are evaluated primarily in terms of their own internally generated criteria. An analysis of the first movement of

Beethoven's Eroica symphony, for example, would seize upon the problematic C# that occurs early on as a much more significant detail than the broken triad that is usually identified as the main thematic material.6 Rather than ascribing a work's significance to the degree to which it conforms to pre-existing criteria, immanent critique locates within the work's structure the "inbuilt moment that combats this mechanism of the familiar and the known." In the case of the Eroica, the C# constitutes this moment because it deviates from the scheme it has set out for itself in a way that problematizes the work's form, thus emphasizing the dynamic struggle between form and content (explained in detail shortly) and challenging the notion of music as static. This method is not simply musical stock taking - what Adorno called "elemental" analysis - but technical analysis that necessarily

5 Theodor W. Adorno, "On Popular Music," in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie, 437-469 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 438. Originally published in English in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1941): 17-48. It was edited for punctuation by Leppert. 6 Theodor W. Adorno, "On the Problem of Musical Analyses" Introduced and translated by Max Paddison, Music Analysis 1, no. 2 (1982): 183. Never previously published. 7 Ibid., 181. 50 involves interpretation.8 Virtually all of the popular music that Adorno analyzes in this way seems to him to be lacking in such "inbuilt moments" that challenge the underlying scheme of the music.

It is important to clarify that Adorno was not simply arguing that the culture industry marketed musical products as commodities. He was chiefly concerned about the effects that such commodification would have on the consciousness of those exposed to the products. The nature of popular music promotes "a system of response mechanisms wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society."9 Adorno saw musical repetition and formulae, dangerously camouflaged as the new and different, pervading popular music at its most basic level. His concern was that the surface differences acted as advertisements for the songs, while the underlying formulae remained masked. This would cause listeners to mistake superficial differences for differences of substance, while remaining unconscious of how easily they "digest" and accept as natural the underlying formulae.

According to Adorno, the standardization that underlies all popular music should not be reduced to an issue of simplicity versus complexity. He notes, for example, that the harmonic vocabulary of much classical music is more limited than that of many Tin

Pan Alley composers who drew on the harmonic language of Ravel, Debussy, and later composers.10 The issue for Adorno is the relation of part to whole: in "good serious music," each specific detail plays an important role in the understanding of the whole inasmuch as the detail "virtually contains the whole" and "at the same time, it is produced

8 Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, trans, and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 24. Originally published as Philosophic derNeuen Musik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1949). 9 Adorno, "On Popular Music," 442. 51 out of the conception of the whole."11 In popular music, however, the general structuring principles (as examples, Adorno cites the thirty-two measure chorus, the average melodic range of a ninth, and the popular dance forms that structure hit songs12) are perceived as

"frozen" - they are so utterly standardized that the whole of a popular piece of music never depends on the specific details that constitute it. If it did, the whole would not easily fit into a formula that could be marketed. Instead, the details of popular music are homogenized as much as the whole, but more subtly. Surface effects are sufficiently differentiated to distract the listener from realizing that "every detail is substitutable [and] serves its function only as a cog in a machine."13

Thus complexity and differentiation exist in popular music not for their own sake, but precisely so that the listener can hear elements that possess such qualities as embellishments of the "underlying scheme" with which she is already familiar. The complex is perceived, in Adorno's words, as "a parodistic distortion of the simple."14

Because mass culture is created against this model, producers can market music that apparently fulfills a double demand of the consumer: that any piece of popular music be

"fundamentally the same as all the other current hits and simultaneously fundamentally different from them."15 This is, of course, an impossibility: in reality what appears different is only pseudo-different or, as Adorno calls it, pseudo-individualized. Pseudo- individualization is the term used to denote those features of mass production that give it

"the halo of free choice."16 Pseudo-individualization causes the listener to "forget" the

11 Ibid., 441. 12 Ibid., 438. 13 Ibid., 440. 14 Ibid., 442. 15 Ibid., 448. 16 Ibid., 445. 52 underlying scheme by distracting her with the appearance of differentiation, resulting in the unconscious acceptance of a standardized template of which she is no longer consciously aware. The illusion of choice is thus ironically intertwined with standardization itself.

This view of popular music and mass culture is largely an outgrowth of the

Marxist theory of commodity fetishism.18 In the case of mass-produced commodities that are not overtly cultural, such as soap, cereal, or cars, a similar pseudo-individualization occurs, manifesting itself as different brands whose external packaging, colors, and trademarks announce ostensibly important differences that entreat consumers to purchase them. Adorno and other critical theorists simply extend this idea (with some modifications) to cultural goods. According to classical Marxist theory, all commodities take on exchange-value, which is distinguished from use-value by being a function of the marketplace.19 Exchange-value is a form of reification - an obj edification of social relations, specifically between worker and capitalist (see chapter 1). This is another way of saying that the world of apparent objects (commodity exchange) masks the social and

subjective world of human relations of which those "objects" are a manifestation.

It is essential to note that although the theory is Marxist, Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues are generally referred to as "neo-Marxist" to distinguish their critical project from "vulgar" or classical Marxism, which, according to Adorno, is simply another totalizing theory that requires debunking. Adorno was concerned about fascism not only in Germany but in the Soviet Bloc, as is evidenced by his concern with "repressive egalitarianism" that often assumes a revolutionary Marxist guise. Adorno, "Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda," in Arato and Gebhart, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, 131. Stuart Sim goes so far as to claim that "the 'totalizing philosophy' that Adorno is seeking most of all to undermine is classical Marxism ...." Stuart Sim, Irony and Crisis: A Critical History of Postmodern Culture (Cambridge, UK: Icon Books, 2002), 37. Because of the determinism associated with dialectical materialism (the philosophy of Orthodox Marxism), Susan Buck-Morss is careful to describe Adorno's "theory" as "dialectical, materialist," with the terms intentionally separated by a comma. Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (Hassocks, UK: The Harvester Press, 1977). 19 Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital," in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, Volume I, 76. 53

Notably, it is the act of purchasing, which exchange-value represents, and not merely the product itself that becomes fetishized in this theory. Adorno argues that to derive pleasure from music's surface qualities is to focus on music's exchange value at

90 the expense of its use value, and this leads to a lack of genuine musical experience.

Importantly, Adorno claims that technology and mass production cause all music, not just popular music, to assume a commodity character. Speaking of the effects of mass production on art music, Adorno states, "The consumer must only know how to deal with 91

[music as a cultural commodity] in order to justify his claim to be a cultivated person."

The difference in the case of popular music is that it is designed for commodification by market forces. Adorno refers to popular culture as "mass culture" because of his conviction that it is administered from above. The culture industry co-opts popular culture and then redistributes it in commodified form, which (according to Adorno) explains its overwhelmingly standardized nature.22

In Adorno's thinking, the fact that commodified music (of which popular music is simply an extreme case) must find a way to distract the listener from its unchanging musical framework is simply a local symptom of capitalism's need to distract the consumer from the unchanging politico-economic framework that underlies society's apparent freedom of choice. Becoming enamored of music's exchange-value is thus associated with the listener's loss of "freedom of choice and responsibility," not only in the cultural arena but in general because such reification tendencies become transferred to 20 Theodor Adorno, "On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," in Essays on Music, 296. Originally published in vol. 14 of Gesammelte Schrifien (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970- 1986), 14-50. 21 Adorno, "The Schema of Mass Culture," in The Culture Industry, 81. Originally published as "Das Schema der Massenkultur," in Adorno's Gesammelte Schrifien III. Dialektik der Aufkldrung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981), 299-335. 22 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 22. all other spheres of life. Hence the unsuspecting listener, whose aural capacity is generally inadequate to escape such exploitation, will be subjected to forms of social control that result from this manipulation of consciousness.24

Needless to say this position has drawn considerable criticism, not only because of the assumption that all mass culture products possess such formulaic frameworks but also because of the structural determinism inherent in the idea that music can act directly on consciousness in a uniform manner. Tia DeNora argues, for example, that Adorno's theory about the regressive or dominating effects of music on listeners is not generalizable to all audiences. Adorno's imagined listeners are bourgeois Europeans organized according to their cognitive listening abilities. They range from "the valued, rational listener who 'grasps' music's structure to the 'emotional' listener who orients to music in search of sensation ,.."25 DeNora observes that because Adorno generalizes listening as a monocultural cognitive activity, he overlooks (intentionally or otherwise) the fact that listening "mediates through one or another cultural schema [and] ... is often linked to status group affiliation." Adorno's theory is not concerned with the various contested meanings that can result from socio-cultural effects on the listening process.

His conclusions about how specific musical works act on consciousness are based on immanent critique, through which he locates meaning within particular musical structures; thus Adorno necessarily makes claims that may not comport with the experiences of all listeners.

Adomo, "On the Fetish Character of Music," 303. Ibid., 296-298. DeNora, After Adorno, 32. Ibid., 28. 55

Denora is suggesting that insofar as ideological influence is presented as unidirectional, Adorno's immanent critique positions music as a pure "text" to be read and deciphered, an object that exerts its effects upon the listener rather than an inseparable part of the dynamic interplay between itself and the listeners who constitute society.27 Drawing on social psychology, she suggests that we shift away from such apparent structuralism and replace the search for "inherent" musical meanings with the idea of "affordance," a term that refers to the ways in which music provides the background conditions or, in a flexible sense, the "structures" that allow it to simultaneously interact with and shape society.28

DeNora is not alone in arguing that Adorno's "structural listening" belongs to an outmoded paradigm. For example, musicologist Tamara Levitz, in discussing the reception of Stravinsky's Le Sacred du Printemps, takes issue with Adorno's tendency to

"situate social meaning, subjectivity, and bodily movement in the music itself." There is an immediate response to such criticism, however. As DeNora herself admits, by focusing on the inseparable relation of music to consciousness and cultural life, Adorno's theorizing "implicitly rejected the dualism of music and society."30 In this sense music for Adorno can never simply be a stand-alone text. Even as his analyses present themselves purely as outcomes of "structural listening," Adorno's entire approach to music problematizes traditional notions of structure.31 Rose Subotnik, who implicates

27 Ibid, 39. 28 Ibid., 46-47. 29 Tamara Levitz, "The Chosen One's Choice," in Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing, ed. Andrew Dell'Antonio, 70-108 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 80. 30 Denora, After Adorno, 151. 31 In fact, as Paddison explains, Adorno uses the term "structure" unconventionally to denote the dynamic relationship between the scheme and that which deviates from it, not "the mere grouping of parts according to traditional formal schemata." And by virtue of this dynamic relationship between form and content, 56

Adorno in her now well known 1986 essay questioning the pre-eminence of "structural listening" in musicology,32 nevertheless reminds us that Adorno saw music as "one element in a cultural structure."33

Inherent meaning, to Adorno, is not unconnected to what is "outside" the music.

Indeed, musical meaning is a dynamic interplay between music's inner structure and its social context. This is a crucial point that will be expanded upon presently, because it is this denial of a split between music and society that permits a critique of musical materials (and by extension, I shall argue, educational materials relating to music) as fixed objects. Adorno's aesthetic theory, being grounded in negative dialectics, ultimately rejects the separation of a musical work from the social conditions that envelop it.

Initially, this may seem at odds with the idea of immanent critique, with its microscopic focus on the materials of the "autonomous" musical work. But this apparent contradiction is best understood in terms of the dialectical idea that the universal can only be known through the particular, a condition which necessitates for Adorno the use of immanent critique. As is explained shortly, immanent critique has a role to play in critical music education, albeit a different one than Adorno envisioned. Before further explanation, however, the theoretical framework upon which the method is based should first be addressed.

structure, for Adorno, has a kind of built-in social content. Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 155- 156. 32 Rose Rosengard Subotnik, "Toward a Deconstruction of Structural Listening," in Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society, 148-176 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). The essay originally appeared in 1986 in a Festschrift for Leonard Meyer. Elsewhere, Subotnik likens Adorno's criticism to "the non-humanistic undertakings of French structuralism." She makes it clear, however, that Adorno did not see himself in this light. "The Historical Structure: Adorno's 'French' Model for the Criticism of Nineteenth-Century Music," 19th-Century Music 2, no. 1 (July, 1978): 59. 33 Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 49. 57

Negative Dialectics

The project that consumed Adorno's career was a sweeping and historically grounded critique of society based on negative dialectics. Negative dialectics generated a way of perceiving art and music that underpinned all of Adorno's writings. The argument is made herein that this underlying concept can provide a compelling basis for a more critical approach to music education. In the remainder of this chapter I outline three interrelated ideas of Adorno's that permeate his writings on aesthetics and attempt to show how these are different manifestations of the principle idea underlying negative dialectics. Following this, a brief discussion of the applicability of this theoretical position to music education is undertaken, illustrated by two concrete examples. A number of further concrete examples are provided in subsequent chapters.

Negative dialectics is a modification of the Hegelian dialectic: the idea that an apparent truth is merely a partial truth (the thesis) that must be understood in terms of its opposite (the antithesis) in order to arrive at a fuller understanding (the synthesis). Unlike

Hegel, however, Adorno feels that no synthesis of thesis and antithesis is ever possible.

The result is what Stuart Sim calls an "endless creation of new contradictions undermining any sense of resolution."34 Adorno explains the basis of negative dialectics with the aphorism that "objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder."35 By this he means that the identity of an object with its corresponding concept is never complete and therefore has always an aspect of untruth. "Yet the appearance of identity is inherent in thought itself... to think is to identify ... The

Sim, Irony and Crisis, 36-37. 35 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 2004) 5. Orginally published as Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1966. 58 semblance and the truth of thought entwine."36 In other words, complete truth is comprised of both the conceptual and the nonconceptual. But since the nonconceptual resists thought, we are left with only the semblance of truth - the incomplete whole that appears complete - and a remainder (that which does not fit into the concept), which we cannot access. This remainder is the left over truth content but, as Adorno explains, this truth content must be perceived as a contradiction because the notion of nonconceptual truth defies logic. Specifically, it disobeys the "norm of adequacy," which is also known as the principle of contradiction that holds that a statement and its negation cannot both be true.37 Therefore complete truth (without which exists falsehood) can only be sought through "nonidentity thinking," a recognition of the contradiction that negates the possibility of (complete) identity between any object and its corresponding concept.

The converse, "identity thinking," occurs when one succumbs to the false belief that the mind is capable of conceptualizing truth in its entirety. The result is that concepts become reified.

Negative dialectics is meant to undermine attempts at constructing a totalizing philosophy or set of absolute truths. In rejecting the possibility of absolute truth, Adorno draws on the writings of Kant, Hegel, and particularly Nietzsche, who recognized the socially-contingent nature of truth.39 Adorno thus feels obliged to resist totalizing

36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 5 38 Ibid. 39 Nietzsche argues, for example, that values that appear fixed are actually determined on the basis of whose interests are best served. 'Master morality' is constructed by powerful elites, who shape it according to their needs, and 'slave morality' is constructed by the oppressed to make their suffering more bearable. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), 203-207. Originally published as Jenseits von Gut undBose: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft (Leipzig: Druck und Verlag von C. G. Naumann, 1886). Stuart Sim notes the extent to which Adorno was indebted to Nietzsche's idea that absolute truths cannot be formulated. Sim, Irony and Crisis, 35. thought. And this can only be done, he posits, by consistently drawing attention to the nonidentity aspect of a given object-concept pair - the surplus truth that exists in the contradiction or negation of the concept. The crux of negative dialectics is the idea that there is no possibility of harmonizing thought (concepts) and reality (objects), therefore truth can only be found in the continual denial of such a harmonization. Adorno's colleague Herbert Marcuse coined the term "one dimensional thinking" to describe this false harmonization, which is based on the flawed assumption that what is real and what is apparent are one and the same. The universe, according to Marcuse, is in actuality two- dimensional in the sense that there is a constant antagonism between what is real or true and what is rational, an antagonism that Western Reason is progressively driven to cover up.40

The reason for this denial is paradoxical. The very nature of reason requires that we remove concepts from their subjective contexts and distance ourselves from them in order to think about them in any meaningful way. But this process of objectification ensures that concepts become reified to some extent. Negative dialectics engages in an endless cycle of negation because of this inescapable fact. Jon Erickson provides a particularly useful way of thinking about this paradox in the figure/ground analogy. The central goal of Critical Theory is to show that the ground against which we perceive figures is not as stable as we generally assume it to be. But figures always require some sort of ground against which they can be perceived. Thus reification is an ongoing, inevitable byproduct of cognition, as it provides a (hopefully) temporary stable ground

Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 123. See also 124-125. 60 for our consciousness by identifying concepts with objective reality so that we can deal with them. Erickson states:

Contemplation ... needs detachment from merely sensual involvement. Thinking as an activity in this sense is a necessary prelude to physical action. If not, then action is simply a response to the stimulus of an ideology that orders the world for you, while purporting to demonstrate that your former ideological ordering is false. ... Contemplation is a distancing that allows one to see the relation of figure and ground; if it were not involved, one would be left immersed in either figure or ground.41 (emphasis added)

Using the figure/ground metaphor, Erickson is simply illustrating Adorno's argument that we cannot do away with the notion of the object because the subject requires it to be aware of its own existence. The two concepts are dialectically intertwined. And the required distancing effect that objectification provides ensures a cyclical relation between reification and our attempts to thwart it. The pedagogical implications of this issue will be discussed in the next chapter.

The Double Meaning of Autonomy

One of the many dichotomies that negative dialectics undermines is the above mentioned idea that art's social content and its intrinsic form are irreconcilable. The reconciliation of these "binary opposite" categories distinguishes Adorno's conception of musical material, in which form and content must be mediated, and it is at the level of musical material that his theorizing can be most usefully applied to music education.

Therefore it is important to understand how these oppo sites work with and through one another at different levels. It will be helpful to begin with an examination of Adorno's use of the word "autonomy," which for him holds a double meaning.

41 Jon Erickson, The Fate of the Object: From Modern Object to Postmodern Sign in Performance, Art, and Poetry (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995), 30. 61

The notion of an autonomous art work is a relatively recent phenomenon. As

Lydia Goehr explains, prior to the late eighteenth century "the idea of something's being done or made was effectively inseparable from the idea of its having been done or made in fulfillment of a designated function."42 Goehr describes how the work concept has taken on a regulative function since its emergence in Western culture, an emergence indicating that it is by no means universal or permanent.43 In the field of music education, some scholars have criticized the view, which was until recently prevalent: that music, as one of the arts, should be conceived of as a collection of autonomous objects as opposed to socially-embedded forms of praxis.44 Adorno's focus on modern works of art would seem on the surface to indicate that he labored under this assumption.45 Theodor Gracyk has in fact made this argument. Indeed, although Adorno argues that the division of labor, in commodifying music, has severed it from its social origins, he equates aesthetic autonomy with "freedom" from these origins, an apparently positive designation.47

42 Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992), 149. 43 Goehr notes that certain ideals that led to the development of the autonomous work concept, such as perfect compliance to the score, are not only recent developments but do not exist in other musical domains such as jazz. Ibid., 99. 44 The most obvious example is David Elliott who, in launching his attack against Reimer's aesthetic position, complained in 1993 that the "official" music education position was "music = objects." David J. Elliott, "Music as Knowledge," in Philosopher, Teacher, Musician: Perspectives on Music Education, ed. Estelle R. Jorgensen, 21-40 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 22. Similarly, Philip Alperson comments critically that the aesthetic viewpoint, which causes us to preclude praxis from a definition of art, seems "natural and commonsensical" in the West. Philip Alperson, "What Should One Expect from a Philosophy of Music Education?" in Jorgensen, Philosopher, Teacher, Musician, 232. 45 There is also Adorno's insistence that it is misguided to translate theory into direct political action. One might erroneously draw a parallel between his apparent separation of theory and practice with the separation of the aesthetic world from the empirical. Russell Berman notes, however, that Adorno's critics often overlook the fact that this "autonomy of theory from practice" must take place "within a dialectical interdependence." Adorno's fear was that unreflective action, which could occur if the poles of theory and action were collapsed, was simply another manifestation of instrumental reason. Russell Berman, "Adorno's Politics" in Adorno: A Critical Reader, ed. Nigel Gibson and Andrew Rubin, 110-131 (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 111, 121-22, 129. Interestingly, critical pedagogue Paolo Freire shares this concern, and similarly condemns practice that is divorced from theory. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 66. 46 Gracyk, "Adorno, Jazz and the Aesthetics of Popular Music," 534. 47 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 23. 62

Few scholars would deny that Adorno was biased by his bourgeois, privileged frame of reference. However, to reduce his theory of aesthetic criticism to one that either champions autonomous art over functional, socially dependent art, or "high" art over

"low," is to overlook a potentially valuable aspect of his theory. Such reduction ignores the fact that Adorno believed the autonomous/socially embedded dichotomy to be incorrect (as well as the product/process dichotomy and several others to be discussed shortly) because it fails to grasp the dialectical nature of art, which becomes apparent when art is viewed historically. Conventionally, autonomy describes art's disengagement from social function. Under this definition, autonomous art is a cultural product devoid of specific ritual (or "cultic") function, although it still exists within a socio-cultural milieu. But Adorno uses the term paradoxically, saying that autonomy can only be recognized in apposition to its "other," which is the particular, socio-cultural meaning that art's new autonomous status has negated. In Aesthetic Theory, he writes:

Art perceived strictly aesthetically is art aesthetically misperceived. Only when art's other is sensed as a primary layer in the experience of art does it become possible to sublimate this layer, to dissolve the thematic bonds, without the autonomy of the artwork becoming a matter of indifference. Art is autonomous and it is not; without what is heterogenous to it, its autonomy eludes it.49

This statement becomes clear in the context of negative dialectics, according to which the truth of art must be located not only through an understanding of what is presented but also through a simultaneous awareness of what it has negated in order to become "Art."

That element is what Adorno calls its "otherness,"50 or the residue of the socio-historical context from which it emerged. It is this dialectical process he refers to when stating that

48 Goehr, Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 149. According to Goehr, the separation actually resulted in a tripartite concept; the modern work of art has been effectively separated from both the creative process and the social function associated with that process 49 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 7-8. 50 Ibid., 8. 63 true art "exists only in relation to its other."51 To perceive a partial truth as a totality is to fall into the trap of identity thinking, which leads to false consciousness; hence pursuing the truth of art, as with anything else, involves negation.

For this reason, Adorno makes it clear that he is not advocating a Kantian

"disinterestedness" that places aesthetics in an unconnected realm, separate from the everyday, empirical world. Some form of disinterestedness is initially necessary because it is the act of distinguishing art from the empirical world that allows us to perceive it "in relation to what it is not."52 However, to stop at the initial point of disinterestedness is to perceive artworks as ahistorical objects unconnected to their particular socio-historical development, and this misses the point of autonomy altogether.53 As the above quotation makes clear, Adorno assigns a trivial meaning to the autonomy that results from such short-sightedness. Placing artworks on a pedestal in the name of "disinterested" aesthetic appreciation "debases" them.54

Out of this disparaging view of a disinterested aesthetic emerges a crucial point: that Adorno submitted high and low art to the same critical scrutiny. This was because in his view they are simply different manifestations of the same thing. This point is easily overlooked in his voluminous and scathing criticisms of popular culture which, the reader will recall, was considered to have been co-opted and administered "from above" in pre- digested form. But his criticism must be understood in context. There are historical and biographical reasons for Adorno's vitriolic attacks on what he saw as the products of the

51 Ibid., 3. 52 Ibid., 9, 15. 53 Goehr uses the term "doubleness" to indicate this idea of a "necessary but irreconcilable opposition" between art's aesthetic and its social character. Lydia Goehr, The Quest for Voice: On Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 14-15. 54 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 15. culture industry. There is even an often overlooked philosophical reason. A brief account of these reasons will help the reader understand why Adorno's acerbic comments on popular culture often overshadow his critical process. Ultimately, and as far as this study is concerned, it is his critical process which has more potential application to music education.

The Culture Industry Argument In Context

Adorno and Horkheimer developed the thrust of the culture industry argument while in exile in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s, where they were influenced by the explosion of mass communications technology and consumerism that took place at that time.55 This, coupled with a rapid expansion of state administration, led them to conclude that the cultural milieu of the United States was susceptible to mass manipulation of consciousness the likes of which had recently occurred in Nazi

Germany.56 For example, Adorno was particularly concerned about the propagandistic use of mass communications technology such as the radio. He had good reason to be, not only because he witnessed President Roosevelt's impressive use of the medium for persuasion,57 but also because of his problematic involvement with the Princeton Radio

Research Project, which was intended "to develop radio for the purposes of propaganda" for the war effort.58

Douglas Kellner, "Adorno and the Dialectics of Mass Culture," in Gibson and Rubin, Adorno: A Critical Reader, 93. 56 Berman, "Adorno's Politics," 118-119. 57 Kellner, "Adorno and the Dialectics of Mass Culture," 93. 58 Andrew Rubin, "The Adorno Files," in Gibson and Rubin, Adorno: A Critical Reader, 176. Apart form the propagandistic goals of the study, Adorno's involvement was problematic because his skepticism of strict empirical methods clashed with the approach of Paul Lazarsfeld, the influential American sociologist with whom Adorno had to work on the project. Adomo's cultural criticism must be understood as a reaction not only to this factor, but also to the "institutional forces" that attempted to curtail his criticism. For example, the FBI monitored, investigated, and censored Adorno during his exile in the

United States.59 The rabid anti-communism that could justify such actions was further proof that the instrumental reason that Adorno and Horkheimer had written about (see chapter 1) was thriving in the United States. In short, Adorno was convinced of the very real possibility of capitalist forces and/or the state using technology to "administer" mass culture in order to rob people of their individuality and autonomy and seduce them into accepting as natural and inevitable whatever state of affairs such powers deemed appropriate.60 Moreover, these concerns had been fostered in an era of Nazism and widespread anti-semitism - phenomena that had been passively welcomed by large numbers of "rational" people. The thought of such bleak occurrences repeating themselves dismayed Adorno to the extent that he over-reacted to all forms of popular culture that bore even the slightest hint of commodification.61

Finally, Adorno's exaggerated statements should be understood in the context of his unusual method of writing. Adorno felt that treatises, formal arguments constructed in such a way as to minimize flaws and convince the reader of the strength of their conclusions, were ideological in the sense that they attempt to "totalize" or to portray the truth as a whole, which is never possible in nonidentity (negative dialectical) thinking.

Hence he intentionally constructed his prose in ways that subvert attempts at summary,

5y Ibid, 173. 60 Kellner, "Adorno and the Dialectics of Mass Culture," 104. 61 Kellner writes, "There is no question but that Adorno has overly one-sided and excessively negative and critical views of both the texts and the audiences of media culture ...." Ibid, 105. 66 generalization or systematizing. Rather than linear argumentation, Adorno adopted an aphoristic essay style that often juxtaposed "mutually contradictory assertions" in an effort to "disrupt normal reading habits and to 'shock' the reader into an active relationship with the text." His intention was that the reader understand his "tersely constructed" statements not as truth claims in their own right, but as representing various perspectives in a constellation of possibilities. As these perspectives must be constantly negotiated, one should eventually get a sense of how contradictory statements can be understood only in terms of one another, as parts of an always incomplete whole.

The Dialectic of Art: Against the High/Low Dichotomy

The context presented above accounts for the polemical tone of Adorno's work, including his work on popular culture. Although it may be tempting to focus on Adorno's championing of "high" art over "low," his theory in fact erases that distinction through the establishment of the dialectic. In Aesthetic Theory (1970),65 Adorno writes:

The idea of freedom, akin to aesthetic autonomy, was shaped by domination, which it universalized. This holds true as well for artworks. The more they freed themselves from external goals, the more completely they determined themselves as their own masters. Because, however, artworks always turn one side toward society, the domination they internalized also radiated externally. Once conscious of this nexus, it is impossible to insist on a critique of the culture industry that draws the line at art.66

As art frees itself from its social function, he appears to be saying, it begins to be controlled by its own rules of internal organization, thus artworks become "their own

Rosengard Subotnik, Developing Vartiations, 53. 63 Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 18. 64 Ibid., 19. 65 Publication dates are misleading in the case of many of Adomo's works. Asthetische Theorie was published posthumously (Adorno died in 1969) from writings spanning a number of years. The quotation that follows is taken from the 1997 translation. 66 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 23. 67 masters." But this results, paradoxically, in a loss of subjective autonomy. The very abstractness that distinguishes autonomous art and enables it to enter a realm ostensibly free of the marketplace is an objective quality that becomes easily reified and vulnerable to commodification. In essence, Adorno is saying that the modern "autonomous" artwork is no more free from reification than the mass-produced cultural commodity. Modern art's abstractness is the result of a historical process through which its autonomy is gained at the expense of its objectification. Adorno saw the culture industry products of the twentieth century as simply the end result of a process that had begun with high art in the previous century.67

Adorno's critique of Wagner exemplifies this idea. Although Adorno considered

Wagner's music to typify "the most advanced stage in the development of music and opera" for its day, Andreas Huyssen points out that Adorno analyzed Wagner's music in order to show that modern music could not progress without simultaneously regressing.

The more Wagner tried to escape the demands of the market for "easy opera" by forcing his audiences to engage with his music, the closer that music came to being commodified, argues Adorno.68 For example, he claims that the calculated emotional impact of

Wagner's orchestration resulted in "beat[ing] his audience into submission," and that this gesture "is structurally isomorphic to the way in which the culture industry treats the consumer."69 Adorno also took offense at Wagner's leitmotiv, which was conceived as an allegorical device but, through constant repetition and because it was "designed to be easily remembered by the forgetful," soon became a form of advertising that would

Andreas Huyssen, "Adorno in Reverse," in Gibson and Rubin, Adorno: A Critical Reader, 43. Ibid., 44. 68 eventually be used for manipulative purposes in Hollywood films.70 In his essay, "On the

Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening," Adorno holds Wagner's compositional techniques in particularly low esteem because repetitiveness and multiple climaxes result in certain passages becoming reified. The easy recognition of certain themes outside the context of the entire composition fetishizes them so that they become like pieces of property.

The case of Wagner is a reminder that Adorno was never suggesting that the culture industry debased art by imposing its commodified products from "outside."

Instead, "art was transformed into its opposite thanks precisely to its emancipation from traditional forms of bourgeois art. In the vortex of commodification," Huyssen states,

"there was never an outside."72 In effect, Adorno locates the birth of the culture industry in the high art of the late nineteenth century.

The Dialectic of Form and Content

Having established that Adorno approached high art and popular culture with similar mistrust because both were susceptible to the same process of commodification, it remains to examine how this process unfolded in Adorno's view. The explanation belies the relationship of form to content, which is key to understanding his aesthetics. For

Adorno, form and content are dialectically related, and the consequences of this idea are far reaching:

70 Ibid., 45. 71 Adomo, "On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening," in Arato and Gebhart, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, 281. 72 Huyssen, "Adorno in Reverse," 49. 73 Ibid, 38. 69

All forms of music ... are sedimented contents. In them survives what is otherwise forgotten and is no longer capable of speaking directly. What once sought refuge inform subsists anonymously inform's persistence, (emphasis added)74

Here, Adorno is saying that the relationship we normally assume between form and content, that of the former containing the latter, masks the historical truth that the two

"categories" must constantly cross over into one another. Musical content seems to represent subjectivity when juxtaposed against the apparently objective backdrop of form. This is true, however, only insofar as the relationship holds for a given moment, but it is not true historically. Once "subjective" content becomes formalized through repetition, over time it begins to function as a device. Hence it takes on an objective character through our collective understanding of it as a formal property and thereby loses its individuality. Adorno refers to this process, through which the particular eventually becomes reified and transformed into the universal, as sedimentation. What is particular about musical content, that which deviates from form, is reflective of the socio- historical circumstances that gave rise to it. And once sedimented into form, content still maintains a kind of presence, albeit one mediated (Adorno's term for this process) by form. "Content," at this later stage can never be known directly, only through negation, as art's "otherness."75

Adorno maintains that what we often assume to be the "purest" musical forms

"can be traced back even in the smallest idiomatic detail to content such as dance."76

Thus modern aesthetic forms contain traces of the particular social occurrences that spawned them (although their "objective" appearance tends to cause us to forget this

74 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 37. 75 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 170. 76 Ibid., 6. 70 fact). But Adorno further extends the argument that particular crosses over into universal by applying it to all music, even the most modern avant-garde works:

Musical analyses ... show that even in those works most diffuse and hostile to repetition, similarities are involved, that many parts correspond with others in terms of shared, distinguishing characteristics, and that it is only through the relation to these elements of identity that the sought-after non-identity is achieved; without sameness of any sort, chaos itself would prevail as something ever-same.77

These shared, distinguishing characteristics are formal parameters that allow content to distinguish itself. Content cannot be perceived as such, Adorno seems to be saying, without form of some kind: logically, a degree of sameness must always be established in order for difference to exist. And it is this necessity that guarantees the specific will always cross over into the general: that something commonly understood as an objective, formal property will emerge out of even the most shockingly new musical configurations.

Since without formal properties art could not become autonomous, content "needed" to sediment for art to renounce its social origins. Yet form appears objective, so new content will always "seek refuge" in form as its foreground, or "subjective" statement. Because the new must reference the conventional to be perceived as new, the successful composition "awaken[s] the content sedimented in the form."78 In this way, form is transformed into content even as content sediments into new forms.

Adorno illustrates this dual process by discussing the history of sonata allegro form. As the sonata form "evolved" from its origins in the eighteenth century through

Beethoven to Brahms, something interesting and (Adorno argues) inevitable occurred. Up to and including Beethoven's early works, development of thematic material was limited to the middle section of the composition and was clearly distinguished from the

77 Ibid., 186. 78 Ibid., 184-85. 71 exposition and recapitulation. However, the number of ways in which the formal parameters could be altered without breaking down is finite. Thus, as the number of compositions increased over time the possibilities for subjective expression decreased.79

Increasing variation was required to enable new content to juxtapose itself against former content that had stultified into convention. To compensate for this problem, "the development - based on variation - unfurl[ed] across the entire sonata."80 By Brahms's time, Adorno writes, development "had already utterly seized possession of the sonata."

This pervasive development of thematic material succeeded in freeing the subjective

"voice" by rejecting the traditional formulae. At the same time, the form was essentially used to create new content, through the stretching of the development section across the expanse of the composition. Of course, tracing this process backward raises the question of whether sonata form can be said to have ever possessed clearly delineated sections at all, and this is precisely Adorno's point in rejecting the notion of forms as fixed or given.

Even though Brahms succeeded in liberating the sonata in this way, however, he was ultimately destined to fail in Adorno's estimation because once development completely saturates a composition, "nothing unthematic remains."82 As Adorno states elsewhere, "differentiation only has any power when it distinguishes itself from what is already established." It is for this reason that modern atonal compositions are not capable of achieving subjective expression through subtle means, as was the case with earlier music. In traditional music, formal parameters, and above all the language of

79 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 47. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., 63. 84 Ibid., 61. tonality itself, were so well established as "objective" backdrops that minimal differentiation was required to achieve expressive (i.e., subjective) effects. In atonal music, however, there is so little to establish itself as background that deviations must be more emphatic and conspicuous, and the largely structural role previously played by intervals is generally taken up by rhythm, "now that the intervals have become mere

Of building blocks and all the experiences accumulated in their differences appear lost."

Adorno refers to this effect as "coarsening," which he considered an inevitable outcome of the "progress" of music, owing to the form/content dialectic we have been discussing.86

By now it should be clear that a process of musical commodification is ongoing and historically inevitable in Adorno's theory.87 For this reason, the modern composer does not enjoy much agency.88 Instead, the musical materials, constantly propelled by the process described above, make strict demands of composers. Adorno considers the emergence of styles such as serialism to be "an 'inevitable' outcome of the historical pressure from within the material.. ."89 Although the emergence of new styles is inevitable, the specific forms they take are not predetermined. For example, Adorno does not consider the twelve-tone technique to be the only possible historical outcome of the

85 Ibid., 60. 86 Ibid., 61. 87 Paddison claims, however, that this sense of determinism is not yet present in Adorno's early (1920s) music criticism. Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 49. 88 Adorno thinks that the artist's "freedom" to work with materials in any way he sees fit is an illusion - a kind of ideology - because freedom is to be found only through working closely with the historically shaped materials that the artist has been handed. "The closer the contact with the material... the freer the artist." Adorno, Reaktion undFortschritt (1930) Briefwechsel (Anhang), 174-175. Quoted in Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 90 (translated by Paddison). 89 Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 84. Paddison notes, however, that Adorno did not consider the twelve-tone technique to be the only possible outcome of the breakdown of tonality. 73 breakdown of tonality.90 Nor does he maintain that the composer has no agency whatsoever. Composers make decisions as to whether and how to maintain the tension between form and content, which is the crucial issue for Adorno because it is this negative tension that allows the critical listener access to the truth content of the artwork in mediated form. As Rubin states, "for Adorno, the autonomy of artworks ultimately possessed a social quality in so far as the socially mediated antagonisms they represented inhered within the works themselves."91 In other words, the dialectical tension between form and content in art is a direct reflection of the tension created by art's struggle to negate its social origins in favor of autonomy. For this reason, and paradoxically, the social dimension of art becomes more important (rather than being canceled out) by its autonomous nature. This is what Adorno appears to mean when he says that "the unsolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent problems of form."92

In Adorno's thinking, works that resolve this dialectical tension are (falsely) affirmative in the sense of presenting themselves as self-contained totalities (i.e., they mask their subjective sides by showing themselves as objects); works that maintain this tension are both negative and emancipatory in that they appear fragmented or shattered, and thus remind us that the appearance of totality is always illusory. For this reason,

Adorno limits what he considers to be "authentic" or emancipatory art to a small number of modern avant-garde pieces that he claims are able, at least temporarily, to stave off commodification because their internal characteristics have sufficient differentiation to allow them to "speak" subjectively without becoming crystallized into formal objects

90 "[E]ven if the tendency is toward the number twelve, its obligatoriness cannot be stringently derived." Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 58. 91 Rubin, "The Adorno Files," 183. 92 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 7. (i.e., commodities). This position, however, has been the basis of considerable criticism.

For as Kellner argues, "by limiting his model of authentic art to those few avant-garde examples of highly negative art, Adorno's model of emancipatory aesthetics is intolerably ascetic and narrow ..." Moreover, Kellner contends that Adorno's tendency to treat mass culture as a rigid, debased category into which emancipatory effects could not possibly penetrate is, ironically, "undialectical."94

Yet these blind spots that affected Adorno's critical analyses of specific works need not have any bearing on a critical music pedagogy based on the central idea underpinning his methods, if we proceed carefully.95 One of the major problems with trying to appropriate Adorno's ideas has already been mentioned. He wrote in an unsystematic manner so as to resist appropriation. As discussed above in regard to his penchant for exaggeration, this unsystematic method is entirely consistent with Critical

Theory's agenda of undermining entrenched systems of thought. Out of this observation comes an interesting hypothesis about Adorno's work. DeNora asks, "Is it perhaps possible that Adorno was less interested in being empirically correct than making a rhetorical point for which musical analysis was a highly useful resource?"96 DeNora offers the insightful idea that

Adorno's analyses are not meant to explain (i.e., to 'tell' the reader) but rather are intended as poetic interventions (to take the reader through a mode of experience, a mode of being conscious of the world). As such, their 'truth value,' like the

93 Kellner, "Adorno and the Dialectics of Mass Culture," 105. 94 Ibid. 95 That is, so long as we resist using negative dialectics to create a totalizing theory of music education. Following Adorno's hope, it should be a constant reminder of the "inevitable insufficiency" of our thoughts. This means critique that refuses to begin from a fixed standpoint. Striving to use negative dialectics in this way may reduce the possibility of swallowing it whole, as it were, but even Adorno acknowledges that his own theorizing is not immune from the dangers of totalizing. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 4-5. 96 DeNora, After Adorno, 31. 75

music they describe, becomes exemplary; their role is to call our attention to the social world in a particular manner ...

This hypothesis casts light on Adorno's culture industry argument by demonstrating the manner in which we might appropriate it: not as a set of empirically verifiable truth statements, but as an example of what is possible. Whether or not a specific musical example cited by Adorno interacts with (as opposed to 'acts upon') listeners to result in ideological effects is beside the point if the critique of the culture industry is viewed in this way.

Toward a Critique of "Objective" Musical Forms

To summarize thus far, focusing on either the high art/low art dichotomy, which

Adorno's own theory discounts, or the sweeping manner in which Adorno condemned almost all popular culture as being ideological, is to miss his most valuable contribution - his dialectical view of art, of which the culture industry argument is merely a powerful exemplar. Adorno's negative dialectics, when applied to art, result in many provocative, interrelated ideas. Among them, the following three points have been addressed: 1) that the (whole) truth of art (and thus music) can only begin to be known through a knowledge of what it negates, 2) that art (and thus music) has a double-character in that it is simultaneously social and autonomous, and 3) that this ambivalence manifests itself through the dialectic of form and content, which holds that the former is simply the latter in sedimented form. For our purposes of proposing a particular kind of critical music pedagogy based on his concept of negative dialectics, the fact that Adorno only

Ibid., 32. considered a small number of western avant-garde musical works to be emancipatory is irrelevant when considering the emancipatory potential of these three ideas.

This critical pedagogy will, for our purposes, focus on the third set of binary terms discussed above, namely, form and content. Understanding the relationships among all of the preceding ideas is necessary, however, in order to grasp the implications of the form/content dialectic. Max Paddison offers a useful way of understanding the relationships among these various opposites in concisely summarizing Adorno's theory of the mediation of nature and history. Nature, for Adorno, is that which appears fixed, immutable, universal and objective, even though it is a historical construct. In this sense nature has a mythical quality. History, however, "refers to that which is dynamic and which changes over time .. ."98 Adorno is interested in the way the two concepts mediate each other, by which he means how history is seen as natural and nature as historical; the terms are understood through their opposites.

Applying this idea to music, we see that when historically conditioned musical materials or systems are perceived as natural, this not only preserves the musical status quo but, through reinforcing the idea of socio-cultural phenomena as static, "conceal [s] the real relations of power within modern society."99 Conventions, musical or otherwise, that are perceived as objective have a socio-cultural history, which means that their origins are subjective. Yet this subjectivity has been forgotten; it has congealed into an apparently objective form that Adorno, borrowing a term from Lukacs and Benjamin, calls "second nature."100

Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 30. Ibid. ' Ibid., 35. 77

Paddison explains how the terms "second nature" and "ideology" are equivalent in the sense that Adorno uses them:

The distinguishing feature of ideology [in Adorno's usage] is that it is to be understood not as a consciously held system of beliefs, but instead as a lived system of values of which we are largely unconscious, which forms our sense of identity, and in relation to which we are normally unable to take a critical and self-reflective position. Ideology understood in this way thus serves to legitimize as natural, universal and unchanging something which is, in a very particularized sense, cultural and historical in origin, and thus subject to change.101

Adorno considers true progress to be a function of music's "ability" to strip away this second nature by demythologizing it: debunking the idea of musical materials and, by extension, social relations as natural.102 (As mentioned above, modern avant-garde music is seen to possess this ability by presenting itself as fragmented, thus resisting its inherent commodification tendencies). Notably, despite his use of the word progress, Adorno's philosophy is not teleological; instead, his view of music history emphasizes disruptions and discontinuities. The "gapless continuum of tranquil development" is seen as an illusion that masks the fragmented reality of art (and music) history. Thus, progress, in

Adorno's sense of the word, is achieved whenever we shatter the illusion of traditional notions of progress, along with their totalizing conceptions of the world. This idea has important implications for the teaching of music history that will be examined in detail in chapter 4.

The demythologizing of second nature renders it (once more) historical, and this is the reverse process that occurs in the nature/history dialectic. The following list of binary pairs, which is by no means exhaustive, expresses this relationship on various levels, some of which have already been discussed:

101 Ibid., 53. 102 Ibid, 92. 103 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 25. 78

History <--> Nature Subject Universal Individual <—> Collective Process <•—> Product Dynamic (Becoming) <--> Static (Being) Expression <--> Technique Autonomous avant-garde art 4--> Commodified art (the art of the culture industry and most autonomous "high" art) Self

This list, in which <--> designates a dialectical relationship, illustrates some of the various ways that Adorno considers the nature/history dialectic to manifest itself. History, in actuality dynamic and subjective, is perceived as nature, which is thought to be static and objective. And this mistake is made because we fall too easily into the trap of believing in the absolute identity of a concept and its object. The conviction that there is no pure objectivity, that every object has its subjective origins in thought, leads Adorno to conclude that, in the realm of aesthetics, the terms subjective and objective "are equivocal," meaning not that the terms are hollow or worthless, but that one cannot exist without the other.105 In his musical analyses, Adorno considers the subject (in the philosophical sense of conscious individuality) to be represented by what is new and differentiated, or what is particular about a piece of music: what individuates it from other music or other musical characteristics. This is juxtaposed with its formal conventions that are collectively understood: what is universal about the music.

The other pairs of terms on this list are also manifestations of the subject/object or nature/history dialectic. For example, process and product cannot really be separated

The concept for this list (and one or two of the elements) was taken from the figure, "Binary Oppositions in Adorno's Philosophy of New Music," Daniel K. L. Chua, "Drifting," in Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Berthold Hoeckner, 1-18 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 3. 105 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 215. because, as discussed above, the social processes that go into a work of music exist in mediated form - as sedimented content - in musical products (hence they are not immediately perceived, if at all). The same can be said of the terms static/dynamic. Static musical characteristics are seen to contribute to the notion that music is objective. For

Adorno, such characteristics are often associated with a preponderance for coloristic effects, such as those used by Stravinsky, that supposedly distract the listener from noticing that there is no substantial differentiation occurring in the music's "actual structure" (and here Adorno's bias toward melodic and harmonic elements at the expense of timbre or rhythm is evident).106 To Adorno's way of thinking, the manipulation of technique for shocking or emotional effects is no substitute for authentic expression

(recall his criticisms of Wagner). Conversely, music that expresses itself authentically is seen as dynamic in that it portrays the struggle between form and content faithfully, without resorting to the manipulation of "surface" techniques such as timbre, a situation that can only lead to fetishizing. Whether we agree with these judgments or not, if we accept for the sake of argument that static musical features may constitute an example of fetish characteristics, the crucial point is that they can only be revealed as fetish characteristics through an understanding of the dynamic features that they have negated.

And the negation of these features is only perceptible when examining the concrete

(static) features that are present.

This raises an interesting issue. Adorno's primary position is that (authentic) modern music has a critical nature in that it is able to express its own internal conflicts in a manner that enables thoughtful listeners to adopt a critical stance toward society. Yet

Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 128. Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetic of Music, 100. 80 beyond this his dialectical framework insists that phenomena that present themselves ideologically can be read critically and that it is precisely through the appearance of ideology that the critical can be realized. In this sense an ideological phenomenon

"possesses" a hidden critical component - that which the appearance of total truth has negated, which requires decoding. Miriam Bratu Hansen uses this argument to (partially) reconcile Adorno's culture industry argument with postmodernists who claim its "thesis of total manipulation and delusion" is overly pessimistic and discounts any notion of critical popular culture. Hansen states, "The reified idiom of mass-cultural products is, after all, also the condition of their critical readability."109

This critical readability results from the total interdependence of the binary pairs of terms in Adorno's "system" of thought. One can consider the dialectical relationship of

'identity <—> nonidentity' to be superimposed onto the above list of terms because it functions as a lens through which other binary relationships can be perceived. The terms on the left hand side of the list (subject, dynamic, process, etc.) should not be mistakenly assigned positive values at the expense of the terms on the right: only when both poles are continuously negotiated (for example, when we understand process as the negation of product and vice-versa) can critical thought subsist. Identity thinking occurs whenever one side or the other is allowed to gain the upper hand. Buck-Morss explains:

If in thinking about reality the (reified) object [is] allowed to dominate the subject, the result [is] the reification of consciousness and the passive acceptance of the status quo; if the subject dominate[s] the object, the result [is] domination of nature and the ideological justification of the status quo. Only by keeping the

Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Mass Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, Kracauer," in The Actuality of Adorno: Critical Essays on Adorno and the Postmodern, ed. Max Pensky, 83-111 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 87 81

argument circling in perpetual motion [can] thought escape compromising with its revolutionary goal.

In other words, negative dialectics functions as a counterweight to traditional reason. We must acknowledge that objective reality is not what it seems and we should endeavor to understand it through reason. But whenever we fall into the trap of believing that we have fully accomplished this task (that our concepts of reality are congruent with the objects that constitute it) we are in no better a position than when we started. Nonidentity thinking, in light of this problem, maintains a perpetual critical motion by refusing to acknowledge the validity of a concept in the absence of its negation. Thus 'subject <--> object,' 'history 4- -> nature,' 'particular <- -> universal' and all of their attendant interrelated concepts must be simultaneously grasped through one another in order to maintain this critical tension.

The final item on the list, 'self 4- -> world (of forms),' refers to the dialectical relationship between musical forms and the subjective origins (within particular socio- historical settings) that their objective appearance negates. This relationship is of particular importance to music education since the formalization of music instruction has inevitably led to the predominance of the objective pole, whereby not only musical forms but compositional methods, performance practices, and theoretical frameworks are often taken for granted and accepted as second nature. Moreover, the teaching methods and approaches used to reify these forms have themselves become reified, further exacerbating the problem. We began with Adorno's argument that music can never present its entire truth in self-contained form, and that we must therefore look for traces of what it has negated to remind ourselves that it is not simply autonomous in the

110 Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 186-187. 82 traditional sense of the word. By extension, the same argument applies to musical forms, pedagogical practices, and music education theories, all of which are not natural, but rather "second nature." The dynamic tension between form and content reveals how forms that appear fixed or given are anything but. Conversely, this tension also reveals that the notion of "subjective freedom," the idea that one can avoid formalization or conventions, is equally ideological. These two key ideas are elaborated on throughout this study.

The Emancipatory Potential of Adorno's Theory of Form

Paddison makes the case that there is a critical theory of form implicit in Adorno's arguments centering on the form/content dialectic:

... Adorno's critical theory of form deals in dynamic, dialectical categories and not in invariants. That is to say, apparently static formal norms are seen as part of a constantly shifting, historically changing musical material, and this (that is, the material) is to be found only in the dynamic context of the individual musical work ... the barest geometry of Adorno's theory of form is the dialectical interaction of universal and particular, mediated within the structure of the work 111

What is referred to here as a critical theory of form is never articulated as such in

Adorno's writings. Paddison has simply honed in on the crucial implication of Adorno's form/content dialectic, wherein Adorno repeatedly claims that because form mediates content, it should not be perceived as simply an "arrangement of pregiven elements" or something "superimposed" on a work.112 Hence, to understand form dialectically, as the historical sedimentation of content, is to problematize the standard conception of form as static. In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno states, "It is astonishing ... how little aesthetics has

111 Max Paddison, "Immanent Critique or Musical Stocktaking?" in Gibson and Rubin, Adorno: A Critical Reader, 225. 112 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 187, 188. 83 reflected on the category of form, how much it... has been assumed to be unproblematically given ...113 Elsewhere he states:

Material is not natural material even if it appears so to artists; rather, it is thoroughly historical. Its supposedly sovereign position is the result of the collapse of every ontology of art, which has in turn affected the materials ...IH

Adorno is saying here that the artist's continuous struggle to differentiate material, over time, results in saturation points at which style categories emerge and formerly subjective content becomes formalized and is consequently wrongly perceived as independent. To examine the situation conversely, understanding the process of sedimentation through which content takes on the appearance of form fulfils a primary goal of Critical Theory: correcting false or illusory ways of conceiving socially constructed phenomena as concrete, universal, or natural. According to Paddison, such socially preformed phenomena are not limited to musical forms, in the strictest sense, but include "genres, formal types, tonal systems and schemata, tuning systems, style systems, [and] compositional techniques."115

The assertion that formal musical types, tonal systems and the like are social constructions should not surprise anyone in this day and age. Notwithstanding this, it has taken a remarkably long time for musical authorities to question the seemingly fixed nature of musical materials. Speaking of Hindemith's extremely conservative theory of harmony, which was "founded on a vision of music as the embodiment of static, immutable and universal truths rooted in the eternal laws of nature," Paddison asserts:

That such 'traditional' and relatively unreflective conceptions of artistic material ... should have survived so long into the twentieth century is in itself surprising, in that the view that the material of music is of purely natural origin can be

113 Ibid., 185. 114 Ibid., 195. 115 Paddison, "Immanent Critique or Musical Stocktaking?" 224. 84

discounted as soon as any sophisticated referential system - like tonality - is examined and its apparently 'natural' characteristics stand revealed as being in fact highly contrived. In a mode of art as dependent on technical means and technology as music, practically everything can be seen to be culturally 'pre formed' in some way - for example, tuning systems, instrument construction, and the demands and limitations of notational systems.116

Not surprisingly, Hindemith's concept of harmony based on natural laws was targeted for criticism by Adorno. Although Paddison notes that opposition to the idea of musical materials as given or natural existed prior to Adorno's initial arguments on the subject in the 1920s,118 Adorno's contribution was to describe how unchecked reification masks the subjective aspect of formal musical properties and leads to this misperception.

The Role of Immanent Critique in Critical Music Education

It is now time to revisit the concept of immanent critique, mentioned briefly at the outset of this chapter, in order to fashion an important link between Adorno's thought and a critical approach to music education. In applying negative dialectical thinking to musical critique, Adorno found that the social origins of forms could not be located through comparative analysis, but only through the analysis of individual works. This is because the obj edification process causes individual differences to become glossed over in favor of common models that emerge out of said works.119 This is the reason for his insistence that works be evaluated based on their own internal consistency (or lack thereof). He explains, using Schenkerian analysis as an example:

[If] you examine the difference between the styles of Mozart and Haydn, then you will not expect to discover this difference in general stylistic models and characteristics of the formal layout... [y]ou will have to resort instead to

Paddision, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 68-69. Ibid., 67-68. Ibid., 69. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 24. 85

examining small but decisive features - little physiognomic characteristics - in the way the themes themselves are constructed, features which, for Schenker, are of mere secondary importance but which make all the difference and constitute, in fact, the difference between Haydn and Mozart. ... What constitutes the essence, or 'Being' of the composition is for Schenker more or less its very abstractness, in fact, and the individual moments through which the composition materializes and becomes concrete are reduced by him to the merely accidental and nonessential. Thus such a concept of analysis intrinsically misses the mark ...

Adorno's point is that because universal categories, such as formal musical types or style classifications, only ever manifest themselves in concrete terms in the individual works from which they emerged, "analysis must be immanent."121 By imposing a set of external criteria that derived itself from the music of a particular historical moment (that of

Beethoven), Schenkerian analysis obliterates any particular aspects of musical works that do not possess those common characteristics that led to the development of its criteria (In this case the main criterion is the Fundamental Line). Thus, in Adorno's example, the stylistic differences between Mozart and Haydn become obliterated since they manifest themselves in ways that are not subject to a reductionist type of analysis that is based on a set of externally generated criteria. Adorno notes that, for the same reason, Schenker's method is inadequate to deal with Debussy's music. Schenker seemed unaware that "in

Debussy's case, there are criteria for inner consistency and musical cohesion which are entirely different from what he called the Fundamental Line." In this way, any analysis that does not allow specific works of music to "speak for themselves" risks imposing norms that emerged historically out of one set of particular works onto works that do not share the same socio-historical origins. This is what Adorno means when he says that

Adorno, "On the Problem of Musical Analyses," 174. Ibid., 175. Ibid., 174. Ibid., 175. Schenkerian analysis "is, in a certain sense legitimate" for Beethoven but not for Haydn or Debussy.124

Herein lies the value of immanent critique. Although the interpretations of specific musical works resulting from Adorno's application of this method may be called into question, the concept at its core, the paradoxical notion that forms only ever manifest themselves in the particularity of specific musical works, can be valuably applied to demythologize those forms. Some authors seem to infer that immanent critique, because it focuses on the specific, internal workings of a phenomenon, seeks to divorce our understanding of the phenomenon from its larger political and historical context. For example, Zavarzedeh and Morton, speaking of its application in textual studies, state that

"immanent critique is basically an ahistorical and formalist mode of understanding that accepts that which already exists."125 Either the authors or those who practice immanent critique in this manner have clearly misunderstood Adorno's intent, which is to unveil particular aberrations that will cause us to question the "giveness" of categories and thus reveal their socially constructed nature, with all attendant historical and political implications. As Adorno and Horkheimer explain in Dialectic of Enlightenment:

What many individual things have in common, or what constantly recurs in one individual thing, needs not be more stable, eternal, or deep than the particular. The scale of categories is not the same as that of significance. ... Classification is a condition of knowledge, not knowledge itself, and knowledge in turn dissolves classification.126

Not only should musical forms (in the most general sense) be demythologized using this approach, but demythologization can and should be extended to the forms

Zavarzedeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 180. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 182. 87 through which music teaching occurs - theories and methods of music pedagogy.

Paddison states:

[Formal] categories, while identifiable at an abstract level of universality for purposes of theoretical discussion, are only really present as mediated in concrete material terms within the particularity of the individual work. This is not to say, however, that these mediated, material categories do not also function as norms of compositional practice at any particular historical period, and thereby acquire a certain abstract currency (and indeed, the effect of academic compositional exercises and training in the process of ensuring that such norms are disseminated and internalized ... should also not be underestimated). What it does imply, nevertheless, is that the manifestation of these norms as compositional material is in individual works, and that the authentic work (in Adorno's terms) engages with them critically as material categories in a state of flux and not as static, abstract norms to be accepted unquestioningly}21 (emphasis added)

This is the central idea of immanent critique: that an examination of the particular can unveil the mediated content that we cannot perceive when faced only with the abstract.

Thus, the false objectivity of a phenomenon can only be revealed from within it. As

Paddison states, "For Adorno, truth lies in the particular which evades the universalizing tendency of conceptual thought." The phenomenon whose false objectivity we are currently interested in uncovering is music education but, as Susan Buck-Morss explains,

Adorno's original target was idealist philosophy; music came later. A brief discussion of the socio-political roots of negative dialectics may now help to illustrate the adaptation of immanent critique being proposed here.1

For Adorno, history is not "the rational unfolding of truth" as Hegel had believed.130 Hence the history/nature dialectic can never be synthesized: myth and rationality are irreconcilable. Buck-Morss, in The Origin of Negative Dialectics, shows the evolution of Adorno's viewpoint by contrasting it with that of Lukacs, whose Marxist

127 Paddison, "Immanent Critique or Musical Stocktaking?" 226. 128 Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 15. 129 Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 36. 130 Ibid., 47. 88 writings only marginally predated the former's work. For Lukacs, "criticism of the present became transformed into a messianic hope for the future: the proletarian revolution would reestablish the lost totality whose passing had been the source of... cultural despair."131 The key difference between Lukacs's Hegelian dialectics and

Adorno's alternative position can be seen in the fact that Adorno never posits a revolutionary subject in any of his writings. Not only does this distinguish his neo-

Marxism from vulgar or orthodox Marxism, but it explains his negative dialectics in political terms.132 False consciousness that arises from reification and the consequent acceptance of second nature cannot be reversed into a "correct" subjective consciousness.

Since "correct" consciousness, i.e., truth, can only exist in mediated form, this explains why Adorno never "identified correct consciousness with the subjective viewpoint of a collective revolutionary class."133 To do so would imply that progress toward a point of unification, or synthesis, is possible. But Adorno held that any such apparent synthesis would be illusory, simply a case of re-mythologizing.

This sounds like relativism, which it in fact is; but it is not the sort of relativism that dissolves the subject-object relationship so that only subjectivism remains. For

Adorno, objective truth exists, but only in an understanding of "the concrete process in which subject and object mutually determine and alter each other."134 In this sense, historical relativism, rather than depriving a phenomenon of meaning, actually

131 Ibid., 46. 132 Although Lukacs is considered one of the founders of Western Marxism, Buck-Morss notes that his position shifted back toward orthodox Marxism later in life, culminating in a public renunciation of History and Class Consciousness under pressure from the Communist Party. Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 30. 133 Ibid., 47. 134 Adorno, "Uber Mannheims Wissenssoziologie," 1947(7), unpublished essay, Frankfurt, Adorno Estate, 6. Cited in Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 51. 89 determines its meaning.135 The truth of a phenomenon is simultaneously the meaning it presents to us, as well as its various historical meanings as they are perceived in the present through the concrete particularity of the phenomenon in question. History mediates phenomena, such as musical works, and causes their meaning to "decay."

Historical decay is simply another term for "otherness" - the historical stripping away of meaning. This is evidenced in music by the fate of the diminished seventh chord, for example, which Paddison cites both Schoenberg and Ernst Bloch discussing as evidence that this concept influenced Adorno's thought. The chord, originally used to express an impressive range of emotions, over time became "sentimental and banal."136 Thus the meaning of a musical work and, by extension, any phenomenon, is determined in the present through an analysis of its concrete particularity, through which its historical decay is revealed. History, in negative dialectics, is only relevant "as it manifests] itself as 'inner history' within the present phenomenon."137

Some Implications

What all of this implies, to speak in concrete terms, is that if we wish to expose the gaps between music as formally taught (second nature) and music as originally experienced (first nature) we cannot simply incorporate one into the other in an attempt at synthesis. Any synthesis leads back to myth. To expose these gaps critically, we must

"focus on history as it appear[s] in concrete configurations within the [musical or educational] phenomena."138 Actions such as including popular music, learner-centered

135 Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 51. 136 Paddison, Adorno 's Aesthetics of Music, 75. 137 Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 51. 138 Ibid., 51-52. 90 teaching approaches, informal learning techniques, aural/oral instruction, alternative methods of tonal organization, or alternative nomenclature will not by themselves guarantee any critical understanding, i.e., these actions will not accomplish the task of demythologizing. Two brief examples will suffice to illustrate this point. First, introducing an alternative pitch system into the classroom would do nothing to reveal to students how tonality came to dominate our thinking as a fixed, objective phenomenon.

Consequently, the alternative system would inevitably take on an objective character of its own, of which students would likely remain unaware.

To take another example, rather than simply focusing on musical process in an attempt to redress an overemphasis on product, a more critical music education would strive to expose the reified nature of musical products. This would require a close, critical engagement with them as products in an attempt to unveil the processes that their reification masks. Rather than encouraging the false perception that either process or product may be dispensable, this approach recognizes their necessary co-dependence.

Lucy Green summarizes the product <- -> process dialectic wonderfully:

In reality, any creative process results in an end product, and people learn about the process of music-making by creating and developing that product. Self- expression is not one-dimensional, but involves the creation of an alienated object in which individuals see, or hear, themselves and their work reflected, an object whose very separateness from us is the source of our relation to it. (emphasis added)

Green's insistence on music as a "necessarily alienated object"140 is a crucial point that is taken up in detail in the next chapter. If we deny the objective qualities that are present in the process of creating music, we mask the perpetual objectification (through historical sedimentation, described above) that occurs and risk portraying music making (or

139 Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 128. 140 Ibid., 129. 91 listening) as a purely subjective activity, free from rules or conventions. Failure to acknowledge that "all music is historical and always therefore has rules and conventions"141 results in forcing music's objective qualities underground, where, by virtue of their invisibility, they exert ideological influence.

This crucial yet subtle point is apparently overlooked by critically minded music educator-scholars such as Wayne Bowman, for example. Bowman holds the critical view that we must unmask the apparent "inertness and stability" of art music.142 However, his proposals for doing so locate musical meaning entirely at the subjective pole of the dialectic. He states:

It is pointless to attempt to define music in terms of characteristics of the sound itself, of consonance, of tonality, of pattern, or of structural unity. ... Music is a result of my willingness that it be so.143

Bowman's assertion that musical meaning is inextricably tied to the social realm is at odds with his unwillingness to concede that social conventions, such as consonance, tonality, or pattern, play a prominent role in the construction of (individual) musical meaning. If that role is often ideological, that is all the more reason to acknowledge it.

His claim that "music is a result of my willingness that it be so" implies that, as a subjective listener, Bowman is free to construct musical meaning in any way that he likes, uninfluenced by the ideological power of musical conventions. The notion that he is completely free to do this is, of course, incorrect. As Adorno insists, "universals such as genres are as indispensable as they are confining."144

141 Ibid., 127. 142 Bowman, "Sound, Sociality, and Music," 66. 143 Ibid., 53. 144 Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7: Asthetische Theorie, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970/1972), 304, cited in Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 155 (Paddison's translation). Green identifies an excellent example of this polarizing tendency in "creative music," an educational movement that encourages children to compose, improvise, and/or perform "freely." This apparent freedom is purported to result from a lack of knowledge of any rules or stylistic constraints.145 Such freedom is completely illusory, however, because freedom is impossible in the absence of constraint. "Creative music" only succeeds in creating a false dichotomy between subjective expression and objective conventions, and since students are only capable of expressing themselves within the confines of what they have learned, the absence of explicit categories and rules leaves only tacit conventions in their wake.146 These tacit conventions, to quote Adorno, form a

"predetermined reality" of which students are unaware and within which "freedom becomes an empty claim."147

Green is not opposed to this teaching method per se.148 Her objection is to the ideological notion of subjective freedom that easily becomes attached to it, if one is not careful. As with creative writing courses that promote the idea of "knowledge that is

'naturally' derived by the student from his or her unmediated contact with the world,"149 the risk in the case of "creative music" is that students will naively assume they are expressing themselves musically in a way that is unencumbered by the naturalized conventions to which they have assimilated. Yet, as will be discussed in the following chapters, there are social, historical, and political agendas connected to the "natural"

Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 126. 146 Ibid., 126-127. 147 Adomo, "Commitment," trans. Francis McDonagh, in Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukacs, Aesthetics and Politics, 177-195 (New York: Verso, 2007), 180. Originally published in Noten zur Literatur II and /// (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1961 and 1965). 148 Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 129. 149 Zavarzadeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 162. 93 ways we conceive of music and such connections will remain unclear so long as students believe they are expressing themselves (or listening to music) in an unmediated way.

It is hoped that this necessary mediation can be revealed through the approach proposed here, by which forms that mediate musical perception are subjected to a kind of immanent critique. Immanent critique is based on the principle that the critical negation of a phenomenon can only be brought about through an examination of its concrete particularity. This examination reveals particular aspects that are then juxtaposed with the phenomenon's general or categorical aspects in order that the tension between these two realms might be exposed. The "microscopic gaze" is a technique that Adorno adapted from Benjamin for this purpose. It seeks out the unusual, unschematic, disruptive qualities that are present in seemingly insignificant, atypical details. "As a tool for philosophical cognition, [this technique] provides a means for making the very particularity of the object release a significance which dissolve[s] its reified appearance

«150

Reification ceases the moment the perceiver realizes that the particular is not simply a case of the general, but that its significance lies "in its contingency rather than its universality."151 This technique can be adapted to both the teaching of musical materials at the secondary level and the teaching of music instruction methods at the post- secondary level. Since musical forms (in the broadest possible sense) and music pedagogy forms (specific methods, approaches, and theories) have all become reified to varying degrees, they can serve as objects of immanent critique, through which their

Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 74. 1 Ibid., 76. 94 reified nature will hopefully be exposed. The remainder of this study will be devoted to exploring this possibility. 95

CHAPTER THREE THE PERPETUAL CYCLE OF REIFICATION: MUSIC, EDUCATION, AND FROZEN METAPHORS

The constant attempt to translate or transform the mediated into the unmediated always ends up concentrating on the medium itself.1

This chapter is concerned with reification, and discusses a particularly helpful concept for understanding its effects on musical understanding: the frozen metaphor.

Although it is defined in Marxist discourse as "an extreme form of alienation induced by commodity fetishism,"2 the term reification is used here in the more general sense, meaning the treating of an abstract idea as concrete or material,3 thus limiting economic overtones to Marx's original term, "commodification." Jon Erickson gives perhaps the most lucid definition of reification: "what has become habitual in perception and therefore takes on the semblance of something that has always been true."4 Through a discussion of the inevitability of reification, the first section of this chapter will explain in more detail the rationale for placing form (in the broadest possible sense of the term) at the heart of a model of critical music education. Following this will be a discussion of metaphor theory in which the notion of the frozen metaphor is used to illuminate the problem of reified linguistic and semiotic frameworks in music education. The analogy is then extended to examples of music itself, as the argument is presented that musical understanding is shaped by metaphors of which we are often unaware. Finally, through a case study, some pedagogical implications of reified forms are addressed. This example

1 Erickson, Fate of the Object, 25. 2 Macey, Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, s.v. "refication." 3 The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th Ed., defines reify as: "to convert (a concept, etc.) mentally into a thing." 4 Erickson, Fate of the Object, 21-22. 96 shows that reification can only be resisted, paradoxically, by drawing attention to the necessary existence of such forms.

The Inescapability of Reification

Why should music educators focus on the forms of music and music instruction as the site of immanent critique? One reason is that no matter what music is chosen for study, its incorporation into institutional settings will necessarily result in students' understanding being mediated by formal categories and nomenclature. Therefore our various nomenclatures, methods of analysis, and of instruction - both newly developing and extant - should be critically examined in order to reveal and consequently retard the process of re-mythologizing that is bound to occur as we redress the imbalance between the reified ideas of formal music education and the notion of music as "naturally" experienced. The reason why some amount of re-mythologizing must always occur is that reification is an unavoidable byproduct of teaching or learning. Adorno developed his concept of immanent critique out of respect for the fact that reification is inevitable within the practices of criticism, analysis, and theorizing. It follows that teaching and learning should be added to this list since reification is essential for conceptualizing. As we have seen, the central idea of negative dialectics is based on this paradoxical notion.

Erickson explains that

reification of an idea is inevitable if we give it a name. Thus all concepts, such as history, technology, material, society, language, and even reification itself, are reified the moment they are used. They have to be, otherwise the very structure of communication of these ideas breaks down under endless regressions of contextualization, generally unaccomplishable due to language's arbitrary relation to things. So reification per se is not the problem. The problem is our loss of control over its almost independent development.. .5

5 Ibid., 203. 97

Recall from chapter 1 that reification leads to a false sense of objectivity because it causes one to lose sight of the subjective origins of an idea. Yet perceiving an abstract idea as "fixed" by silencing the multiplicity of particular meanings historically associated with the term that denotes it is essential for that term to have any use value for us. "To call into question consistently and constantly the nature of the words we use can in the end only reduce our tasks to silence."6 It follows that some amount of reification is unavoidable in teaching or learning because language plays such a prominent role in those activities.

As was noted in the last chapter, reification paradoxically provides the distancing effect that allows ideology to be recognized. It is therefore imperative to distinguish between objects as "static things-in-themselves" (an incorrect notion, according to the argument being deployed here) and the process of objectification as an aspect of ongoing consciousness that enables us to perceive the illusory nature of "things-in-themselves."7

We can attempt to control the former only through an awareness of the latter. The conviction that reification is not only inevitable but redeems us from a world of paralyzing subjectivity is crystallized in the opening quotation of this chapter. Whenever attempts have been made to dispel illusion or ideology, the result is never unmediated access to the truth but, rather, an emphasis on the medium that filters and shapes our understanding, as Derrida's and Foucault's theories demonstrate with regard to the importance of language. Similarly, Erickson shows that in the modern history of visual art, the shift from representational to increasingly abstract was an attempt to maintain the semantic richness of the art object by increasingly calling attention to its formal

6 Ibid., 21. 7 Ibid., 4. properties, which mediate our understanding of it (and which representational art downplays, perpetuating the illusion that no mediation takes place).8 In like manner, I propose that critical music educators should focus on the forms of both music and music pedagogy as a way of calling attention to the instability of the ground against which we encourage students to perceive figures (i.e., musical ideas) in music education. In other words, we should endeavor to make our "frames" the objects of our attention.

School as the New Culture Industry

The relation between reification and language/consciousness demonstrates that the former is not merely, as Lukacs claims, "the necessary immediate reality of every person living in capitalist society,"9 but that it is in fact a necessary part of life in any society and that "to eliminate reification altogether is a specious aim."10 Drawing on this idea, I would argue that schools are places where reification is particularly unavoidable.

After all, educators and learners must constantly objectify aspects of the world in order to make sense of it. And the technologically advanced state of formal education in highly industrialized societies accelerates this process. This is because technology, and in particular the technology of the written and printed word, which is paramount to formal education, promotes abstraction and objectification.

Evidence for this claim is abundant in the work of Walter Ong (1970, 1977), who argues that the transformation of consciousness that enabled Enlightenment thinking to occur was predicated on "the technological development of the word" from oral to visual

8 Ibid., 13, 100. 9 Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968), 197. Cited in Erickson, Fate of the Object, 20. 10 Ibid., 22. 99 formats. Ong's central thesis is that visual cultures are more alienated than oral.

Arguing that sight is a distancing sense, he maintains, following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that hearing is not really capable of dissecting in the way that sight is. Although sound is fleeting, what it conveys to the listener at any given instant is simultaneous, whereas sight presents surfaces, but only those in front of the seer.12 The result is that sight, "despite the fact that it is seemingly more independent of time than sound," can only convey actuality

"in a succession of 'fixes.'"13 The distancing effect of the written word is best summarized by Ong himself:

Except for a small corps of highly trained writers, most persons could get into writing few if any of the complicated and nuanced meanings they regularly convey orally. One reason is evident: the spoken word is part of present actuality and has its meaning established by the total situation in which it comes into being. Context for the spoken word is simply present, centered in the person speaking and the one or ones to whom he addresses himself and to whom he is related existentially in terms of the circumambient actuality. But the meaning caught in writing comes provided with no such present circumambient actuality ...14

To highlight the distancing effect of writing, one need only consider that there is no truly collective noun for readers that is the equivalent of "audience" for listeners. The term

"readership" does not denote a group activity, since text decoding is an individual enterprise. Thus "direct communication by script is impossible." Ripped from its immediate context, the written word cannot possibly convey the rich particularity of that context and becomes instantly susceptible to reification. Ong refers to the distancing effect of the written word as "alienation" or "cleavage" but, like Erickson, he is quick to

11 Walter J. Ong, S.J., Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 47. 12 Walter J. Ong, S.J., The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 128-129. 13 Ibid. 14 Ong, Interfaces of the Word, 56. 15 Ibid., 58. 16 Ibid., 80. 100 point out that without such alienation, "the evolution of human consciousness would be

...unthinkable."17

Alienation becomes intensified with moveable type. The invention of print made it possible for a teacher to refer to a specific point on a specific page in reference to a passage, something that could not have occurred when students had used manuscripts owing to differences in folio size and the many idiosyncrasies of script.18 The result was a tendency to think of words (and the concepts they denote) more as objects because they increasingly inhabited fixed positions. For example, the index, which was virtually useless in manuscript culture, became a "highly effective and widespread retrieval device" in print culture, promoting the idea that words are not necessarily tied to their verbal origins.19 Soon the "collections of sayings" that had been preserved in the Middle

Ages and early Renaissance gave way to encyclopedias of "facts." Ong points out that facts "tend to be regarded as physical objects available without any reference to verbalization - as 'facts' in fact never are."20 Ong's ideas here seem indebted to Marshall

McLuhan, his thesis advisor, who wrote in 1962 that "typography tended to alter language from a means of perception and exploration to a portable commodity."

Although the written and typed word is further removed from present actuality than the spoken, that we tend to assume the reverse is evidence of the reification that

Ibid., 47. Erickson similarly holds alienation to be indispensable: "One cannot completely separate the notions of autonomy and alienation, as they are to be discerned in a figure-ground relation to one another. One finds elements of one's freedom within experiential and ideological contradiction, and the first effect of this contradiction is alienation. But through the distancing process of objectifying the contradiction one can turn alienation into a feeling of autonomy." Erickson, Fate of the Object, 39. 18 Ong, Interfaces of the Word, 88. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Marshal McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), 161. 101 occurs once words have been abstracted from their oral sources and objectified on the page (or the computer screen, as may now be the case). Ong states:

It seems offensively banal to note that written or printed 'words' are only codes to enable properly informed and skilled persons to reconstruct real words in externalized sound or in their auditory imaginations. However, many if not most persons in technological cultures are strongly conditioned to think unreflectively just the opposite, to assume that the printed word is the real word, and that the spoken word is inconsequential. Permanent unreality is more plausible and comforting than reality that is transient.22

Of course, oral instruction and oral/aural testing comprise a considerable part of formal schooling for many students. But the written or printed word is certainly held in higher esteem. Consider the importance of note-taking, final examinations, written reports, permanent records, transcripts, essays, and the central role that text books play in most courses, not to mention visual teaching aids such as Power Point and the recent appearance of "online" courses in which students need never speak or listen to a teacher or classmate and thus need not participate in "real time." One can safely conclude that the special emphasis that schools place on the printed word makes them more likely to induce the reification of ideas at an accelerated rate.

It may be helpful to think of schools in the same way that Erickson describes certain artists' thoughts on art galleries. Placing an object in a space for contemplation (a gallery) is often considered a form of commodification, as it conditions the viewer to consume the object. Robert Smithson, the minimalist artist who is best known for designating geographical sites as art in reaction to the gallery system, refers to art displayed in galleries as "ineffective, abstracted, safe and politically lobotomized."24 One

22 Ong, Interfaces of the Word, 21. 23 Erickson, The Fate of the Object, 108-109. 24 Robert Smithson, The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 132. Cited in Erickson, Fate of the Object, 109. 102 could argue that the mere existence of formalized schooling ensures a parallel process in education. In the same way that art galleries "prepare" art for consumption by abstracting and neutralizing it, schools amass knowledge in textbooks, resource materials, and ensemble repertoire, ready for consumption. John Dewey argues that mere consumption of knowledge does not constitute meaningful learning. His pragmatic philosophy insists that meaning is generated through interaction with the world. He disparagingly refers to the "ready-made" school curriculum as "degenerate reminiscence of what someone else once formulated on the basis of the experience that some further person had, once upon a time, experienced."25 This process is - Dewey's attempts at reversing it through progressive education notwithstanding - always somewhat inescapable. Therefore, to focus on its inescapable aspect and thereby reveal the reified nature of the frameworks and categories through which students make sense of the world would seem the most reasonable countermeasure to "runaway" reification. In particular, one should consider the role of formal education in the dissemination of theory, whose formal categories have a similar reifying effect to that of the culture industry.26

The failure to acknowledge the inescapability of reification in formal educational settings is a serious shortcoming in much of the music education literature (reviewed in chapter 1) that claims to have a critical or emancipatory agenda. To take but one example, Patricia O'Toole, although correct in insisting that music educators must examine the assumptions that underlie their traditional frameworks, advocates that students' lived experiences should be the (apparently unquestioned) starting point of an

John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum, in The Child and the Curriculum and The School and Society, combined ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956), 26. Originally published in 1902 26 Erickson, Fate of the Object, xiii. 103 emancipatory pedagogy. To be fair, O'Toole draws on research that is mindful of prescriptive solutions to the problem of reification, and this open-ended way of thinking is similar to what I am proposing.28 But her talk of empowering students by enabling them to "reflect upon and negotiate the power relations, thus working toward a more

90 democratic classroom" ignores the cyclical nature that we must attend to in the struggle to thwart reification. Not only is it problematic to imply that the reified categories of formal music education can ever be replaced by something other than new and different reified categories, but it is potentially dangerous to portray a pedagogy based solely on student consciousness as liberating. This view overlooks the necessity of reification as a part of everyday existence, a fact that leads Althusser to conclude that "lived experience

... is not given, given by a pure reality but the spontaneous 'lived experience' of ideology in its peculiar relationship to the real."31 For this reason, "critical pedagogy recognizes that students' experiences might contain unacceptable values, be they racist, sexist, violent, or whatever."

O'Toole's desire that students "subvert traditional teacher-student power relations and ... take charge of their education"33 presupposes that students are free subjects who would be capable of instigating a participatory democracy and forming consensus uninhibited by ideological influences if only music teachers would abandon their

27 O'Toole, "Redirecting the Choral Classroom," 29. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Such discourse also appears to overlook democracy's flaws. For example, as famously noted by Alexis de Tocqueville, the "tyranny of the majority" may work to suppress or invalidate minority views. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume I, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: The Colonial Press, 1899), 263-267. 31 Althusser, Louis, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), 223. Cited in Zavarzedeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 94. 32 Ken Osborne, Teaching for Democratic Citizenship (Toronto: Our Schools/Our Selves Education Foundation, 1991), 53. 33 O'Toole, "Redirecting the Choral Classroom," 341. traditional authoritarian positions and facilitate the process. Such a position is problematic for two reasons. First, it overlooks the indispensable power relations that are built into the process of teaching, such as grading. Grading reproduces inequalities by design. And despite any critical pedagogue's best intentions, ultimately grading will always remain the instructor's responsibility. Yet, as Michael Billig points out, the critical pedagogy literature is silent on this paradoxical situation.34 Second, the notion of students as free subjects is a form of ideology perpetuated by late capitalism, which works to mask the increasing marketization of public discourse, including educational discourse. As Zavarzadeh and Morton argue, it is not the existence or non-existence of authority but its use that should be the primary issue, and the classroom that denies its authority merely creates an "ideological haze" in which students believe they are free.

Similarly, Norman Fairclough maintains that the increasing focus on learner-centered education is tied to pressures exerted on teachers and academics to perceive their students as "customers."36 Ironically, the myth of the student as free subject will reinstate if not reinforce the status quo by masking the socially constructed nature of the abstract categories through which students understand their world - categories formed by their peers, their culture and, probably most importantly, what Giroux calls "the accelerated commercialism in all aspects of everyday life."37 In effect, any pedagogy that fails to account for the inevitability of reification in everyday life, and particularly in school, risks positioning itself at the "nature" pole of the "nature history" dialectic, as if

34 Michael Billig, "Critical Discourse Analysis and the Rhetoric of Critique," in Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity, ed. Gilbert Weiss and Ruth Wodak, 35-46 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 43. 35 Zavarzadeh and Morton, Theory as Resistance, 49. 36 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (Harrow, UK: Longman, 1995), 141. 37 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 99. 105 fixated on the myth that we can return to a pre-Enlightenment understanding of music or any other phenomenon, capturing its rich particularity and unencumbered by the need for abstraction.

The message of Dialectic of Enlightenment is not about the possibility of returning to pre-Enlightenment values, as Adorno and Horkheimer clearly believe that no

Hegelian synthesis of abstract knowledge and concrete experience is possible. It is rather an attempt to balance these two poles dialectically, as is evidenced by the extremely unorthodox style of "arguing" whereby "antithetical concept-pairs" such as enlightenment-myth and progression-regression are endlessly juxtaposed.3 As the earlier discussion of Adorno has attempted to show, the notion that we can somehow arrive at a point where our understanding of phenomena is not mediated by socially constructed categories will always lead us to the erroneous conclusion that our ideas about reality are as real as reality itself. For our purposes, the only "solution" in the face of this paradox is to attempt to reveal reification as an ongoing and necessary part of formal education, so that students might become aware of its effects without falling prey to the fallacy that it can be dispensed with.

This entails perceiving school as the new culture industry in the sense that sites of formal education necessarily accelerate the reification (and probably even the commodification) process by parceling off knowledge from its original, particular socio- historical contexts and presenting it in digestible forms that strip it of semantic richness.

Ong discusses the compound effect of this process over time:

One of the most important phenomena attendant on scholasticism and the rise of the universities was the fact that the intellectual heritage was constantly being

38 Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 59. 106

beaten down into simplified form by systematic presentation and re-presentation to the youthful mind, generation after generation.

Through exposure to a critique of the forms that make music digestible - specifically, the semantic/linguistic and musical/theoretical frames that mediate the music learning process - this double-edged aspect of education will hopefully become understood by both music educators and students. Of course, as Erickson states, "any method of resistance to commodification in itself is no guarantee of rectitude .. ."40 But a critique of forms based on negative dialectics, or the figure-ground model if we choose to call it that, seems the least problematic of all possible approaches for the foregoing reasons.

Metaphor Theory and Reified Linguistic Frameworks: Some Pedagogical Implications

There is no test, textbook, syllabus, or lesson plan that any of us creates that does not reflect our preference for some metaphor of the mind, or of knowledge, or of the process of learning .... Whichever you favor, your metaphor will control - often without your being aware of it - how you will proceed as a teacher, (emphasis added)

This comment, by cultural critic Neil Postman, about metaphors silently shaping teaching practices does not represent an isolated idea. There are some striking parallels between the Critical Theory concept of second nature as the product of reified ideas and recent work in the area of metaphor theory. The following section will attempt to synthesize some key ideas from these two fields of study and discuss their implications for music education. Specifically, the argument has been made that metaphorical aspects of language, supposedly purged from clear, literal, or scientific discourse, actually inhabit

39 Walter J. Ong, S.J., Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 136. 40 Erickson, Fate of the Object, xiii. 41 Neil Postman, Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 29. 107 that discourse masquerading in objective form. This is simply a version of the argument that reified ideas masquerade as common sense or unassailable truths, only in this case the argument functions on a linguistic level. Thus an unwavering belief in the literality of language produces a kind of false consciousness.

Postman also states, "There is nothing that happens among humans that is not instigated, negotiated, clarified, or mystified by language, including our attempts to acquire knowledge." Since it mediates virtually every educational endeavor, language can be viewed as a kind of meta-framework that houses the more specific frameworks that structure music comprehension. Thus, ideology critique in music education should probably begin with language. The reason for examining metaphor in relation to ideology will only become clear, however, if one abandons the traditional view of metaphor, which maintains that metaphorical terms can simply be substituted for "literal" terms.

Christopher Tilley cites a standard example in which "John is a fox" is translated into its

"literal" equivalent, "John is crafty." According to this view (and its related offshoots) metaphor is "a condensed or convoluted form of simile" and as such is an unnecessary embellishment of direct communication.43 This position is problematic for several reasons. First, as Tilley points out, "translation" of a metaphor into a "literal" statement is only possible in a narrow range of simple cases, such as the one just mentioned. It is simply not possible to find an appropriate "literal translation" for certain metaphors.4 For example, consider the expression "red roofs dissolve under the tongue," found in Paul

Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 123. 43 Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 11-12. 44 Ibid., 12. 108

Eluard's surrealist poem, "Head Against the Walls." How could one conceive of a "literal translation" for such a phrase?

Second, even in cases where an appropriate substitute can be found, the

"conversion" process results in at least some meaning being lost. Max Black states that

"the literal comparison lacks the ambience and suggestiveness, and the imposed 'view' of the primary subject, upon which a metaphor's power to illuminate depends."45 He insists that the traditional substitution view of metaphor is incorrect because metaphor is not "a precis of a literal point-by-point comparison, in which the primary and secondary subjects are juxtaposed for the sake of noting dissimilarities as well as similarities."46 A metaphor, such as Pascal's view of man as a "thinking reed," superimposes select qualities from the secondary subject to the primary - in this case, human frailty and weakness - in a particularly striking manner that "converting" the statement into a literal comparison would fail to do.47 Further, Tilley notes that the traditional view of metaphor as a decorative substitution for literal discourse is inadequate because it cannot account for the creation of novel metaphors.48

An alternative view has been expressed by a number of scholars and is perhaps best articulated by the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson. Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphor is not simply a literary or rhetorical device, but that it forms the basis of our conceptual system.49 For example, they show how the metaphor

Max Black, "More about Metaphor," in Metaphor and Thought. 2n ed., ed. Andrew Ortony, 19-41. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 31. 46 Ibid., 30-31. 47 Ibid. 8 Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture, 12. 49 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3. 109

ARGUMENT IS WAR50 is not simply a phrase used to describe a similarity between arguing and war. The metaphor actually structures, to some degree, the way we commonly understand and carry out arguments.51 The fact that we do not believe we are speaking metaphorically when we talk of defending claims, attacking weak points, employing strategies, and shooting down and demolishing arguments indicates that "our conventional ways of talking about arguments presupposes a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. [Thus] the metaphor is not merely in the words - it is in our very concept of argument."52

The implications of this alternative view are far-reaching. If metaphor is not simply a literary device but assists in structuring consciousness, then there is no literality in the commonly understood sense. Lakoff and Johnson's theory of metaphor is similar to negative dialectics in that it challenges the idea that words can ever refer precisely to objective reality. Erickson defines literality as "a largely unquestioned, totally conventionalized approach to reality, that through social habituation seems to be an unmediated perception expressed by transparent terms."53 In other words, literality is second nature. He cites Nietzsche, who describes the relation between metaphors and what we understand as truth:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors ... a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.54

501 have followed Lakoff and Johnson's custom of capitalizing metaphors because it is an effective way to emphasize their role in structuring our thoughts. 51 Ibid., 5. 52 Ibid. 53 Erickson, Fate of the Object, 23. 54 Nietzche, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," quoted in Erickson, Fate of the Object, 23. No publication information given. 110

This description, which is perfectly consistent with Adorno's explanation of second nature, reveals the importance of metaphor to the present discussion. That is, an ideological component becomes clear when metaphors are viewed in terms of the Lakoff-

Johnson model, as opposed to the traditional substitution model. Nietzche appears to have hit upon the idea more than a century ago that frozen or dead metaphors structure consciousness by masquerading as truth. Lakoff and Johnson provide detailed evidence for this thesis, demonstrating that so-called literal statements are simply metaphors that have become so conventionalized as to be unrecognizable. The distinction between such

"frozen" metaphors and less conventionalized metaphors that are employed rhetorically is thus historically and culturally contingent.

Tilley notes that although we generally assume literal language to be the ground against which linguistic tropes are defined,55 this ground is far more metaphorical than we realize. One study, for example, revealed that 1.8 novel (recognized) and 4.08 frozen

(generally unrecognized) metaphors per minute were spoken during televised presidential debates.56 Citing Raymond Gibbs, Tilley also reports the results of a study on televised debates in which one novel metaphor was found for every twenty five words spoken.

Anoher study found that United States senators employed an average of one unconventional metaphor every two to three minutes of speech.57 The ubiquity of metaphor in everyday speech indicates that it is a primary and not secondary part of

Although trope is defined in general terms as "a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression" {Oxford Concise Dictionary, 11th ed.), theories of rhetoric tend to distinguish between tropes and figures based on the supposed requirement that an intellectual effort is required to appreciate the former. However, this distinction creates a paradox, since it is generally accepted that such expressions "are spontaneously used by those who have no training in the art of persuasion." Macey, Dictionary of Critical Theory, s.vv. "rhetoric," "trope." Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture, 13. 57 Ibid., 13. Ill language. All appearances to the contrary are simply proof that many "literal" expressions are "metaphor[s] whose figurality has been forgotten."58

This does not mean that all contemporary speech is metaphorical in the sense of mapping from one conceptual domain onto another. As Tilley points out, a dog's tail may be thought of as a flag or merely as a natural appendage.59 Nevertheless, it would be misleading to attempt to make a clear distinction between statements and concepts that are metaphorical and those that are not "because metaphoricity is bound up with aspects of conceptual structure and the polysemy [indeterminacy] of words."60 Lakoff and

Johnson refer to the attempt to establish a clear distinction between metaphoricity and literality as "the myth of objectivism."61 This position - which holds that metaphor is only a matter of language and can therefore at best describe, but never create, our lived reality - is itself, ironically, the product of a myth generated by a well-entrenched metaphor: the conduit metaphor.

The conduit metaphor refers to the idea that truthful information about the world is not constructed or mediated but rather transferred from one point to another. Michael J.

Reddy has compiled what he calls a "far from complete" list of 140 common English language expressions that are based on the conduit metaphor. Featuring such statements as, "It is very difficult to put this concept into words," "The passage conveys a feeling of excitement," "That concept has been floating around for centuries," and "Your words are hollow," Reddy's list emphasizes the extent to which our discourse implies that language

58 Ibid., 20. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 186-188. 62 Michael J. Reddy, "The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in our Language about Language," in Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony, 164-201 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 189-201. 112 functions as a conduit, transferring disembodied thoughts or meaning from one person to another via words, which act as containers for concepts.

The objectivist myth, which is largely generated by this metaphor, assumes that objects in the world have inherent properties that correspond to our categories of understanding and that it is possible to make statements "that are objectively, absolutely, and unconditionally true and false" about the world. All discrepancies are attributed to human subjectivity, which is to be avoided in the objectivist paradigm. Additionally, according to this view words have or should have fixed meanings and are capable of describing reality correctly if they are precisely defined.63 The problem with this paradigm, as Lakoff and Johnson insist, is that "meaning is always meaning to someone."64 The conduit metaphor assumes that truth can somehow be isolated from human understanding. Thus it overlooks the fact that meaning is "relative to context and to one's own conceptual system."65

It is crucial to note that claiming we do not have access to absolute, unconditional truths about the world is not the same as claiming that there is no objective reality. Nor is it to claim that we cannot agree on simple statements, such as "there are four clarinet players in this room." Adorno would undoubtedly say that although we can agree on the objective meaning of the above statement, the concepts that come to mind upon uttering

63 Ibid., 186-187. 64 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 184. 65 Ibid., 182. 661 am speaking here of the form of objective reality that is necessary for normal communication to take place. The philosopher John Searle calls this "external" or "publicly accessible" reality. As Searle demonstrates, external reality is a "purely formal constraint [that] does not say how things are but only that there is a way that they are that is independent of our representations." In distinguishing between a "brute reality" and our representations of it, Searle argues that the correspondence theory of truth is "trivially true," but that it does not follow that facts are "complex kinds of material objects" nor that there is any "necessary isomorphism between the syntactical structure of true statements and the structure of facts." John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 188, 213-214. Using Searle's terminology, one could say that ideology functions by characterizing particular, constructed representations of brute reality as external reality itself. 113 the words cannot fully grasp the objects (clarinet, players, room, etc.) that those words signify. Thus the concepts are always somewhat underdetermined. Concepts and language remain in what Northrop Frye calls the "transparent envelope" that exists between ourselves and nature. 7 Lakoff and Johnson posit a theory of truth that is similar to Adorno's position, whereby objectivity cannot exist in isolation from its subjective counterpart. To perceive it otherwise is to forget that all truth claims are filtered through conceptual frames that are the products of human experience.68

And it has been shown that human experience is essential to understanding the most basic statements, even for very young children. Psychologist David Rumelhart has demonstrated that the widely held belief that children learn nonliteral language only after mastering literal language is simply not supported by empirical evidence.69 Instead, empirical observations support the idea that "figurative language appears in children's speech from the very beginning."70 He also notes that the mental tools for processing nonliteral and so-called literal statements appear to be the same.71 In other words, knowledge of the immediate context in which a statement is uttered is just as important to the processing of "literal" language as it is to metaphorical discourse.72

Further evidence against the case for a clear distinction between the two discourse types can be found in Gibbs's research. A student of Rumelhart, Gibbs tested the theory that metaphor is a type of linguistic pathology that is recognized only once the listener realizes that the literal meaning of the statement she just heard cannot be the intended

67 Northrop Frye, On Education (Markham, Ont, Canada: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1988), 145. 68 In the field of critical pedagogy, Giroux holds a similar position, yet insists that "a critique of foundationalism is not a surrender to relativism." Disturbing Pleasures, 115. 69 David E. Rumelhart, "Some Problems with the Notion of Literal Meanings," in Metaphor and Thought. 2nd ed., ed. Andrew Ortony, 19-41. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 73. 70 Ibid., 72. 71 Ibid., 73. 72 Ibid., 76. 114 meaning because it would be inappropriate. In this view, a clear distinction between intended meaning and literal meaning is necessary because the listener must use knowledge of the latter as a litmus test to determine when speech is metaphorical. The results of Gibbs research, however, showed that when nonliteral statements are made in an appropriate context, "they can be understood as quickly as when the literal interpretation of the same statement is required."73 The equal processing times show that we do not determine the literal meanings of such statements first.

All of the above evidence undermines the case for two distinct discourse types, literal and metaphorical, based on the notion of a self-contained realm of literal meaning, as the objectivist position would have it. The objectivist view of the world that Lakoff and Johnson contest is in fact no different than the positivist one that Adorno and

Horkheimer attack in Dialectic of Enlightenment. In portraying metaphor as a purely subjective element that should not be allowed to pollute the "clear," "scientific" language of truth, the objectivist account perpetuates ideology by obscuring the fact that "literal language is a language in which key aspects of figurality have been forgotten."74

Rumelhart maintains that our classification of literal and metaphorical meanings is simply generated by our classification of language as either formal or colloquial.75 This observation should be kept in mind when considering the power of frozen metaphors as formalized educational truisms.

Ibid., 76. Tilley, "Metaphor and Material Culture," 20. Rumelhart, "Problems with Literal Meanings," 72. 115

Frozen Metaphors and Music Education Discourse

Lakoff and Johnson group metaphors into two main categories, orientational- ontological and structural. The former are the most general types of metaphor, which organize whole systems of concepts around central themes. Orientational metaphors involve spatial orientations, such as up-down, in-out, central-peripheral, etc. The expressions "my spirits rose" and "I'm feeling down," for example, refer to the metaphor

HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN.76 Similarly, ontological metaphors explain our experiences in terms of physical objects and substances, such as the idea that inflation is an entity ("If there's much more inflation, we'll never survive.") or that our visual field is a container with a discreet boundary ("The ship is coming into view"). Such quantification helps us to understand our experiences in a way that seems less abstract.77

Of particular pedagogical interest, however, are structural metaphors, which comprise the second category. These are much richer and more detailed metaphors that allow for one specific concept to be "structured in terms of another."78 The metaphors previously mentioned, ARGUMENT IS WAR and COMMUNICATION IS SENDING

(the conduit metaphor), are examples of structural metaphors. Structural metaphors are particularly notable because they necessarily highlight certain aspects of a concept while masking others. For example, LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE are culturally contingent structural metaphors that highlight the value industrialized societies place on quantifying both of these concepts. Yet these metaphors simultaneously hide alternative (qualitative) views of labor and time shared by other cultures (and some subcultures of Western society). The quantification of labor in terms

76 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 14-15. 77 Ibid., 25-30. 78 Ibid., 14. 116 of time, also viewed as a resource, leads to a view of leisure time as a resource that must be spent wisely, ironically rendering it remarkably similar to labor.79 Thus there is strong ideological potential in the masking aspect of structural metaphors, and this potential is realized once a structural metaphor becomes frozen, or unrecognizable.

Two Cases of Structural Metaphor and Their Importance to Music Education

I will now examine two common structural metaphors that have the potential to function ideologically in music education, if accepted as second nature. The first, the

Conduit Metaphor, has already been addressed, but its pedagogical impact warrants closer inspection. Reddy maintains that the conduit metaphor is actually a complex of three metaphors:

IDEAS (OR MEANINGS) ARE OBJECTS, LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAINERS, COMMUNICATION IS SENDING.80

He argues that the conduit metaphor has taken hold so firmly in the English language that it permeates the logic of our everyday thought processes, as his extensive list of conduit metaphor expressions (see above) indicates. His (admittedly imprecise) research reveals that "of the entire metalingual apparatus of the English language, at least seventy percent is directly, visibly, and graphically based on the conduit metaphor." To demonstrate the impact of the conduit metaphor on our understanding of music, we need only conduct a simple thought experiment in which we test for semantic pathology. Semantic pathology refers to the existence of two or more incompatible senses of a word that can be used

79 Ibid., 67. Interestingly, Adorno makes the same argument, saying that "free time is nothing more than a shadowy continuation of labour." Adorno, "Free Time," in The Culture Industry, 194. 80 Quoted in Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 10. No citation given. 81 Reddy, "The Conduit Metaphor," 177. 117 meaningfully in the same context. An obvious example arises when discussing an unpleasant incident; the expression "I'm sorry" can easily be mistaken as an admission of fault when meant as a declaration of empathy and vice-versa.82

Similarly, the word "poem" can denote either a text (as in the physical arrangement of words on a page) or the assemblage of concepts and emotions that one constructs when reading a text."83 Yet semantic pathologies do not normally arise when we use the term poem because of our tacit agreement on the conduit metaphor, which presumes that poen^ (the physical text) contains within it poeni2 (the concepts and emotions pertinent to the text). So long as the conduit metaphor functions, there can be only one possible poeni2 for any given poemi, thus ambiguities arising from the two different senses are irrelevant. But consider a constructivist model of communication in which the assemblage of mental and emotional materials varies from situation to situation depending on the cultural and historical milieu and the unique repertoires that allow individual readers to "decode" a given set of "instructions." In this scenario "there will be as many poenVs in existence as there are readers or listeners."

In this alternative model communication is not sending: it is (re)constructing knowledge based on signals, which function as blueprints that we exchange with one another. Because the blueprints are read and interpreted in different physical, cultural, and thus mental environments, the "natural" state of affairs does not favor perfect reconstructions. As Reddy explains, "divergence of readings from a single text are not

82 Ibid., 178. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 179. Although theoretically there are sufficient grounds to assert, as does Reddy, that there are as many poem2's as there are readers, we must also presume that they all share a core set of attributes that allow us to identify them as derivations of poem!. Otherwise, we might slide into the trap of radical subjectivism. Clearly, there is a middle ground between the extreme essentialism that Reddy argues against and the extreme nominalism that results from an overly radical constructivist stance. 118 aberrations. They are tendencies inherent in the system ,.."85 Semantic pathology arises in discussions of poems once we abandon the conduit metaphor in favor of this alternative model because it becomes crucial to distinguish between a poemi and the various poeni2's that are generated from it. Yet our normal discourse does not accommodate such distinctions.8 Pluralization becomes problematic when trying to reflect the idea that there must necessarily be many poen^'s (constructions generated from a single poemi) to deal with in a group discussion.87 Similar examples can be found not only for the word "poem," but for "the entire class of words in English that denote signals, such as "word," "phrase," "essay," or "text."88

Terms that denote musical signals, such as "piece," "work," or "composition," are prone to the same problem. In music education, the use of language that is generated by the conduit metaphor functions to reinforce the idea that musical works are self-contained entities and that musical knowledge, systems, and structures can be transferred across time and space. Just as there is no common way to discuss the poeni2's generated by a group of readers in an English classroom, there is no common way to express the idea that there are many musical workz's, piece2's, tune2's, or song2's generated by students for every worki, piece i, tunei, or songi on staff paper that they encounter.

Further, as Reddy argues with reference to the word "poem," using expressions such as "versions of the song" merely exacerbates the problem because it implies either textual variations or the notion that there is one ideal, "correct" song that is knowable and

Ibid., 175. Ibid., 180-181. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 179. 119 becomes altered slightly in performance by choice or necessity.89 It seems that our normal way of speaking about music is likely to reinforce a Platonic notion of musical elements and systems as immutable and eternal, precisely the ahistorical perspective that

Adorno and the critical theorists fought against. Renee Cox notes that the philosopher

Peter Kivy, in defending a Platonic account of music, falls prey to the assumption that musical elements are static, an assumption that seems deeply embedded in the language commonly available to describe music. Cox summarizes Kivy's argument, which holds that "logical space," or the ideal realm, can accommodate an indescribably large number of possible sonic elements from which composers might choose. If this is the case, and musical choices pre-exist composers' knowledge of them, then "all possible combinations of those elements will also pre-exist perception of them."90 The problem with Kivy's argument is that it does not account for "the dynamic nature of musical elements, relationships, and systems, all of which take on new meaning in different historical and cultural contexts."91

Indeed, Kivy's language elsewhere indicates that he assumes musical structures contain musical content. A self-described musical cognitivist, Kivy is committed to the position that happiness and sadness are "expressive properties] of the music which the listener recognizes in it."92 In trying to dissociate the notions of emotional arousal and the emotional qualities of music itself, he states, "There is a great deal of music that

Renee Cox, "Are Musical Works Discovered?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43, no. 4 (Summer, 1985): 370. She cites Peter Kivy, "Platonism in Music: A Kind of Defense," Grazer Philosophische Studien 19 (1983): 114-119. 91 Ibid. 92 Peter Kivy, "How Music Moves," in What Is Music?: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music, ed. Philip Alperson, 147-163 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 149. 120 possesses all sorts of expressive properties, but is not moving at all." (emphasis added)

These statements are cases of the conduit metaphor functioning in musical discourse.

Much like the word "poem" is thought of as a container of thoughts and ideas, in this derivative metaphor the word "music" connotes a container of sonic content, which travels along a conduit of sound waves from person to person. Absent from this metaphor is the idea that we each generate our own musical meaning, in effect a different music2 for every listening or exposure (in the case of score reading) to musici. The 'music as conduit' metaphor silently reinforces a static and reproductive view of music at the expense of a dynamic, albeit less stable view. Given that this metaphor influences such scholarly discourse as Kivy's, it is likely pervasive in the discourse of the average music educator, particularly since there seems to be no easy way around the pluralization problem raised by Reddy.

The most obvious manifestation of the view that music travels along a conduit, if it silently holds sway over teaching practices, is a tendency to focus on performance as the conveyance of a work's meaning, rather than to consider the context of its creation or reception as sites for constructing new meanings. If it is assumed that musical meaning is essentially embodied in its transmission, then a performer either conveys that meaning faithfully or, through choice or necessity, fails to do so. This assumption appears to be the basis for modern musical authenticity movements, which strive to reconstruct "authentic" performances of earlier music.94 Yet, as musicologist Gary Tomlinson observes, "the

93 Ibid., 159. 941 say "earlier" because Robert P. Morgan, writing in 1988, noted that "the authenticity movement [was] in the process of appropriating the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven," and had extended into the Romantic period as far as Brahms piano music of the late nineteenth century. Robert P. Morgan, "Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene," in Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium, ed. Nicholas Kenyon, 57-82 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 77. 121 most profound and authentic meanings of music will be found not in musical works themselves .. .."95 Authentic meanings, for Tomlinson, are multiple meanings derived from a concerted effort at interpreting a complex web of cultural values that he calls the

"ideology ... that may have made the work meaningful to its creators or original audience."96

Tomlinson emphasizes his use of the plural "meanings" because he refutes the conduit metaphor in favor of "a constructive act of historical cultural interpretation," which is incongruent with the assumption that there is a single authentic meaning for a

07 work. The belief in one authentic meaning that can somehow be transferred from composer to modern audience by way of a "correct" or definitive performance necessarily promotes a philosophy of reproductive music making. But beyond that, it fails to emphasize the importance of understanding the ideological context in which a musical work is created. Implied is a separation of "purely musical" issues from matters relating to a broader contextual understanding and, one can reasonably assume, promotes a less integrated pedagogy. More importantly, this assumption adversely affects our view of music history; to treat musical meaning as disembodied is to obscure any understanding of the dialectical relation between music's formal properties and its reception contexts, discussed in chapter 2. To quote Adorno, "The nominalistic urge for authenticity resists the playful forms as descendents ..."98 The constant sedimentation of subjective content into objective form that ensures a cyclical relation between the new and the traditional is lost in the conduit metaphor. In the words of Robert Morgan, considering musical

95 Gary Tomlinson, "The Historian, the Performer, and Authentic Meaning in Music," in Authenticity and Early Music, 135. 96 Ibid., 123. 97 Ibid., 125. 98 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 288. 122 meaning as static is paramount to believing that we can view music history "as it really was ... rather than as transformed and distorted through our own cultural filters."

A second structural metaphor that arguably has a strong ideological effect on music education is the Visual Metaphor: SEEING IS KNOWING. The work of Walter

Ong has already been discussed in connection with what he dubs "the technologization of the word" (the advent of writing and print) and its relation to the development of abstract thinking. Ong asserts that, through this process, Western civilization shifted from a primarily auditory to a primarily visual culture.100 And modern technological civilization consequently developed the view that knowing was analogous to seeing:

The drive to consider intellectual knowing ... by analogy with vision responds to the need to 'formalize' intellectual knowledge, to give it definition, distinctness, edge, precision, clarity, qualities like those paramount in vision.101

He goes on to argue that the need to formalize serves both positive and negative ends.

This idea has been central to the current discussion. But the metaphor SEEING IS

KNOWING emphasizes only the positive aspect of formalizing, the importance of abstraction to knowledge, while downplaying what critical theorists would consider its dangerous (reifying) tendencies.

It is worth quoting Ong at length on the relation between visual culture and the scientific view of objective knowledge. He regrets that there is a kind of objectivity

that does not get involved in human values as such. This objectivity, essential for scientific explanation, becomes possible when one envisions the world as set off from oneself as essentially neuter, uncommitted, and indifferent to the viewer. Study of such a world is felt to be not a response to the world but an operation upon it. Knowledge in its optimum or typical condition regards not persons or quasi-persons but neutral objects. Whether such objectivity can be achieved and verbalized in a preliterate culture is at least questionable, for, as we have seen, in

Morgan, "Tradition, Anxiety, and the Musical Scene," 68. 0 Ong, Interfaces of the Word, 126. 1 Ibid., 137. 123

such cultures spoken words, the only words such cultures know, ordinarily are closely tied to living interactions of man with man [sic]. They are dynamic and charged with the emotion involved necessarily in interpersonal relations, since all words occur in 'existential' situations between man and man [sic].1

The crucial factor that allows this type of objectivity to develop is distance, a quality associated with sight much more so than with hearing. Ong notes that the senses can be arranged from left to right as follows:

Touch taste smell hearing sight

As one moves to the right, there is greater physical distance from objects, as well as increased abstraction and formalization. To the left, the sense organs become closer to the source of stimulus and there is a tendency toward concreteness.103 Because vision functions optimally when light reflects off surfaces, it is a sense associated with exteriority. Consequently, the metaphor SEEING IS KNOWING deprives knowledge of its sense of interiority, a quality associated with subjectivity, which therefore becomes excluded.104

Ong calls the tendency to over-emphasize the relation between intellection and sight "hypervisualism."105 And, like Reddy, he has assembled a list of terms that reflects the influence of this particular metaphor on our thought processes. Some visually based terms commonly employed in discourse about knowledge or intellect are: insight, speculation, intellectual vision, glimmering of, cast light on, elucidate, view, show, clear/clarity, make out, observe, exposition, discern, chart, plan, table, list, and field of

Ong, Presence of the Word, 223. Ong, Interfaces of the Word, 136. Ibid., 122-123. Ong cites Lonergan as the first to refer to vision as a "symbol" or "myth" for knowing. Ibid., 125. 124 knowledge.106 Many more words associated with the intellect, such as "idea" and

"evident," have hidden origins in the verb "to see" (eidos and e-videre from the Greek and Latin, respectively).107 Like Reddy's list, Ong's is admittedly incomplete. Yet he feels confident in surmising that "we would be incapacitated for dealing with knowledge and intellection without massive visualist conceptualization, that is, without conceiving of intelligence through models applying initially to vision."108

The SEEING IS KNOWING metaphor has obvious implications for the music classroom. It affects the formation of attitudes and values, as evidenced by the supremacy of notation in music education. Christopher Small remarks that our use of the notation system indicates that it has shifted far away from its original purpose, that of a mnemonic device. Unlike other cultures also possessing notation systems, Westerners often think of the written score as being the music, as it tends to guide every aspect of our attempts to conjure the "correct" sounds to reproduce it. As Small writes, "only in western music has the written score become the medium through which the act of composition takes place, and this long before the actual sounds are heard."109 The ubiquity of printed music in the classroom at the expense of music that is improvised or known only aurally is so well acknowledged as to require no further documentation. The more interesting question is: how many educators are aware of or take the time to explain the mnemonic origins of sheet music? How often is music literacy framed as an important memory aid for the performance of complex music and not just an end unto itself? Even such commonplace

Ibid., 133. This is only a sampling of Ong's list, which also includes words that have tactile and aural implications. The portion of visual terms far outweighs the other two. 107 Ibid., 134, 136. 108 Ibid., 134. 109 Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 30. 125 directives as "Look at the music!" have the potential to instill the notion that the written score is more real than the music it is intended to assist in recollecting.

Small points out that the highly developed nature of our notation system has made it possible to preserve a canon of works, perpetuating the 'composer as genius' notion and allowing us to view many past compositions as "apparently permanent features of the musical landscape." Beyond this, the pre-eminence of notation not only renders a false sense of permanence to works but promotes a false sense of reality as well. This is because it is incapable of capturing all the subtle nuances of the music it represents in abstract form, such as the microtonal pitch manipulations of a blues artist, or the standard performance customs of common practice music that composers were well aware of, and thus did not generally indicate on a score. Ample evidence of the latter is supplied by

Clive Brown's study of performance practices from 1750-1900, which offers evidence that composers often expected performers to use contextual cues in addition to the score for guidance in execution, as well as to "see beyond the literal meaning of the composer's text."111 Unfortunately, the "seeing is believing" myth that is generated from the visual metaphor has the potential to gloss over some crucial details of music, while enshrining others by implying a sense of immutability. Finally, aural aspects of music learning are

110 Ibid., 31. 111 Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice: 1750-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 416. Specific examples include Brown's observations that composers in the nineteenth century often failed to include expressive or technical markings, such as bowings, and would not have generally expected them to be followed explicitly when they were included (182); the absence of legato or staccato markings did not necessarily mean an intended note length of intermediary value (195-199); the fermata could generate a number of different meanings (588); dotted rhythms were not necessarily intended to be performed mathematically accurately when scored against triplet rhythms (614-621); and the amount of sustain added to dotted figures also varied according to musical context and circumstances (621-626). not only de-emphasized by a focus on literacy but, as Morton observes, also by the need

"to stage visual spectacles" such as large public concerts and competitions.112

Metonym and Synecdoche

Although up to this point the term metaphor has been used loosely to refer to figurative linguistic devices in general, metaphor should be properly distinguished from two closely related terms, metonym and synecdoche. A metonym is a figure of speech in which the word that denotes an attribute or feature of some entity is used in place of the word that denotes the entity itself, such as the expression "a hired gun," which refers to the user of the gun. Lakoff and Johnson describe the normal function of a metonym as referential, which distinguishes it from metaphor, whose primary function is understanding.113

Yet it would be a mistake to believe that the sole function of metonymic concepts is referential. This is because, as in the case of structural metaphors, the act of substitution allows us to highlight specific aspects of someone or something while downplaying other aspects, and we are not generally conscious of this fact.114 Thus metonymy, like metaphor, structures our thoughts and attitudes and not simply our language. For example, Lakoff and Johnson explain how the PRODUCER FOR

PRODUCT metonym often shapes our concept of art:

When we think of a Picasso, we are not just thinking of a work of art alone, in and of itself. We think of it in terms of its relation to the artist, that is, his conception of art, his technique, his role in art history, etc. We act with reverence toward a

Charlene Morton, "An Interdisciplinary Invitation: A Study of Korsmeyer's Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction. " Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education 5, no. 1 (January, 2006): 5. http:// act.maydaygroup.org/ articles/Morton5_l .pdf 113 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 36. 114 Ibid., 37. 127

Picasso, even a sketch he made as a teen-ager, because of its relation to the artist.115

Of course, the same can be said of music. We often approach with reverence any Mozart or Beethoven composition because of what we know about a composer's entire oeuvre, as well as his role in the "development" of music history. It is likely that such metonymic thinking inspires some fans of deceased recording artists to fetishize recording session

"out-takes" that the artists themselves would probably consider too inferior for release.

Considered a special case of metonymy, synecdoche uses a part of something or someone to substitute for the whole, such as the expression "We don't hire longhairs."116

Table 1 presents some common examples of synecdoche that are prevalent in educational texts and speech.

TABLE 1 Part for Whole Substitutions with Ideological Implications

General written or spoken phrase <- -> Specific unwritten or unspoken ideal being substituted for a universal ideal

"good or characteristic sound" 4- -> sound that is characteristic of Western art music

"proper technique" 4- -> technique that is appropriate to the context of Western art music

"aural skills" <- -> aural skills associated with identifying the formal structures of Western art music, often in isolation from any real musical context and almost invariably sounded on one instrument - the piano.

Often when music educators use general phrases with simple, positive adjectives to describe ideal skills or performance values, they are in actuality referring to a context-

115 Ibid., 39. 116 Ibid., 35-38. Synecdoche can also be a substitution of whole for part, although this appears less common. specific sets of musical ideals - usually those associated with Western art music - that are merely a sub-group of a much larger pool of possible musical ideals. When they fail to identify Western art music values as such, educators effectively universalize them by allowing them to stand for all musical ideals. (The reified performance values presented in this table will be discussed in detail in chapter 4).

Music as Frozen Metaphor: A Brief Overview of Musical Reification

The idea that frozen metaphors are examples of reification applies not only to linguistic frameworks but to music itself. An important point of the Lakoff-Johnson theory is that abstract concepts that are not clearly delineated, such as love, are structured almost entirely metaphorically.117 This point is obviously relevant to music and has been taken up by Michael Spitzer, a musicologist who maintains that we have always thought about music metaphorically. Building on Lakoff and Johnson, as well as other metaphor theorists, Spitzer has developed a theory of the role of metaphor in musical thought. The theory is predicated on a crucial distinction: the difference between "hearing" and

"hearing as." Musical listening, says Spitzer, is "never an act of unmediated perception."118 Following the philosopher Roger Scruton, Spitzer distinguishes between the "sonic material of music," its concrete manifestation so to speak, and the results of intentionally hearing sounds as music.119

But Spitzer goes beyond Scruton's concept in recognizing that there are various, often conflicting, choices as to how we hear music, and he shows that these choices are available at the most elemental level. For example, if two isolated notes of equal duration

117 Ibid., 85. 118 Michael Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 9. are presented in succession, such as F followed by E, the E can be heard as departing from F, as if F were the primary note or, conversely, the F may be heard as an appoggiatura within an imagined C harmony.120 But aside from deciding which note (if either) will have precedence, we can also decide to hear the tiny phrase in a number of fairly complex ways. Spitzer shows that, with some imagination, it is possible to hear the

E as a decorative figure (as if the F were a structural ground), as a predicate (as if the F were a grammatical subject) or as a destination (as if the F were a starting point). These three ways of "hearing as" are generated from the structural metaphors MUSIC IS

PAINTING, MUSIC IS LANGUAGE, and MUSIC IS A LIVING ORGANISM, respectively.121 Spitzer argues that these are perhaps the three most common ways of hearing music. Building on Lakoff and Johnson's observation that structural metaphors are a case of mapping from a known to an unknown domain, he maintains that these metaphors are generated from three "distinct and richly organized domains of human experience," namely representation, language, and embodiment.122

Spitzer's theory posits an isomorphic relation among these three metaphorical ways of structuring musical understanding and the privileging of harmony, rhythm, and melody, respectively.123 Through an extensive examination of theoretical treatises supplemented by musical examples, he establishes connections among the three major styles of the common practice period and the cultural values that have arguably generated the three metaphors listed above. For example, he argues that the Baroque concept of harmony was tied to a scientific view of the cosmos, evident in the writings of such

120 Ibid., 7. 121 Ibid., 11-12.1 have altered Spitzer's wording slightly to be consistent with the Lakoff-Johnson method of naming metaphors that I have been using thus far. 122 Ibid., 12. 123 Ibid., 13. 130 thinkers as Johannes Kepler, that projected a spatial model onto the act of composition.124

Although music had obvious mimetic shortcomings, to the Baroque listener it was considered capable of expressing emotion "based on the perceived analogy between the dynamics of light and sound."125 This led to the acceptance of the "hearing music as painting" model as the most natural.

Spitzer makes similar arguments for rhythm and language, in the case of the

Classical Era, and melody and life, in the case of the Romantic. I do not intend to argue the validity of Spitzer's theory, which is far too complex to summarize here (Spitzer admits that his proposed model is not necessarily a "closed" system ), but to emphasize that Spitzer's examples support the idea that prevailing cultural values have historically determined the method of "hearing as " that is accepted as most natural for a given time and place. And this sense of naturalness is accomplished by masking the metaphor that structures musical understanding, be it MUSIC IS PAINTING or any other metaphor, and absorbing it into the category of nature or common sense. Tellingly, Spitzer notes that when Kepler proposed his analogy between the mathematical harmony of the cosmos and that of musical counterpoint, he insisted that "this comparison is not only a metaphor."121

Although his work is not primarily concerned with the ideological implications of masking the metaphorical nature of musical understanding, Spitzer is well aware of these implications, as his position on objectivism makes clear:

A symptom of... objectivism is a comparative indifference to the human values that inform analytical methods themselves, or, to put it in a different way, a

Ibid., 145. Ibid., 148. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 145, Spitzer's italics. 131

forgetfulness that the categories we apply to music - harmony, melody, rhythm, form, tonality - are made by people; they are not universal absolutes.

Spitzer paradoxically argues that many examples of abstract categories can in fact be considered concrete if viewed in terms of the material world of social values from which they are constructed. For example, Spitzer argues that when listening to the opening measures of Bach's St. John Passion, the informed listener would normally hear

Bach's overlapping figures in several voices as counterpoint. In such cases, we would assume that the listener is reducing the "concrete" level, the foreground textures, to an abstract contrapuntal model. But Spitzer, drawing on cognitive theory, posits the idea of counterpoint as a "basic-level category," meaning that it represents "concrete knowledge of musical style, derived from the theorist's personal study and practice of counterpoint exercises."129 In other words, the world of theory exerts a pedagogical influence on formally educated listeners through the use of models, such as counterpoint, which, although metaphorical, are grounded in socially contingent ways of understanding music

(such as through the study of counterpoint - a uniquely human endeavor).

Unfortunately, Spitzer does not adopt a particularly critical stance considering the implications of his theory. He is quick to assume, for example, that we normally accept the contrapuntal model to be abstract or "imaginary." Whereas he notes that the model's socially constructed origins place it in the realm of the familiar or (in terms of metaphor theory) the concrete which we then map from in order to access the abstract.130 Although

Spitzer's description of this process is accurate, I take issue with his claim that we

Ibid., 16. Spitzer actually distinguishes between strong and weak forms of objectivism. Since the negative consequence he describes pertains to the weak variety, by extension it must also pertain to the strong. 132 normally assume theoretical models to be abstract. As we have seen, reification, the result of "forgetting" the socially constructed origins of a theoretical model, is the false objectification of the abstract as if it were concrete. Thus prevailing theoretical models tend to present themselves not as imaginary, but as more real than the music they purport to describe precisely because they have become so familiar as to be considered objective

(i.e., second nature). Consequently, the use of the term "concrete" to describe theoretical models is misleading from a Critical Theory perspective. Although the models have roots in the subjective world of social values, the fact that they are abstractions of a particular set of social values is crucial. It may seem a merely semantic objection, but Spitzer's descriptions of theoretical models as "basic level" implies a sense of "giveness" that threatens to conceal their social contingency (contingency that Spitzer acknowledges when he writes that "a basic-level category is a little piece of knowledge that has been enshrined as a concept."131)

Nevertheless, Spitzer's work is valuable in that it repeatedly and exhaustively describes theoretical models as having hidden social origins. He shows that our "natural" understanding of music is always the result of "an imaginative act of metaphorical mapping."132 And Spitzer acknowledges that pedagogy is responsible for teaching us to think metaphorically about music:

[T]he pedagogical pathway from simple to complex, or concrete to abstract, unfolds a pathway from literal to metaphorical musical knowledge. Musical •I -3-1

metaphor thus entails a course of pedagogical mapping.

It is unclear what Spitzer means by "literal musical knowledge" since, given the abstract nature of the concept of music, it is questionable that such knowledge could exist. 131 Ibid., 33. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid., 16. However, Spitzer is correct in pointing out that we learn to map from a domain of concrete understanding, such as the way we relate to our own bodies, to the domain of music so that we can understand the concept in terms that seem less abstract (music as a living organism, for example). Reification occurs, however, when we stop thinking of metaphorical mapping as imaginative and consider the prevalent metaphor to be the natural mode of musical thinking.

This is particularly evident when examining the way in which social values determine how we analyze music. Consider the following example: by comparing three

Schenkerian analyses of the same Mozart sonata (K. 283) by Heinrich Schenker, Felix

Salzer, and Leonard Meyer, Spitzer uncovers two distinctly different modes of analytical

"hearing as" that were shaped by the cultural values of the theorists who created the graphs. Both Schenker and Salzer, his student, privilege continuity over discontinuity in keeping with the tenets of Schenkerian theory, which upholds the importance of prolongation and voice leading in the unfolding of a fundamental structure. By contrast, Meyer privileges discontinuity, as his theory of music holds that listeners generate meaning from the subversion of expected patterns. Consequently, notes that are considered structural to Salzer and Schenker are marked as incidental on Meyer's graph and vice-versa.135

Not only the results but, perhaps most importantly, the tools of analysis themselves are shaped by a combination of prevalent social values and the music that they are intended to explain. The lesson presented in musicologist Scott Burnham's book,

Beethoven Hero, is best summarized by Spitzer in one sentence: "Music can motivate the

Ibid., 30. Ibid., 28, 31-32. 134 tools of its own representation."136 Burnham examines the heroic qualities associated with Beethoven's music from the Eroica Symphony onward and reveals in detail the cyclical, and one could even argue dialectical, relationship between the music's reception and our theorizing about it. He demonstrates how the theorists Riemann, Reti, A. B.

Marx, and Schenker "found" in Beethoven's heroic music the necessary support for their burgeoning theories, which were then applied to the music. Thus Beethoven's music, because it consequently stands as a quintessential example of these theories, became representative of "the way music ought to go."137

Burnham discusses how our need to perceive music Ideologically, to which

Beethoven's thematic treatments are so well suited, is rooted in the German Idealism that flourished during Beethoven's active life as a composer. The heroic concept of self that placed the human subject at the center of consciousness was spawned by an intellectual movement of the nineteenth century associated with Goethe, Kant, and Hegel that

1 oil

Burnham prefers to call the "Goethezeit." This prevailing sentiment led to a conception of music as, ideally, capable of portraying the struggle of the individual. Concomitantly with this need for a sense of narrative, Beethoven's music took on a "pervasive sense of thematic development informing the musical process of an entire movement [and giving] that process a linear, teleological thrust."139

At the same time, theorists influenced by the values of the Goethezeit were developing systems of musical analysis. It has already been noted that Adorno commented on the suitability of Beethoven's music to Schenker's analytical tools.

136 Ibid., 49. 137 Bumham, Beethoven Hero, 112. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., 120. Burnham goes a step further in arguing that Beethoven's music directly influenced the development of Schenker's theory. He specifically cites the Fifth Symphony as instrumental in forming Schenker's concept of the Fundamental Line. For example, instead of interpreting the opening four note phrase (consisting of three G's followed by an Eb) as the basic motive to be developed, Schenker identifies the opening four pitches

(G, Eb, F, D) as the primary motive, among which the G and Eb are considered decorative and the Eb and D structural. Hence the primary motive becomes a two note descent from Eb to D, a type of"Urlinie seed" which Schenker can then demonstrate

"grows" into the Fundamental Line of the entire movement.140 Burnham argues that the

Fifth Symphony is pivotal for Schenker because it allowed him to show not only the importance of left-to-right development of the surface motives, but also a back-to-front development of the Fundamental Line itself.141

The idea of background-to-foreground development, which Schenker was first able to emphasize with the Fifth Symphony, is particularly congruent with the metaphor of music as a living organism. As Burnham notes, Schenker describes his analysis of the

First Movement in language that is "powered by organicist metaphor."142 He writes of

"germinal tones" and of notes that "strive" to merge with others.143 The need to perceive music teleologically was thus reinforced cyclically through both Beethoven's music and the theories that were developing alongside it. Burnham states:

Schenker's use of the Fifth Symphony demonstrates once again the circular relationship that obtains between Beethoven and the theorists: it is never clear

0 Ibid., 90-93. 1 Ibid., 93. 2 Ibid., 92. whether the theory is made to fit the music or the music is heard to fit the theory, and it is ultimately beside the point to attempt such a determination.

Burnham explores other influential theories of analysis and demonstrates similar circular relationships between them and Beethoven's music that spawned the heroic style.

Theorists were able to "find" in this music evidence of the values that underpinned their various means of analysis, whether that was meaningful tension generated from the opposition of movement and rest (Marx), harmonic structures as "placeholders," associated with the modern grid-like notion of functional harmony (Riemann), or the organicism associated with thematic development (Reti). Burnham concludes that the heroic style, being associated with numerous "imposing" musical theories, has exerted hegemony over Western art music for two centuries. More importantly, it continues to exert its influence, and for the most part does so silently:

[I]f anything, these values are even stronger now in their controlling role as the unquestioned a priori conditions of the way we tend to construct the musical experience.145

The values that Burnham is referring to are generated from the third metaphor in

Spitzer's list, MUSIC IS A LIVING ORGANISM. Burnham argues that this metaphor has become effectively frozen in our collective consciousness, owing largely to the influence of nineteenth-century theorists whose analytical tools prevailed throughout the twentieth century.146 In 1980, fifteen years before the publication of Burnham's book,

Ruth Solie undertook a study of the roots of organicism in music analysis, focusing on the theorists Schenker and Reti. Speaking of Schenker, she writes that his major contribution to this movement was to craft a means of understanding a musical

144 Ibid., 101. 145 Ibid., 152. 146 Ruth A. Solie, "Melody and the Historiography of Music," Journal of the History of Ideas 43, no. 2 (April-June, 1982): 297. 137 composition as a whole which was, as in Gestalt psychology, considered greater than the sum of its parts. Solie notes that

unlike the Gestaltists, however, Schenker predicated his notion of totality not upon perceptual mechanisms in the observer, but upon the work of art itself. Wholeness stems from a central generative force to which everything else is subordinate. It is at this juncture that the reliance of Schenker's holistic aesthetic upon traditional concepts of organicism is most clear: the generative force which brings forth the composition ... is music's origin in nature, in the major triad ... as found in the overtone series.147

The idea of the Western tonal system having a natural basis has already been discussed in connection with Hindemith's theory of music, which Adorno was quick to attack. The major difference between conceiving of music as simply natural and structuring our understanding of it in terms of a living organism is that living organisms evolve. Thus along with the organicist metaphor, the idea of a developmental history of music took root in the nineteenth century, fuelled by the writings of theorists such as Herbert

Spencer, who applied Darwin's concept of biological progression to the social world.

Solie notes that in 1878 Spencer even included an essay on music in his work entitled,

Illustrations of Universal Progress.149

Ironically, Solie notes that evolutionary theory as popularly understood in the nineteenth century was "in some ways better suited to the metaphoric uses of cultural history than to biology itself."150 That an autonomous life force subject to a set of internal laws that oversee its growth is somehow present in a composition is a notion particularly associated with the nineteenth century. Rose Subotnik has claimed that such thinking was symptomatic of society's need to view the musical work as a "self-evident" structure, the

147 Ruth A. Solie, "The Living Work: Organicism and Musical Analysis," 19rh Century Music 4, no. 2 (Autumn, 1980): 151. 148 Solie, "Melody and the Historiography of Music," 298. 149 Ibid. (New York, 1878). 150 Ibid., 300. 138 result of art's movement away from functionality (largely owing to Kant's idea of a disinterested aesthetic) as well as "disintegrating artistic and moral consensus."151 Even today, the nineteenth century repertory is often considered as a large musical ecosystem in which the "survival of the fittest" applies insofar as "the absence of a work from that repertory is [interpreted] as a sign of compositional weakness."

The shift from the idea of a musical work as evolving to MUSIC as evolving was quite a natural one, given the popularity of Darwinian ideas. One of the consequences of applying the evolutionary metaphor to music as a whole was the privileging of polyphony over monophony, or the idea that melody is inferior to harmony because it is incapable of

"evolving" to a similarly complex state. Solie notes that, in the world of music analysis,

"because melody appears chronologically at the 'undeveloped' end of this continuum, it is sometimes prejudiced from the start."153 Further, the privileging of complex harmony over monody that results from basing musical understanding on an evolutionary metaphor has the built in advantage of ensuring that Western art music can be shown to have evolved the most in any comparative study:

Western European chauvinism is virtually a necessary outcome of the comparative method if it is carried to its logical conclusions: that is, the steady developmental stream appears to lead inevitably and directly to music of nineteenth- or twentieth-century Europe, as musics which do not fit the hypothesis are gradually eliminated from the study.154

Although musical eurocentrism is by now a widely recognized issue, this last point is particularly relevant to music education because of the impact that a student's well-

151 Rose Rosengard Subotnik, "The Challenge of Contemporary Music," in What Is Music? An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music, ed. Philip Alperson, 359-396 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987): 364. 152 Ibid., 372. 153 Solie, "Melody and the Historiography of Music," 297. 154 Ibid., 307. 139 formed mental construct of an evolutionary model might have on her reception of multicultural or popular music. Even multicultural music pedagogy that avoids comparative approaches in favor of conveying the message that all musical values are equally valid in their own contexts will not be immune from inferences about the relative value of musics of varying complexity unless the frameworks through which music is understood are interrogated and problematized (suggestions for this are offered in the following chapter).

This problem is highlighted in Lucy Green's (2003) research on the recent implementation of popular music into the British national curriculum. Green critiques the ideological way in which such music has been presented, noting that the reified frameworks through which popular music is received guarantee that it will be evaluated according to the tacitly accepted criteria of Western European art music, such as complexity, universality, eternality, originality, and autonomy (in the non-Adornian sense).155 Green states:

If teachers present music only, or largely in terms of its intra-musical or 'inherent' properties, the suggestion is that its significance derives from factors that are not tied to any specific social situation and are therefore universal and eternal, which involve complexity, and which make possible the development of originality and autonomy. Contrastingly, if teachers draw attention only or mainly to the social contexts or 'delineations' of the music, this suggests that the 'music itself is of less importance, that the music is a servant of its social context and therefore, that it cannot be universal, eternally valid or autonomous. Also, since the 'music itself is not apparently worth analysing, this suggests that it has no complexity, which in turn suggests the impossibility of any real originality. Overall then, although popular music was taught, it was approached in ways that implicitly rendered it inferior to classical music. 56

Green, "Why Ideology is Still Relevant," 13. 140

The 'catch-22' scenario Green describes is relevant not only in the curricular context of popular and world musics but, indeed, any Western European art music that does not

"measure up" to such criteria.

And Green's findings are not isolated. Additionally, Wayne Bowman (1994),

Thomas Regelski (1996) and Estelle Jorgensen (2003) all mount arguments or cite research indicating that musics outside of the canon have been included in the curriculum only on the grounds that they be subject to the criteria of Western aesthetic values.157

These studies indicate that unquestioned social values are reproduced in the music classroom. And I would add that the artificial dichotomy between "the music itself and its "delineations" is a result of the failure to recognize the social origins of musical forms.

If the dialectical process of sedimentation were better understood, the hierarchical relationship between so-called inherent and so-called extra-musical characteristics would be placed in jeopardy, thus thwarting ideological outcomes.

The values Green cites in her ideology critique, particularly originality, complexity, and autonomy, are strongly associated with evolution. The idea of Western music as highly evolved places it in a mythical category with scientific knowledge. As

Subotnik argues, "for almost two hundred years, Western art music has tried to secure a social guarantee of its own existence, precisely as if it were as 'self-evident' a structure as science."158 The sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) famously traced the Western impulse to organize music around rational principles in his essay The Rational and Social

157 Bowman, "Sound, Sociality, and Music," 58; Thomas A. Regelski, "Taking the 'Art' of Music for Granted: A Critical Sociology of the Aesthetic Philosophy of Music," in Critical Reflections on Music Education: Proceedings, of the Second International Symposium on the Philosophy of Music Education, ed., Lee R. Bartel and David J. Elliott, 23-58. (Toronto: Canadian Music Research Centre, 1996): 43; Jorgensen, Transforming Music Education, 79, 167nl0. 158 Subotnik, "The Challenge of Contemporary Music," 365. 141

Foundations of Music. Unfortunately, by categorizing much world music as "primitive,"

Weber reveals his a priori acceptance of the evolutionary thinking that Solie describes.

However, his accounts are illustrative of how the linking of science and rationality to

Western culture universalizes the latter and thus seemingly absolves it of charges of colonialism or bigotry.159 Many of Weber's narratives reinforce the idea that we attach a universal, scientific status to musical rules that grew out of serendipitous events and practices. For example, he notes that we tend to ascribe the prohibition of parallel fifths to either the interpretation of hollow fifths as fragments of triads or the fact that they simply obscure melodic independence. But he then goes on to show that the prohibition of these parallels resulted more from the acceptance of alternative performance practices

(such as the parallel sixths and thirds offaux-bourdon style) and that rational explanations for the changes were created much later.160

Interestingly, Spitzer shows that ideological views of music have often been refuted by framing an alternative view in terms of science. He illustrates this using the

Schenker/Meyer dichotomy. Although Schenker's heroic language, filled with organicist metaphor, may at least seem obviously figurative to some, less obvious is Meyer's

posture of experimental objectivity [which] entails a rhetorical style just as pronounced as Schenker's romanticism, only different. Meyer's language, with his typical references to musical material as 'data' subject to 'inspection' and 'verification' ... is all of a piece with his empiricist outlook.161

159 See for example, Weber's comments on the development of the "irrational third," which he believed to have originated from the bagpipe, "a primitive instrument known to all cattle breeders and Bedouins." Max Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans, and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Southern Illinois University Press, 1958), 93. 160 Ibid., 73-74. 161 Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 42. The work that Spitzer refers to as an example of such language is Leonard B. Meyer's, The Spheres of Music: A Gathering of Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 142

Meyer's rhetoric arguably forms its own narrative based on the biological behaviorism of

George Mead and John Dewey. Mead's theory of meaning arising from responses to the unexpected gestures of organisms, together with Dewey's idea of an organism's emotional response to conflict as a metaphor for aesthetic experience, create an organic context for Meyer's theory of emotional affect resulting from inhibited expectations.

Citing Naomi Cumming's research in this area, Spitzer maintains that Meyer's work can, ironically, be seen to imply "a kind of scientific update of organicism."162

The scientific search for a set of "first principles" of musical understanding presumably underpins Meyer's proposal that the inhibition of expectation creates musical meaning, since the implication is that criteria for "good" melodic continuation or completion can somehow obtain universally. As Spitzer points out, however, Meyer's own student, Eugene Narmour, has argued that almost all of the "evidence" that Meyer ascribes to natural, "bottom-up" processing can be attributed to cultural, "top-down" learning. For example, the pattern C-D-E only "naturally desires" to continue to F, as opposed to F#, because of our knowledge of the accepted musical grammar of the common practice period.163 Yet the notion of "natural" or "good" completion continues to have powerful pedagogical implications.

Scientism has exerted considerable ideological influence on North American formal music education since its inception in the nineteenth century. Michael Mark and

Charles Gary note that the word "unscientific" was used in the early 1800s to discourage the use of Yankee music - a "folkish" music with "modal progressions, unusual

Ibid., 35. dissonances, open fifths and parallel fifths, and octaves" associated with the singing school movement and a relatively unschooled group of New England composers - in schools.165 Ironically, the word "science" had in the previous century been used to promote the singing schools, which taught music reading, so as to improve the quality of church singing. Yet, in the post-Revolutionary War period, the same word was now turned against the Yankee music of the singing schools in order to serve the interests of the genteel and wealthy who wished to further the cause of European music.166 Indeed, the existence of popular early instructional methods that advocate teaching "the facts of music rather than the music itself using "progressively difficult exercises" indicates the extent, early on, to which music educators felt the need to adopt "scientific" approaches.

An Illustrative Example: Jazz and the Perpetual Cycle of Reification

The above discussion is far from exhaustive, as the number of possible reified musical forms is limited only by the number of ways we conceive of music. But it addresses some of the many ways we create frozen musical metaphors - modes of musical understanding that often appear (or are made out to appear) correct, natural, scientific, or otherwise beyond history's grasp. Of course, we often become aware of the ideological implications of such frozen metaphors only to replace them with new metaphors. When addressing this problem, unless the process of reification itself is emphasized we are likely to fall prey to the belief that we have somehow escaped the

164 Michael L. Mark and Charles L. Gary, A History of Music Education, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2007), 93. 165 iIbid. , 100. 166' iIbid . 167 Ibid., 198-199. 144 cycle and this, as this study attempts to show, is not possible. The result, particularly given the inescapable abstraction that accompanies formal education, is a new myth, a new frozen metaphor. The following example will illustrate this argument in greater detail. The case of jazz is particularly appropriate to demonstrate the cyclical nature of reification because it is improvisation-based, thus stylistic parameters shift at a rapid pace, historically speaking. But more importantly, its rapid rate of codification, exacerbated by its recent shift into the classroom environment, has resulted in acute awareness of the reification problem. Thus far, however, few attempts to deal with the problem have adopted a dialectical perspective.

Although jazz' entry into academia has had the positive effect of legitimizing it as worthy of study, there are those who worry that the extreme codification that accompanies its entry into academia renders it devoid of social meaning. This is a real concern according to Kenneth Prouty. His research reveals that many educators and veteran artists are concerned that jazz pedagogy is often presented as a series of rules or general improvisational principles. These principles are meant to apply to various harmonic situations, regardless of the specific contexts in which those harmonic situations may arise.168 The memorization of melodic sequences that can be inserted when a corresponding chord is heard allows musical structures to be transported outside of the cultural and historical contexts that first gave rise to their use and, potentially, into an academic vacuum. Jazz artists, critics, and several scholars have argued that this often results in improvisational statements (even from mature students and young, technically

1 Kenneth Prouty, "From Story ville to State University: The Intersection of Academic and Non-academic Learning Cultures In Post-secondary Jazz Education" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2002), 183. 145 polished artists) that sound reproductive of bygone musicians to the point where they seem to lack any sense of individual expression.169

Away from academia, these concerns have long been raised by jazz critics, who argue that there has been a growing systematization of jazz performance in general and that mainstream jazz has taken a conservative turn since the 1980s, at which time the music was controversially presented as a neo-classical phenomenon by prominent spokespeople such as Wynton Marsalis.170 Pitted against the neo-classical movement is the so-called critical theory of jazz school, led by Krin Gabbard.171 According to Lee

Brown (an Adorno scholar), Gabbard and his followers (to whom race is a central issue) extol improvisational statements that undermine traditional formal structures because such "free" statements represent the subjective voices of African Americans under conditions of social repression.172 By contrast, (white) societal institutions (including traditional jazz scholarship and jazz academia) are seen as conspiring "to neuter the music by pushing the resistance out of it."

But Brown shows that this essentialist view, reliant on a dualism between conventional musical systems and subjective musical statements, is untenable:

Even if we granted that authentic jazz disrupts the elitist's vaunted ideals of unity and order, the disrupting could not function in sheer isolation. Otherwise, nothing would be felt as disrupted. In sum, without any reference to a web-work of

169 For examples, see Stuart Nicholson's (p. 13), Ben Ratliff s (pp. 28-29), and Ted Gioia's (p. 193) comments in Will Friedwald et al., The Future of Jazz, ed. Yuval Taylor (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2002). Also Edwin Provost, No Sound is Innocent (Matching Tye, Essex, UK: Copula, 1995), 62., and Salim Washington, "All the Things You Could Be By Now: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and the Limits of Avant-Garde Jazz," in Robert G. O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Jasmine Griffin, eds., Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, 27-49 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 33. 170 Stuart Nicholson, Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has It Moved to a New Address) (New York: Routledge: 2005), 54. 171 Lee B. Brown, "Postmodern Jazz Theory: Afrocentrism, Old and New," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, no. 2 (Spring, 1999): 235. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid. 146

conventional structures, the music could not speak with any voice at all - resistant or otherwise.

Here Brown is appropriately using the figure-ground argument of negative dialectics to refute the notion that improvisation can ever free itself of referencing formalized conventions. Note that Brown's argument reflects Adorno's comments about avant-garde art music (see chapter 2) in which the latter states that formalization is present in even the most jarring and unusual musical examples. Similarity of some kind must always exist for difference to be perceived. For this reason, although the process of academization seems to have accelerated the formalization of jazz, it is naive to assume that such reification was foreign to jazz prior to its academic admission.

Yet jazz' improvisational nature has led scholars who fear its codification to overlook the necessary relation that obtains between spontaneity and reification and consistently describe it as overwhelmingly subjective. For example, Bruce Johnson, in an essay contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, entitled "Jazz as Cultural

Practice," states that "relative to art music, jazz is unprotected by the distinction between quotidian noise and music, a distinction preserved in the art-music score and central to the aesthetics of autonomy."175 He goes on to describe jazz as being "at odds with authorized musical aesthetics [owing to its] tendency away from accepted forms of regulation, control and containment."176 By contrast, we are told that "the art music score, with its aura of sacral inviolability, constrains democratic interventions and reinterpretations."177

174 Ibid., 239. 175 Bruce Johnson, "Jazz as Cultural Practice," in The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, ed. Mervyn Cooke and David Horn, 96-113 (New York: Cambridge University Press), 105. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid., 107. Several authors other than those associated with the critical school of jazz, notably philosopher Theodore Gracyk and music education philosopher David Elliott, have advanced the notion that theories (such as Adorno's) that rely on Western concepts of the aesthetic are entirely inappropriate frameworks for discussing or analyzing jazz.

Their reasoning is that jazz is best understood as praxis rather than art object. Gracyk argues, for example, that the traditional Western aesthetic view (adopted by Adorno in his criticism of jazz) considers performance "as a token of some further work, with the work itself the locus of value."178 He cites Miles Davis' (1959) seminal album Kind of

Blue as an example of music that defies such a definition.179 There was only one complete run-through for each cut on the album, and the musicians were not aware of the themes on which they were to improvise before Davis brought his sketches into the studio. Elliott would agree with this assessment. He refers to jazz as "African based music" in which "gratification tends to be immediate" and he accuses the Western

European tradition of evaluating jazz only on the basis of its "embodied meaning" and

"syntactic possibilities," as opposed to what he calls its "processual meaning."

Although Elliott, Gracyk and Johnson are all correct in claiming that jazz pedagogy and analysis have tended to focus on structural aspects, there are dangers in taking the other extreme view. Failure to account for the dialectical relationship that improvised jazz negotiates between the "European" pole of art object and the "African" pole of social practice (for lack of better terminology) amounts to what Brown calls a

178 Theodore Gracyk, "Adorno, Jazz and the Aesthetics of Popular Music," 537. 179 Ibid, 533. 180 David J. Elliott, "Descriptive, Philosophical and Practical Bases for Jazz Education: A Canadian Perspective" (Ph.D. diss. Case Western Reserve, 1983), 193-194. 148 reversion to primitivism. Such a view renders structural approaches to jazz futile, and does not really explain how jazz performance actually works as praxis, that is, by formalizing (or commoditying) the musical objects of previous musicians to act as

"ground" for the current "figures" of an improvisation. In using the term "commodity," I am referring to both the manner in which jazz musicians appropriate each others' ideas as objects (in this sense, there is some truth to Adorno's charge that jazz' exchange value permeates "the work process itself ), as well as the way in which musical protestations eventually become ossified into "style" categories through repetition and acceptance.

Overstating the case for the subjective, processual aspects of jazz promotes a dichotomous view in which jazz is pitted against the purportedly closed, objective realm of European art music. This false dichotomy ignores the historical process through which subjective content sediments into objective form. For the comments of Johnson, Gracyk, and Elliott imply that European art music is frozen and universally objectified, while jazz is like a living subject. Such a view fails to recognize that both genres are subject to the same historical forces and that jazz, being improvisation based, simply moves through phases of reification and rebirth at an accelerated pace, leaving the immediate impression that it is exclusively located at the subjective pole of the dialectic. A brief look at the historical record will suffice to show that this view of jazz is lacking and that the practice of jazz performance, at its best, reflects a critical stance that is in opposition to, yet informed by, the more commodified "piece" of jazz music.

To begin with, the argument that Miles Davis' improvisational experiments on

Kind of Blue resist categorization as art objects can be recast dialectically. Davis, in this

1 Brown, "Postmodern Jazz Theory," 238. 2 Adorao, "On Jazz" in Essays on Music, ATi. light, was abandoning stultified musical forms that would no longer allow for even the illusion of subjectivity. Lhamon writes that

with Kind of Blue (1959), Davis in one blow consolidated avant-garde dissatisfaction with the elements of song form, which were still vestigial after bebop's assault on them, and he popularized alternative structures. Instead of prescribed chord changes at prescribed intervals, Kind of Blue used modal 183

structures.

Beyond altering the function of harmonic accompaniment by emphasizing modality rather than tonality, Davis developed a personalized approach to improvisation around

1960 that emphasized musical implication rather than statement.184 These events were a direct response to the extreme development of the improvisational vocabulary of bebop, the language of post 1945 "modern jazz" that had, in Davis' mind, reached the point of saturation and culminated in a loss of subjective meaning. Brown puts the case succinctly in criticizing Robert Walser's view of Davis. Walser in effect adopts an essentialist position by attaching critical social meaning to Davis' "consistent and deliberate use of risky techniques." Brown observes, however, that "nothing is risked unless the officially despised conventional values still have some stake in the case."185 And how did bebop become so highly conventionalized? Peter Martin describes how Charlie Parker, an undisputed innovator in the world of modern jazz, created myriad musical fragments of syntax that were taken up by others. Thus Parker was "contributing immensely to the codification of bebop as a musical language."186

183 W. T. Lhamon Jr., "They All Juggled Milk Bottles," in A Miles Davis Reader, ed. Bill Kirchner (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 55. Note that, unlike in Western art music theory, the term "modal" in jazz theory refers to a framework for improvisation that employs a small number of chords that seldom change and are derived from one or two modes. See Mark Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, 8th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 386. 184 Don Heckman, "Miles Davis Times Three," in A Miles Davis Reader, 121. 185 Lee Brown, "Postmodernist Jazz Theory," 240. 186 Martin cites the seminal work of Thomas Owens. Peter J. Martin, "Spontaneity and Organisation," in Cook and Horn, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, 148. 150

The seminal figures of jazz were acutely aware of the stultified language that they were reacting to in each case, and their reactions were, in a sense, historically forced. For example, Mackey cites Howard McGhee, another modern jazz virtuoso, as saying, "...

[W]e can't do no more than what's been done with it, we gotta do somethin' else. We gotta do some other kind of thing." He adds that pianist Thelonius Monk, another of the founders of bebop, had the same frustrations with codified improvisational vocabulary and reacted by designing music that would "use notes differently."188

But perhaps no subgenre of jazz is more closely associated with subjectivity than the free jazz of the 1960s, or The New Thing, as it was dubbed by founder Ornette

Coleman. Coleman's seminal album, Free Jazz (1960), significantly heralded the movement, which abandoned not only tonality but other traditional organizational principles, as well as flouting accepted notions of timbre. The movement was largely associated with social critique and the largest migration of jazz musicians from the South

1 80 to northern American cities that had occurred up to that time. This music was informed by, among other things, "decolonization, the black power movement, the counter-culture, and antiwar movement of the Vietnam Era." Additionally, the structural innovations introduced into it were intended to "fight for freedom, not merely from staid musical conventions but also against political injustice."190 More important in terms of the present discussion is the fact that, although some associated this approach with the European

Nathaniel Mackey, "Other: From Noun to Verb," in Jazz Among the Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard, 76- 99 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 16. McGhee, whom Feather cites as "the best known bop trumpet player after Gillespie in the late '40s," was born in 1918 and played jazz in a more traditional style early on in his career. See Leonard Feather, The Encyclopedia of Jazz 1st ed. (New York: Horizon Press, 1955), s.v. "McGhee, Howard." 188 Mackey, "Other: From Noun to Verb," 16. 189 Washington, "All the Things You Could Be By Now," 31. 151 avant-garde, the improvisational syntax created for the New Thing was in many ways an attempt to subvert Western European aesthetic expectations."191

Yet Salim Washington argues that The New Thing was simply the latest phase of what he calls jazz' "perpetual avant-garde" nature. He charges that the histories of all avant-garde movements in jazz have been misrepresented as permanent "fringe" elements rather than attitudes that condone a "continuous search for expansion of the formal parameters available for artistic expression."192 Washington succinctly explains how rapidly "new" musical statements have become ossified into formal conventions throughout jazz' young history by pointing out that the free jazz of the 1960s was considered a more virulent strain of protest music simply because of shifting musical expectations. The chromaticism and angularity that resulted in what Gracyk calls "the antithesis of entertainment"193 had, by 1960, become the vernacular language of jazz.

This caused many to overlook the fact that

at the time of its emergence, the 'New Thing' was simply a continuation of the perpetual avant-garde tradition of the music and was no more self-consciously revolutionary than the bebop of "modern music" movement.194

Because audiences and historians often fail to perceive this perpetual avant-garde quality of jazz, they likewise fail to perceive the connections between categories such as bebop and the 'New Thing,' and instead compartmentalize them according to perceived "style" differences.195 According to Washington, the result is that avant-garde becomes "reified as a style" and its processual aspects go unnoticed."196

191 Ibid., 33. 192 Ibid, 28. 193 Gracyk, "Adorno, Jazz and the Aesthetics of Popular Music," 532. 194 Washington, "All the Things You Could Be By Now," 33. 195 Other scholars, such as Krin Gabbard, have postulated that there are additional subtle connections between bebop and free jazz of the 1960s that are also praxis based, such as the tendency of improvisers in both "categories" to employ modernist "collage" techniques. See Krin Gabbard, "The Quoter and his 152

To clarify this idea, it is necessary to examine closely the central act of jazz performance - improvisation - in order to demonstrate that it tends to take on a critical role in reaction to its own commodification, an idea that both Lee Brown and Peter

Martin have explored.197 The effective jazz improviser is aware of the continuous tension between content and form, as well as the need to balance the effects of improvisational statements, which are continually ossifying into formal conventions. Because jazz performance is based on principles of alteration and quotation, the improviser who struggles to communicate expressive content against a backdrop of formal parameters

(not to mention a backdrop of historical performances, including her own, against which she and others may be evaluating new musical statements) must instinctively understand the dialectical process involved in a way that casual listeners likely do not. In jazz, the repetition of patterns or short musical ideas (known as "riffs") quickly removes them from the sphere of the subjective by making them available for appropriation as formal objects.198

Experienced improvisers react to these developments by attempting to imbue each successive performance with new expressive content, which eventually necessitates altering the structural parameters of the form, as ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner has noted. This view negates the dualism between the evolutionary and revolutionary views of jazz history because it essentially says that both views are partly correct. While the

"Great Men" narrative has focused on the way that key figures, such as Charlie Parker

Culture," in Jazz in Mind: Essays on the History and Meanings of Jazz, ed. Reginald T. Buckner and Steven Weiland, 92-111 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 93. 196 Ibid. 197 See Brown, "Postmodern Jazz Theory," and Martin, "Spontaneity and Organisation." 198 This is in fact the primary way that jazz musicians learn their art. Prouty notes that "the language of improvisation is gleaned from pre-existing sources, particularly recordings of major jazz artists. Prouty, "From Storyville to State University," 182. 153 and Miles Davis, managed to spearhead the creation of new styles, a dialectical model implies that their accomplishments can only be understood in relation to the hundreds of musicians who pushed the improvisational vocabulary to the point of subjective exhaustion in the first place.

There is an additional factor, however, that differentiates jazz performance aesthetics from traditional European art music aesthetics and that is the element of interaction. Berliner states:

[improvisation involves reworking precomposed material and designs in relation to unanticipated ideas conceived, shaped, and transformed under the special conditions of performance, thereby adding unique features to every creation.199 (emphasis added)

The "special conditions" to which he refers are the conditions of group interaction. Ingrid

Monson has studied the interactive aspects of jazz improvisation by focusing on the complex improvisational interplay within the rhythm section (those instruments who generally act in a supporting role with regard to a soloist) of a jazz ensemble. The rhythmic "feel" or "groove," established by the rhythm section through its constant interaction, acts as a framework that is dynamically related to anything then improvised by the soloist. Then soloist and rhythm section will often add complementary layers of what Monson call "interactional texts."200 Not only does such a collective process resist the category of "composition" in the traditional sense but, theoretically, a constantly shifting context should act as a buffer to prevent the stultifying of musical statements, if heard as parts of a whole. Logically, the less interactive the ensemble, the more likely that musical codification might occur more quickly.

199 Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 241. 200 Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 189. 154

So, there are at least several complex dialectical processes that occur during jazz improvisation: (1) the tendency toward spontaneity that is simultaneously informed by the need to relate to some formal structural parameters, (2) the tendency of improvised statements to be expressive yet reference formal conventions and (eventually) transform themselves into new conventions, and (3) the negotiation between individual and collective goals during group interaction. The praxis of improvisation is thus predicated on an ongoing relationship between action and art object, in contrast to the oversimplified praxial reading that most so-called critical theory of jazz scholars advance.

Improvisations themselves are not best perceived as art objects (recordings are another matter); however the musical statements appropriated for the task - the crystallized musical fragments with which improvisers negotiate, can be viewed as such. This helps to explain the history of the emergence of various styles while sidestepping the evolution/revolution debate. Martin summarizes the dialectical nature of jazz in one sentence: "It is precisely in reconciling the tension between innovation and tradition, spontaneity and organization, that players work to achieve that integration of the individual and the collective which is at the heart of the jazz aesthetic."201

To summarize, the argument that jazz' codification can be offset by an entirely contextual educational approach that considers jazz as praxis rather than product is untenable because (1) formal education always involves a degree of abstraction from an original context, and, more importantly, (2) jazz as praxis is inconceivable without jazz as product, even prior to the academization process. This is an illustration of the problem inherent in ignoring the necessity of reification. Since "units" of improvisational language can be seen as commodities that take on exchange value in direct relation to

201 Martin, "Spontaneity and Organization," 152. 155 their codification in academic settings, then having discussions about the original

"meanings" of stock musical statements or encouraging performance activities that place them in similar contexts will always, according to Adorno's paradox, solidify them as objects. As the above passages have attempted to demonstrate, the ongoing history of jazz as a dynamic music continues to depend on such formalization.

The tendency to perceive theoretically constructed abstractions, such as chord/scale relationships that are intended to assist in understanding jazz performance practices, as pre-existing, natural objects is a real problem. Prouty refers to this practice, when employed in pedagogical settings, as "reverse analysis."202 But, as the above discussion has attempted to show, addressing this problem by treating jazz as "pure" praxis, as if it were immune to objectification, will simply cause the reification of newly emerging practices, while ignoring their dynamic relation to past conventions. As Travis

Jackson cautions, "in reducing oral or aural phenomena to notation and applying text- based analytical procedures," early jazz historians, such as Gunther Schuller, Winthrop

Sargeant, and Andre Hodier "perhaps imply that their transcriptions have the same status as the sources used to generate them."203 Whether or not the creators of jazz transcriptions, Schenker graphs, or any other abstractions, are guilty of this implicature is ultimately beside the point, however. At issue is our tendency to draw such inferences for ourselves owing to a kind of blindness to the necessarily abstract frameworks through which we process musical information and an ignorance of the complex dialectical interplay between the abstract and the concrete.

20 Prouty, "From Storyville to State University," 179. 203 Travis A. Jackson, "Jazz as Musical Practice," in Cook and Horn, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, 90. 156

CHAPTER FOUR TOWARD A CRITIQUE OF FORMS IN MUSIC EDUCATION

The point of theory is to travel, always to move beyond its confinements, to emigrate, to remain in a sense an exile.1

By now it should be evident that the relationship between Critical Theory and method is a problematic one. Adorno states that "a rigorous dialectical thinker should not in fact speak of method, for the simple reason ... that the method should be a function of the object, not the inverse."2 For a critical pedagogue such as Giroux, this means not that method should be abandoned, but that educators must prevent a "petrified, omniscient system of universal laws" from glossing over the "contradictions and disjunctions" that problematize meaning.3 But how does one go about suggesting a method by which to critique the systematization of musical thought when all methods are subject to reification?

Perhaps Paddison answers this query best by insisting that negative dialectics can be neither considered nor applied as a method. He states, "It is not a 'system' or a

'framework' which can be extracted as a separate thesis, but exists only as a dynamic field of debate."4 Constantly eluding a fixed position, negative dialectics brings to mind

Edward Said's notion of "traveling theory," cited in the opening passage. Herein lies both its strength and weakness. It is properly viewed not as a critical theory but as an ongoing critique of all systematized thought; however, as Adorno's problematic relationship with

1 Edward Said, "Traveling Theory Reconsidered," in Critical Reconstructions: The Relationship of Fiction and Life, ed. Robert M. Polhemus and Roger B. Henkle (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 264. 2 Theodor Adorno, "Goldman and Adorno: To Describe, Understand and Explain," in Lucien Goldman, Cultural Creation in Modem Society, trans. Bart Grahl, 129-145 (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1977), 129. 3 Giroux, Ideology, Culture and the Process of Schooling, 115-116. 4 Paddison, Adorno's Aesthetics of Music, 278. 157 the Left indicates, because nonidentity thinking by definition resists systematization, attempts to "apply" or "translate" its tenets into praxis always run the risk of reducing it

"to a mere vehicle for given strategic intentions."5

A glaring example of this problem can be found in one of the few practical attempts to apply critical pedagogy to music education. In Frank Abrahams's recent

(2005) article in Music Educators Journal, the author endeavors to show that ideas ostensibly borrowed from critical pedagogy can be utilized to help teachers and students to "meet the goals set forth by the [American] National Standards for Music Education."6

Abrahams's sample lesson plan, which is in no way intended to be prescriptive, is nevertheless presented in chart form with step-by-step instructions next to which are listed the national standards being met at each stage of the lesson.7 Although Abrahams notes that "achievement in a critical pedagogy classroom is context bound, and the goals may not be the same for all children in every situation,"8 the irony of drawing on ideas rooted in Critical Theory in order to reinforce unquestioningly the National Standards seems to have been lost on him.9

As Cathy Benedict reveals in her dissertation, which examines the National

Standards through a Critical Theory lens, the creation of the standards was motivated by the practical desire for legitimacy, curricular inclusion, and funding; thus the standards

5 Berman, "Adorno's Politics," 129. 6 Frank Abrahams, "Transforming Classroom Music Instruction with Ideas from Critical Pedagogy," Music Educators Journal 92, no. 1 (Sept., 2005): 67. 7 Ibid., 66. 8 Ibid., 67. 9 In this article Abrahams draws entirely on Paolo Freire, whose work, although it focuses more on abolishing the student-teacher dichotomy, stresses the importance of questioning the assumed worth of "given" knowledge that represents dominant classes. In this sense Freire's work owes a great deal to the Western Marxist thought associated with the Frankfurt School. 158 focus on measurable outcomes and emphasize "training and observable behaviors."10 In fact, Benedict shows that, in the United States, national standards in other disciplines are generally framed in language that allows for questioning and problem posing to a far greater extent than is the case with the music standards.11 In addition to the emphasis on quantification, the standards were framed as "an executive summary, a business model for presenting information."12 This particular format was promoted by Rich Gurin who was, at the time that he served on the committee that created the standards, the chief executive officer of a major corporation.13 The need for clarity, simplicity, and measurability in the standards stemmed from anxiety related to music education's legitimacy crisis. Since "it is much more difficult to examine issues and call to question seemingly given and immutable assumptions," it was thought that the standards should not leave room for "conflict and disorder." Because conflict tends to undermine the perceived scientific legitimacy of a body of knowledge, masking conflict by creating the appearance of consensus worked to bolster music education's public image.14

Consequently, Benedict concludes, the standards adopted an ostensibly neutral stance that is in fact "less than neutral in that a pedagogical focus that is ends-means permeates

[them]."15

Benedict draws a parallel between the National Standards and reified methods of music instruction, arguing that both are ultimately incompatible with the aims of Critical

10 Cathy Benedict, "Chasing Legitimacy: The National Standards Viewed Through a Critical Theorist Framework" (Ed.D. diss., Teachers College, Columbia University, 2004), 141. 11 Ibid., 142. 12 Ibid., 138. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 132. 15 Ibid., ii. Theory. In a similar vein, Woodford argues that the Standards may potentially render students and teachers "intellectually passive and docile."17 Abrahams's presentation of critical pedagogy as a means of achieving the Standards while simultaneously claiming to be transformative highlights the problem that has been continually raised throughout this discussion: any theory, critical or not, can potentially be used instrumentally to achieve certain partisan ends once it enters the realm of praxis.

The Assessment Paradox

Another potential problem related to the notion of standards is that assessment or evaluation of any type requires some degree of measurability. Colwell (2002) defines evaluation as "the making of judgments based on the data derived from measurements and other procedures," while noting that assessment refers to the collection of data that enables such judgments. He uses the two terms interchangeably, however, inasmuch as assessment is also defined as a means "to improve or judge instruction or do both."18

Although evaluation and assessment are both qualitative, then, insofar as they involve judging "the worth of an experience, idea, procedure or product,"19 measurement

(through which data are collected that can then be subject to qualitative judgment) is considered an essential (although atomistic) part of the evaluation process.20 But nonidentity thinking by definition problematizes all obj edification and therefore resists

16 Ibid., 149-150. 17 Woodford, Democracy and Music Education, 64. 18 Richard Colwell, "Assessment's Potential in Music Education," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, ed. Richard Colwell and Carol P. Richardson, 1128-1158 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1129. 19 Richard Colwell, The Evaluation of Music Teaching and Learning (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970), 3. 20 Ibid., 5. In "Assessment's Potential in Music Education" (see above) Colwell refers to measurement as "the smallest unit in assessment" (1129). 160 the idea of a permanently fixed position from which to measure. More importantly,

Critical Theory, as just stated, eludes a fixed definition, and this makes it incompatible with the notion of objective outcomes, some form of which is necessary for assessment.

Negative dialectics holds that there is no "end point" (let alone an observable one) at which one's consciousness is fully liberated, and the relative success of ideology critique may well elude outside observation.21 Ironically, the belief that Critical Theory, when applied to music education, must be subject to evaluation in order to be considered important is grounded in positivist and empiricist assumptions about knowledge, for which it is intended to serve as a corrective.

This problem surfaces in Abrahams's claim that teachers can assess student transformation, which he defines as an acknowledgement that a change in perception has

00 occurred. But, as previously noted, a change in perception alone (assuming it is a real change and that the student is not merely exhibiting outward behavior that she knows the teacher will associate with a perceptual shift) is no guarantee whatsoever that a critical stance has been adopted. The change may merely be from one ideological position to another. This misperception can be traced to Abrahams's assumption that, by promoting open dialogue that values the knowledge that students bring into classrooms, teachers and students can transcend ideology.23 Yet this constructivist, student-centered approach fails to problematize student knowledge that may be ideologically influenced to begin with.

21 There is a further problem with regard to the role of observation in evaluation and assessment. The very separation of measurement from these other activities presupposes that observation can be isolated from moral assessment, a claim that A. R. Louch argues is untenable. See Explanation and Human Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 4 and passim. 22 Abrahams, "Transforming Classroom Music," 64. 161

Thus, the assumption that a change in perception is necessarily synonymous with a heightened sense of critical consciousness is mistaken.

Abrahams erroneously assumes that the end result of a critical music pedagogy must be assessable and must somehow fulfill content standards, with predictably problematic results. However, "the assessment paradox" is only a problem if the value of applying Critical Theory to music education is thought to depend on one's ability to assess the outcomes of its application. I would argue that this is not the case. Indeed, the necessary objectification, abstraction, and systematization involved in measuring, evaluating, and setting standards - all of which are to some degree essential pedagogical activities - demand as a dialectical "counterweight" a critical approach to music education that draws on nonidentity thinking so as to continually question the sense of neutrality and permanence that is prone to develop in relation to these other activities. It is not merely a change in perception that should be the aim of a critical music education, but a general tendency to question all seemingly fixed points in the universe of musical understanding.

With this in mind, the present chapter, which attempts to ground the theoretical ideas previously discussed, contains some cautious suggestions as to what a critical theory of forms might look like in practice. It cannot be overstressed that these suggestions are not intended to be prescriptive and should not be adopted unquestioningly without modification. The discussion that follows is organized into two areas of potential application: (1) critiquing the discourse of music instruction and (2) problematizing the idea of given musical forms. A consideration of music instruction methods and the contexts in which they are employed as potentially reified forms is treated in the next chapter. These categories are, like all categories, somewhat artificial and in reality overlap significantly. Some of the ideas that follow are presented under such headings as

"history," "theory," and "performance." This is primarily for convenience because these labels reflect current divisions of music education. The presentation format does not imply any advocacy for a nonintegrated, and thus de-historicized, music education.24

Part I: Critiquing the Discourse of Music Instruction

Although a critique of language is presented here as a separate category, language obviously operates on a meta-level, permeating all areas of music education. As discussed in the previous chapter, the frozen metaphors of musical understanding are reinforced continually through the discourse of instruction, which tends to present them as universal constants. As Regelski points out, language has the crucial role in music education of legitimizing its institutionalized values.25 Therefore, an initial suggestion is that educators critique the language that they use to describe music and ways of understanding it, and that they encourage their students to proceed similarly.

1. Applying Critical Discourse Analysis

Norman Fairclough, the founder of critical discourse analysis, explains that the ordinary way in which we speak about things and, in particular, the manner in which statements of human interaction are thought to proceed smoothly from one to another are indicators of the mutually assumed background knowledge that interlocutors bring to a

24 In this regard, J. M. Bernstein notes that "the same forces of fragmentation and reification which have produced the great divide between high art and the culture industry produced the division of labour among the various disciplines." J.M. Bernstein, introduction to The Culture Industry, 3. 25 Regelski, "Taking the 'Art' of Music for Granted," 26. 163 dialogue. And background knowledge "subsumes 'naturalized' ideological representations."26 The goal of critical discourse analysis is to "elucidate such naturalizations" and to reveal consequences of discourse that are "characteristically opaque" to those involved. For example, Fairclough analyzes transcripts from a police interview with a woman claiming to be a victim of rape in order to demonstrate that

"orderliness" (the overall perception that a series of statements fits together coherently as evidenced by the speakers' orderly turn-taking or polite acknowledgments at

"appropriate" points in the conversation) is dependent on assumed background knowledge. In this case the orderliness of the dialogue showed that the assumed background knowledge included such given propositions as: "if a woman places herself in a situation where sexual intercourse 'might be expected to occur' ... that is tantamount to being a willing partner and rules out rape."28

Fairclough's aim is to show that understanding orderliness is a key to perceiving the dialectical relation between "micro events," such as conversations, and "macro structures," which include social institutions such as the education profession:

[T]o become a teacher, one must master the discursive and ideological norms which the school attaches to that subject position - one must learn to talk like a teacher and 'see things' (i.e., things such as learning and teaching) like a teacher. ... these ways of talking and ways of seeing are inseparably intertwined in that the latter constitute a part of the taken-for-granted 'knowledge base' upon which the orderliness of the former depends. This means that in the process of acquiring the ways of talking which are normatively associated with a subject position, one necessarily acquires also its ways of seeing, or ideological norms. And just as one is typically unaware of one's ways of talking unless for some reason they are subjected to conscious scrutiny, so also is one typically unaware of what ways of seeing, what ideological representations, underlie one's talk.29

Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 28. Ibid. Ibid., 30. Ibid., 39-40. 164

Orderliness would seem not only to indicate the presence of naturalized ideological representations but to reinforce them as well. This has strong implications for teachers, who are conditioned by their profession and, in turn, condition students to accept the kind of discourse that is appropriate for what Fairclough calls their "speech community."

Granted, Fairclough clearly argues against a "hard" structuralist view of social institutions insofar as he maintains that they are open to change from below (this is why he calls the relation dialectical).30 But given that teachers, perhaps more so than professionals in other institutions, shape students' concepts of acceptable communication

(e.g., what is orderly), their potential to reinforce naturalized ideological representations through orderly communication should not be underestimated. In other words, we must attend not only to what is said but how it is said.

Below are two examples of discourse that might occur in a secondary school music class, followed by brief explanations of the likely naturalized ideologies embedded in the assumed background knowledge:

Example 1

Teacher: Last week I said that if you focused your energy and worked hard on the Messiah, we could sing something popular of your choice. Did anyone bring a CD of one of the options I listed so that we can choose? Hopefully more than one of you ....

Student: Yes, I did. Here it is.

Teacher: Okay, we do have an arrangement of this. So, for the rest of the class we'll listen to the CD and then on Monday we'll begin working with the music.

In this example, a teacher is clearly trying to connect with students' musical lives outside of the classroom by offering to negotiate the inclusion of some of "their" music. The

Ibid., 38. 165 opening statement, however, indicates several propositions taken as a given part of the background knowledge. First, it is taken as given that popular choral music is an enjoyable diversion from the more difficult and thus presumably more important task of rehearsing art music ("work hard on the Messiah ... sing something popular"). It is also taken as given that the students' tastes will be aligned with popular music, which may not be the case for every student. Finally, the teacher's concluding statement indicates subtly, by way of the visual metaphor discussed in the previous chapter, that the sheet music is accorded higher status than the recorded music.

Example 2

Teacher: We were supposed to do theory today, but I'm not happy with the way "Regal March" is sounding, so we'll have to put off doing theory until Wednesday.

In the second example, aside from the obvious implication that the teacher is the final arbiter who decides when the criteria for good performance have been met (a proposition that has tacitly been agreed upon by both teacher and students), there are at least two other propositions that are taken as given, although they are less apparent. First, it is taken as given that theory cannot be effectively pursued in a performance context and, second, it is taken as given that product is more important than process. Granted, the immediate context could include an imminent competition or school concert that the superintendent will be attending, in which case the comment may not be typical and students would probably interpret its implications in light of the unusual circumstances under which it was spoken.

There are any number of ways in which some form of critical discourse analysis can be applied to music teaching situations. Student teaching often involves videotaping oneself to analyze pacing, classroom management techniques, conducting gestures, or countless other factors. An analysis of language that may reinforce or instill ideological representations is one possible outcome of videotaping, and it is also a technique that could be applied by experienced teachers to review their communication habits.

It should be emphasized that the goal of critical discourse analysis is not to discover a way of speaking without any assumptions about previous knowledge. It is of course impossible to communicate other than at the most rudimentary level without assuming that tacit agreements exist about basic premises. The goal is rather to ensure that socially constructed propositions that have been naturalized into accepted knowledge are brought to the forefront where they can be scrutinized and modified if necessary.

And, as Fairclough explains, there are degrees of naturalization, ranging from propositions accepted as knowledge by a small circle of individuals to, at the other

T 1 extreme, propositions accepted as knowledge by all members of a community. Thus the assumptions that are most consistently embedded in the discourse of music education, such as the primacy of teleology, unity, organicism, hypervisualism, and the conduit metaphor, should garner the most attention.

It is worth reiterating that it would be a mistake to ask, "With what shall we replace these values?" The goal is not necessarily to replace socially constructed values but to expose their socially constructed nature, so that we might avoid applying them to all musics in all situations. It is not being suggested here, for example, that one should listen to Beethoven's music while avoiding associations with teleology at all costs. There is a world of difference between understanding Beethoven's music in teleological terms as a product of the "Goethezeit" in which it was fashioned, and falsely attributing

31 Ibid., 31. 167 teleology to the musical structures themselves or unconsciously using it as a benchmark against which all other music should be evaluated. Similarly, in the second hypothetical example of music education discourse offered above, it would be possible (although perhaps less likely) that language might reflect the assumption that process is more important than product. If the proposition were tacitly assumed and unquestioningly accepted, it would be a naturalized social value and we would be no better off with it.

By helping students to become aware of the problem of naturalization in discourse, teachers will be alerting them to the process of reification, although probably not in so many words. In order to avoid replacing one ideology with another, this action should be separated from the debate over which social values associated with music should rank higher than others (a debate that should be encouraged, albeit overtly, so as to avoid a relativistic stance). In this way, thoughtful teachers will be using ideology critique to focus on the process of reification, as opposed to their "pet" ideologies.

Whether this process is explained as the naturalization of concepts perpetuated in discourse (i.e., revealing the power of language to reify ideas) or the historical sedimentation of musical forms from content, such discussions will hopefully enable students to develop a questioning stance toward musical "givens." But more importantly, the result may be a transfer of such thinking to the world in general, whereby students, as developing citizens, may perceive the need to question the subject/object dichotomy in all facets of their existence. 168

2. "Hearing As"

One way of exploring the connections among discourse, ideology, and music is by adapting Spitzer's "hearing as" thought experiments to the classroom. There are at least three different approaches that could be taken, depending on the extent to which students' ideas about how to listen to music are already formed. The first approach involves introducing students to musical sounds and, through verbal direction, inviting them to hear the sounds in various ways. This could involve something as simple as Spitzer's example of two notes, an F descending to an E, which can be heard in terms of an imaginary F harmony or an imaginary C harmony, depending on one's mental orientation. Students might be asked to imagine hearing the familiar "Amen" chord progression surrounding the two notes, in one instance, and to imagine the sound of an F

Major chord juxtaposed against the beginning of a descending F scale on another listening. Of course, there are many other possible ways of hearing the two notes. For example, an advanced student of jazz at the undergraduate level would probably associate a descending semitone with the first two notes of the song "Stella By Starlight," a standard in the jazz repertory. In that case, the two notes will be heard as an upper neighbor tone anacrusis moving to an eleventh extension on a B half diminished chord, a considerably more complex way of "hearing as."

The point of the exercise is to engage students in as many different ways of

"hearing as" as circumstances will allow. This could include Spitzer's three primary metaphorical modes of understanding: painting (hearing one note as an embellishment of the other), language (hearing the notes as antecedent and consequent, as in a grammatical statement), and life (perceiving a sense of directed movement toward a destination, as in 169 life's journey). But teachers need not limit the exercise to three historically common ways of hearing Western art music, since there is no reason to assume they constitute a closed set of possibilities.32 And the exercise need not focus solely on tiny isolated structures such as two note phrases. The point of employing abstract structures is to demonstrate that we are capable of superimposing different socially conditioned listening responses onto them. Ideally, at the outcome of the exercise students should recognize, in the words of Subotnik, that

no matter how intrinsically necessary they may seem, all [musical] structures are dependent for meaning on subjective minds existing outside of those structures; meaning is not intrinsic ... but imposed on them.33

Discourse is involved in this process insofar as the teacher's verbal directions, as well as what students have thus far read and heard about musical meaning, steers the direction of

"hearing as" that results. Thus, discourse is implicated in imposing meaning onto the musical structures, and its effects should be addressed as part of the exercise. The discourse of music theory, particularly in pedagogical settings, is often particularly guilty of invoking constructed meanings that are falsely attributed to musical structures during the act of listening. This issue will be taken up presently.

The second suggested approach uses student discourse as the material for analyzing listening experiences and bringing to light the metaphorical nature of "hearing as." In this variation on the exercise, students would be asked to focus their listening attention on a musical example, but without being directed to structure their listening experiences in any particular manner. They would then describe their impressions of the music's "meaning," either orally or through journaling, and those descriptions would

32 Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 12. 33 Rose Rosengard Subotnik, "Tonality, Autonomy, and Competence in Post-Classical Music," Critical Inquiry 6, no. 1 (Autumn, 1979): 155. become the basis of analysis, ideally by both teacher and students (with teacher guidance), for determining the various metaphors that structure their listening. The presence of language indicating discrepancies in metaphorical structuring would present an opportunity to acknowledge the validity of different ways of "hearing as," thus denaturalizing them by default. In cases where ideological representations are strong, however, such as the common association of teleology with Romantic music, lack of discrepancies would actually solidify the case for ideology. This too could work to advantage, as long as the exercise were undertaken in such a way that students did not conclude that consensus is proof of the naturalness of a particular mode of "hearing as."

Following up with the directed listening version of the exercise might be effective in that case.

In any event, the language with which students describe music can be revealing.

Critically analyzing student discourse would presumably be most effective in situations where students have been or are currently being exposed to the discourses of music theory, analysis, and history, such as the typical undergraduate situation. Even younger students, however, may have strong preconceived ideas preventing them from recognizing a distinction between hearing and "hearing as." In particular, and given the way in which popular music is generally marginalized in the curriculum (or, as Green points out, the way in which it is taught when it is included), they may have tacitly accepted the notion that art music is highly evolved.34 The valuing of formal complexity is easy enough to sense in any formal music teaching situation. This may affect the way students listen to music and what they believe they should listen for.

Green, "Why Ideology is Still Relevant," 13. 171

Related to this ideological potential of Western art music is the third variation on the exercise. In this version, students are presented with two or more musical examples of which one is Western art music and the others are popular, world music, and/or some other contrasting example. The rest of the exercise is consistent with the second variation, with the exception that the resulting descriptions may reveal whether the students tend to favor specific ways of "hearing as" for certain types of music or whether they structure their listening similarly across genres. There are interesting implications if students who have studied Western art music and been exposed to its discourse tend to hear popular or world music teleologically, for example, or evaluate it in terms of its harmonic and melodic complexity or lack thereof.

3. Technologized Discourse: Recognizing the Dangers of Standardized Speech

As music educators turn their attention toward their own language, an additional concern is the extent to which the discourse of their instruction may become

"technologized." Fairclough describes the "technologization of discourse" as any attempt to restructure and standardize the discourse of a given institution or organization to achieve more "effective" results. In such a scenario, research is generally done on the pre-existing discourse by specialists who seek to impose a new discourse that is persuasive or manipulative, standardized, and carries an aura of scientific truth owing to its proven "effectiveness."35 As an example, Fairclough cites attempts to implement a standardized language that would transform workplace disciplinary reviews into pleasant,

Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 102-103. 172 sociable events.36 In that case, the blurring of distinctions between professional and personal discourse merely serves to mask the disciplinary nature of the meeting through an "apparent democratization" of institutional language.37 Fairclough notes that institutional discourse in general is increasingly "designed and projected as 'context free,' as usable in any relevant context."38 And discourse that appears to transcend context results in a de-emphasizing of local institutional concerns and increased standardization.39

All of these issues, the pressure toward standardized language, the presentation of discourse as context free, and the notion of an aura of scientific truth pervading discourse, should be of particular concern to music educators. Standardizing discourse effectively insulates it from criticism, as does an aura of scientism, such as that associated with the language of standardized testing, an activity with which the music education profession has a long history of involvement.40 And the appearance of context-free language precludes efforts to modify discourse to suit different situations. Standardized discourse goes hand in hand with standardized outcomes. As Woodford notes, although emphasis on the latter seemed to decline throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the advent of the (U.S.)

National Standards reflects a renewed focus on quantifying music education outcomes stemming from political pressures of the New Right.41

36 M. Argyle, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behavior, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978). Cited in Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 103. 37 Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, 105. 38 Ibid, 104. 39 Ibid. 40 Woodford, Democracy and Music Education, 63. Woodford lists the following as examples: "the Seashore Measures of Musical Talents (1919), Wing's Standardized Tests of Musical Intelligence (1939), the Drake Musical Aptitude Tests (1957), Bentley's Measures of Musical Abilities (1966), Edwin Gordon's Musical Aptitude Profile (1965), and Richard Colwell's Music Achievement Tests (1969-70)." 41 Ibid, 63-64. In support of this claim, Woodford cites Betty Hanley and Janet Montgomery, "Contemporary Curriculum Practices and their Theoretical Bases," in The New Handbook of Research on 173

A recent example of standardized discourse in education is the "discourse of excellence," as David Purpel and Svi Shapiro call it. They show that the ubiquitous use of the terms "excellence," "standards," and "rigor" beginning in the 1980s in relation to education was in fact a massive rationalization for reversing the progressive policies that had sprung up in the previous two decades in an attempt to render education somewhat more democratic and accessible.42 Such words, with their scientific aura, belie the true nature of the educational "reforms" of the 1980s and 1990s, which, as right wing reactions to the declining position of the United States in the world economy, were clearly driven by political more so than professional concerns.43 As Benedict argues, it is tempting for music educators to partake in this prevalent discourse in exchange for the curricular legitimacy that comes with the appearance of teaching and testing rigorously.44

Woodford observes that the movement for music education advocacy has itself spawned a standardized discourse, one rife with "rhetoric and sloganism."45 And, of course, there is also the risk of standardized language as an outcome of slavish adherence to specific instructional methods. (This issue will be pursued in detail in the next chapter.) Finally, Fairclough's concern about the widespread implementation of pseudo- democratic discourse that serves to mask power relations is also relevant to music education. Critical music educators should be aware of the possibility that discourse that appears to be student-centered might merely serve to manipulate the surface features of music education while disguising the hegemony of existing power structures. Green's

Music Teaching and Learning, 135; and Ralph Smith, "Recent Trends and Issues in Policy Making," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, 24. 42 David E. Purpel and Svi Shapiro, Beyond Liberation and Excellence: Reconstructing the Public Discourse on Education (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1995), 50-55. 43 Ibid., 69. 44 Benedict, "Chasing Legitimacy," 141. 45 Woodford, Democracy and Music Education, 29. 174 aforementioned example of the discourse of inclusiveness surrounding the decision to add popular music - which teachers and text editors then subjected to the scrutiny of

Western art music's aesthetic values - to the British curriculum is a case in point. Other possibilities include the widespread acceptance of informal, sociable language that may not be employed in the true spirit of giving students a greater voice in the music classroom, but rather simply to mollify them. As Osborne points out, "this kind of informality can be manipulative as teachers seek to find a good relationship with students but do not otherwise change their views of what it means to be a teacher."46

4. Problematizing the Authority of Texts

Considering the power of the printed word to accelerate the reification of ideas, it stands to reason that music students will enjoy greater opportunities for critical perspective with a decreased reliance on any single textual authority. One approach to problematizing the authority of texts with good potential for success is to present students with contrasting perspectives drawn from multiple texts (thus exposing tensions) and then encouraging them to engage critically with these different perspectives. (An example of this strategy can be found in chapter 5 in the juxtaposition and critical exploration of

Elliott's and Reimer's models of music education, for instance.) This approach inevitably involves considerable time and effort on behalf of the music educator. Using a single comprehensive text or anthology in an uncritical manner is simply easier, particularly in overcrowded public school classrooms or large university lecture settings.

The temptation to use pre-packaged curricular material is all the greater considering its ubiquity. The plethora of highly sequenced method books, instructional

46 Osborne, Teaching for Democratic Citizenship, 60. manuals, and music texts of a technical nature intended for pedagogic use is ample evidence that Apple's concern about the "deskilling" of the teaching profession through excessively prescriptive published resources is warranted.47 Marcia Citron, however, cautions that although "a relatively small group of individuals - anthologizers, textbook authors, and the publishers with whom they work - can shape the behavior and tastes of a large population of listeners, performers, composers, and scholars,"48 one would be oversimplifying to associate the problem solely with the production side. This is because a circular, reinforcing relationship exists between music scholars/educators and publishers: the latter fulfill a demand by producing the kinds of resources that academics and teachers have, for the most part, been weaned on and therefore desire.49

Anthologies are particularly instrumental in reproducing the status quo by determining what music receives canonic status. Citron notes that "although theoretically free to use any materials, most instructors rely heavily on published materials for reportorial examples."50 This may be in part because music educators must potentially deal with copyright issues in addition to the time and trouble involved in choosing and organizing their own musical examples.51 And in the secondary classroom there are economic impediments to drawing on a disparate number of resources for use. Although university teachers are free to assemble "course packs" which can then be purchased by students, because public school students are not generally burdened with textbook costs, the added expense of producing unpublished materials for them must be borne by the school or, even worse, the individual teacher.

47 See Apple's discussion in Cultural Politics and Education, 144-146. 48 Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 25. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 25. 51 Ibid. 176

When music educators do take this more challenging path and present students with many resources representing contrasting viewpoints, the outcome should not be what Giroux calls "a mere celebration of subjectivity."52 This cannot be overemphasized.

For a critical educator, the goal of acknowledging a plurality of views is to avoid bestowing any one particular view with the aura of immutable truth by encouraging students to engage in vigorous debates over values. This cannot be accomplished if students simply withdraw into their own subjective worlds. Such an undialectical outcome would be counterproductive to any critical agenda. The goal of critical, comparative textual analysis is to uncover hidden criteria and assumed values that masquerade as neutral, transparent discourse in order that teachers and students may then partake in dialogue and debate over these issues once they have been exposed. This does not mean that educators should not express their own points of view through their teaching (as if such avoidance were possible) or acknowledge the sometimes strongly formed views of students. The point of problematizing texts (as well as spoken discourse) is to make consistent attempts to identify false objectivity - reified ideas posing as neutral or universal language - so that objective understanding hopefully becomes a journey rather than a destination.

In keeping with the theme of critiquing our frames of reference, music educators should not hesitate to interrogate method books, textbooks, anthologies, or any other resources in order to reveal assumed values and implied philosophical positions.

Educators should help students to read between the lines, exploring the lacunae of given texts and, in particular, they should make students aware of the presence of scientific language when it is used to make a case for universality. An example of one of the more

52 Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling, 125. troubling ideological aspects of written (and oral) discourse that can be critically examined is the careless use of synecdoche, such as "good tone" or "correct technique," which was addressed in chapter 3. Such expressions lend a false sense of universality to values associated with Western art music. More will be said on the socially constructed nature of performance ideals in section 3, below.

The philosopher Paul Feyerabend speaks to the importance of comparative critique when he explains that most prejudices are uncovered not through simple analysis, but by contrast. In this light, and speaking from personal experience, a particularly effective strategy for encouraging undergraduate music education majors to engage in such critique is to ask them to compare and contrast several different method or instructional books that are intended for the same general purpose, such as teaching ensemble fundamentals, sight-singing, or the basics of Western art music theory. By noting differences in approach, fundamental assumptions, or unspoken criteria, preservice students may begin to understand that unspoken philosophical premises underlie most if not all resources that they will likely encounter as educators. (Some examples of such resources will be discussed in the next chapter.) Given sufficient experience and practice, they may begin to acquire the ability to unmask these hidden assumptions about what content, skills, or knowledge is most important. Finally, in addition to comparing and critically analyzing authoritative texts, students should be encouraged to examine other sources of discourse about music, such as scholarly and popular articles, concert reviews and other types of criticism, with the same goals. Even editorials and the liner notes of compact discs can be subjected to a critical analysis of language.

53 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1990. Originally published 1975 by New Left Books), 22. 178

Part II: Problematizing Musical Forms as "Given"

The argument thus far has been centered on the idea that the form/content dialectic is often unacknowledged or misunderstood, and that this can lead to the

"runaway" reification of forms. I have attempted to expand on Adorno's implication of a critical theory of forms by, following Paddison, using the term "form" in the loosest possible sense. In that regard, every frame of understanding that has already been mentioned in connection with the music classroom is a potentially reified form, including discourse, teaching methods, and texts. The following section, however, deals specifically with musical forms, although the word "form" should continue to be understood in the broadest sense. Specifically addressed (and in no particular order) are potentially reified forms in music history, performance practices, improvisation- composition, theory, analysis, and notation.

1. Teaching Music History as "Fractured"

The reader will recall from chapter 2 that Adorno refers disparagingly to the traditional portrayal of music history as "the gapless continuum of tranquil development."54 Adopting a critical way of presenting music history necessitates bringing to the fore the disruptions and discontinuities that are generally "smoothed over" by the

"neat and tidy" appearance and linear arrangement of style and period categories. The gaps and gray areas that refuse to fit cleanly into our narratives are crucial to examine because they problematize the notion of discreet boundaries around style categories and time periods, showing them as convenient constructions. The totalizing tendencies of categorization fit well with traditional notions of historical progress, such as the idea of a

54 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 25. 179 smooth developmental music history that proceeds from Bach to Mozart to Beethoven. It is perhaps ironic that Adorno's definition of progress in music history is the opposite: the gradual demythologization of concepts as self-contained entities (such as "Baroque,"

"Bebop," or "Alternative Rock") that mask the true, fragmented nature of music.

The formation of categories, whether of period or style, is of course a function of canon formation. The term canon is used here to mean any body of works that is or has been assumed to be exemplary because of the presence of certain implicitly or explicitly acknowledged ideal qualities. The word is used freely, following cultural studies writings, and notwithstanding the fact that it has only recently been applied to music.55

Citron explains that the concept of a musical canon arose out of such factors as the repetition of nineteenth-century repertoire, the advent of music anthologies, and the

"scientific" legitimation bestowed by traditional musicology, among others.56 By presenting specific values as though they are neutral and universal, canons are able through the use of categories to project these values forward by applying them to future works. Citron explains:

In canonicity, the constituent categories are implicitly passing judgment on what sorts of things are culturally acceptable and therefore capable of being pre- canonic, and what sorts of things do not have a chance. Systems of categorization also shape what sorts of activities will be carried out in the future.57

A conception of music history based on negative dialectics must go beyond merely criticizing formal categories, however, because it is an awareness of the persistence of formalization that allows one to become cognizant of and thus able to

55 Citron dates its existence in music discourse to the early 1970s (approximately). Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 17. 56 Ibid., 17, 32, 37. Joseph Kerman dates the existence of a musical canon to "around 1800 or 1820," but notes that this observation applies only to secular music, as the Catholic Church already had a canon which, although occasionally revised, had extended back several hundred years. Joseph Kerman, "A Few Canonic Variations," Critical Inquiry 10, no. 1 (Sep., 1983): 111. 57 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 18. 180 partially or temporarily escape, the cycle. Much ink has been spilled over the issue of

"filling in" the gaps of the canon with the addition of overlooked women composers, composers of color, and genres (e.g., popular music) that do not fit into the traditional narrative. Efforts to "fill in" the gaps, however, are often based on a mistaken assumption that the canon can somehow be "made whole" and the problem of marginalization consequently transcended. Such attempts amount to nothing more than what many feminist scholars call the "add and stir" approach, a stopgap measure that may do more long term harm than good. Nel Noddings describes the outcome of attempts to expand the canon in the social sciences in terms that could easily be applied to most music history textbooks:

When women and minorities started to object strongly to their exclusion ..., the initial response was (perhaps quite naturally) to search historical accounts for the presence of women and minorities whose participation had somehow been overlooked. The results were in part positive, in part ludicrous. Women were now present in texts, but it often required a stretch of imagination to see why they were included. In many of these situations, it was obvious that no White man who had CO

participated so peripherally would have been represented in the text.

If the relationship between the underlying aesthetic criteria that determine the canon and the specific socio-cultural contexts out of which those criteria crystallized is not explored, a student is likely to arrive at the facile conclusion that women or other marginalized people are underrepresented either because circumstances did not allow them to compose music that was "as good as" that of Mozart or Beethoven, or because they lacked ability or intelligence. Inclusion in this context can easily be interpreted as an act of political correctness. For example, in the latest (2006) edition of the Norton Anthology of Western

Music, a sense of marginalization is merely reinforced by the inclusion (in the second

58 Nel Noddings, "The Care Tradition: Beyond 'Add Women and Stir,'" Theory into Practice 40, no. 1 (Winter, 2001): 29-34. 181 volume) of six women composers, four "jazz composers," and one "popular" composer

(Stephen Foster), within a list of seventy canonical figures.59

Paradoxically, revealing historical sedimentation - through which music's subjective aspects become crystallized into formal objects - as an outcome of the human need to strive for objective foundations which enable understanding, may lead to two simultaneous realizations: first, that the boundaries surrounding style categories and time periods are of human origin and, second, that formalization and canon formation are inescapable results of sedimentation.

Citron groups musical canons into disciplinary and repertorial. Included in the former category are:

goals, methodologies, research conventions, institutions, social structures, belief systems, underlying theories, audience, language, subjects for study, and various other parameters that shape and define a discipline's self-view of what is standard, acceptable and even desirable.60

Despite referring to a canon of repertory as distinct from this broader category of canon, she notes that the two categories often intersect quite freely, such as when disciplinary practices shape repertorial canons through the preparation of editions, or when established canonic works dictate "appropriate" areas of study.61 The problem of canonicity is therefore quite complex and is obviously not limited to music history, but rather extends to all areas of the music curriculum. The issue is addressed in this section, however, because music history is an area in which disciplinary and reportorial canons clearly overlap.

59 J. Peter Burkholder and Claude V. Palisca, eds., Norton Anthology of Western Music (Volume Two: Classic to Twentieth Century), 5th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 1439. This is not to disparage the modest improvements made over previous editions. Citron notes that the 1988 edition contained only one piece out of 163 by a female composer. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 42. 60 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 19. 61 Ibid., 22-23. 182

Faced with the knowledge of our complicity in reinforcing a narrow set of aesthetic values associated with the traditional canon (of White, European, male, art music), music educators have recently attempted to expand the canon, as evidenced by the growing role of jazz, world, and popular music in secondary and postsecondary schools. Yet in order to avoid the trap of applying the same aesthetic criteria so often taken for granted (such as complexity, unity, or coherence), we are apparently faced with the problem of choosing new criteria with which to guide the canon's expansion. In connection with this issue, Carol Gonzo poses the following question: "[H]ow and to what extent can we gain sufficient understanding of other cultures as the context for appreciating the aesthetic and practical values of the musics that make up our expanding canon?" Gonzo observes that if we expand the canon on the basis of "relative values," meaning "musics whose value is understood only within each of their particular contexts," then there is no possible way to access fully such localized values, let alone within the constraints of formal music education.

This concern has been raised by music educator Keith Swanwick in a series of debates in the 1980s with sociologists Graham Vulliamy and John Shepperd over the issue of the possible cultural transcendence of musical values. Swanwick takes a universalist position, claiming that to focus on the "referential" features of music will inevitably lead to cross-cultural misinterpretation and closed systems of musical discourse. Vulliamy and Shepherd counter that, although the aesthetic listening

62 Caroll Gonzo, "Canon Busting: A Response to Regelski and Richmond," in Critical Reflections on Music Education: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on the Philosophy of Music Education, ed. Lee R. Bartel and David J. Elliott (Toronto: Canadian Music Education Research Centre, 1994), 63. When using the word "aesthetic" here, Gonzo is presumably referring to ways of aesthetically valuing that are 'appropriate' within a given cultural context. 63 Ibid. 183 experiences of Westerners may overlap with those of other cultures, they are not isomorphic with them and therefore claims of universality are Eurocentric and should be abandoned.64

According to the dialectical position being advanced here, this debate over whether the universal or the particular should preside in music education is misguided because neither view perceives a necessarily sustained tension between subject and object. Vulliamy and Shepherd fail to admit that there must exist an objective component to prevent the total breakdown in discourse that inevitably accompanies a purely contextual (i.e., subjective) framework for criteria. And Swanwick errs in failing to acknowledge objective musical structures as constructed perceptions, shaped by cultural/historical contexts. Swanwick argues correctly that one's ability to respond to the music of a foreign culture is evidence that musical meaning cannot be located entirely in its social significance. 5 Yet his assertion that different social groups enjoy the music of other groups "on its own terms"66 seems to assume on some level the existence of objective musical structures that are untouched by the socially constructed frameworks of those perceiving them (more will be said about this assumption in the section on theory, below).

Reimer, in summarizing both positions of this familiar debate, speaks of the importance of recognizing and respecting the underlying paradox, which is "surely

See John Shepherd, "A Theoretical Model for the Sociomusicological Analysis of Popular Musics," Popular Music, 2, Theory and Method (1982): 145-177; Also see the following articles in the British Journal of Sociology of Education 5, no. 1 (1984): Keith Swanwick, "Problems of a Sociological Approach to Pop Music in Schools," 49-56; Graham Vulliamy and John Shepherd, "Sociology and Music Education: A Response to Swanwick," 57-76; and Keith Swanwick, "A Further Note on Sociology of Music Education," in no. 3 of the same volume (1984): 303-307. 65 Swanwick, "Problems of a Sociological Approach," 53. 66 Ibid., 53. 184 among the most complex and vexing in all of human thought and experience." He correctly concludes that parties to this and similar debates who insist on emphasizing object at the expense of subject or vice-versa project a partial view of the situation. As

Lucy Green explains, the "contextual versus formal" polemic is fuelled by an undialectical assumption that inherent and delineated musical meanings can somehow be separated. In reality, however, musical meanings are inherent only insofar as they are

"contained within the [musical] object, but without any suggestion of this containment being essential, ahistorical, or natural." Inherent meanings, in this dialectical sense, are not contained in the sense of being isolated. They derive meaning "in relation to the historically-constituted, logical properties of the meaning-making processes."69

(emphasis added) Since it is impossible to hear music outside of some social context, delineation "is not merely an add-on to inherent musical meaning."70 Rather, it is crucial to the process of creating meaning from inherent musical properties.

In any event, it seems that the problem of how to expand the canon is actually a

"red herring" since, as already explained, the very idea of a fixed canon is an ideological construct. According to Bowman, the notion that there exists a "stable essence" to popular music is a fiction.71 The corollary argument also applies: the stable canon of art music is an illusion. This is because the cyclical nature of reification ensures the cyclical

67 Bennett Reimer, "Can We Understand Music of Foreign Cultures?" in Musical Connections: Tradition and Change. Proceedings of the 21st World Conference of the International Society for Music Education held in Tampa, Florida, USA., 227-245 (ISME, 1994), 241. 68 Ibid. 69 Lucy Green, "Musical Meaning and Social Reproduction: A Case for Retrieving Autonomy," in Music Education for the New Millenium: Theory and Practice Futures for Music Teaching and Learning, ed. David K. Lines, 75-90 (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 77. 70 Ibid., 79. 71 Wayne Bowman, "Pop Goes ...? Taking Popular Music Seriously," in Bridging the Gap: Popular Music and Music Education, ed. Carlos Xavier Rodriguez, 29-49 (Reston, VA: MENC: The National Association for Music Education, 2004), 35. 185 nature of canonicity. And we are less likely to perceive that canons are of our own making if we construct a false dichotomy between the "objective" (i.e., structural, formal) meanings of Western art music and the "subjective" (i.e., contextual) meanings of Other musics. Such a view obscures the undeniable fact that all music is both rooted in subjectivity and destined to assume objective forms, particularly when studied in formal settings. And whereas historical distance masks the subjective origins of the seemingly immutable aesthetic values that guide our perceptions of Western musical structures, lack of historical distance has the reverse effect on any music that is new or with which we are as yet unfamiliar. Indeed, newer forms of music that have not yet been codified appear to elude objedification (and its attendant commodification) because the subjective roots of such music remain quite obvious for the time being. This point was emphasized in the discussion of jazz history reception in the previous chapter, in which so called critical theory of jazz scholars failed to recognize that their undialectical position ensures the silent replacement of one canon with another.72

There is no immediate solution to the thorny issue of whether and to what extent we should search for transcendent values in music. Based on the critical, dialectical perspective being encouraged here, however, music educators would do well to try to balance views of music that locate it at either the subjective or objective pole. That entails, first, denying the myth that Western art music (or its offshoots) possesses purely objective characteristics by unmasking the subjective origins of Western aesthetic values

72 For further evidence that the specific in music inevitably codifies into the general, one need only notice the extent to which "alternative Rock" was gradually embraced by the mainstream listener (as is clear by the space allotted to the genre on store shelves) and soon acquired so much cachet that its "localism [was] reproduced, in relatively uniform ways, on a continental and international level." Will Straw, "Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music," Cultural Studies 5, no. 3 (October, 1991): 373. Ironically, this has altered the original meaning of the term, almost to the point of reversal. and, second, denying the myth that it is possible to get sufficiently close to the context of any music to "know" its subjectivity by understanding it in an unmediated way (an impossible goal even for "inside" members of a musical culture!). As was argued at the outset of chapter 3, the very act of acquiring knowledge of something necessitates objectifying it. Therefore, the argument that by avoiding, for example, Roman numerals, the discourse of functional harmony, or Schenkerian analysis when studying popular music, one can somehow avoid formalizing the music is wrong-headed. Such an attitude merely masks formalization and keeps the birth of new canons hidden from view.

A corrective course of action would entail discussing the nature and causes of canon formation in parallel with more traditional lessons on music history. An examination of the social origins of Western aesthetic values and how those values became enshrined in "the" musical canon will offer more critical perspective than a quick gloss of a Clara Schumann or Fanny Hensel composition in the final hours of a course schedule. Of course, lodged within these aesthetic values and also warranting emphasis are patriarchal values, such as historical notions about the limits of female creativity, or the cult of professionalism. Such values blocked women composers from publishing, discouraged them from pursuing composition, caused them to disparage their own works, or (perhaps most importantly) may cause us to perceive their works in a less than favorable light.7 Crucially, such discussion need not (and, in fact, should not) be divorced from discussions of the formal aspects of music. This is because, as has been argued throughout, the process of sedimentation that results in apparently immutable musical forms is affected by and affects the social values underlying such forms.

73 These issues are treated at great length in Citron's Gender and the Musical Canon. See in particular chapter 2 (44-79) and chapter 3 (80-119). 187

Spitzer's example of the circular relationship that holds among Beethoven's music, the values of the "Goeihezeit" and the theorists and historians who immortalized Beethoven and his music is a case in point.

In summary, a critical approach to music history pedagogy requires some infusion of all that is being discussed herein. This would ideally necessitate the synthesis of music history with all other aspects of music education such that not only style or period categories but all categories associated with music learning are subjected to a process of historicization. A critical music history would not be conceptually contained within closed disciplinary borders but would come to the fore whenever there is the risk that a musical work, a style, a method of analysis, or a way of understanding music may be perceived ahistorically. As Giroux argues with respect to the de-historicization of images used in advertising,74 whenever historical specificity is denied or hidden, the "range of meanings that might be brought into play" becomes severely limited.

2. Discussing the Socially Constructed Nature of Performance Ideals

The problem of applying the performance ideals of modern, Western art music to all musical situations has already been touched on in the above discussion of critical textual analysis. When music educators refer to "good tone quality," they are almost always referring to the canonic ideals of bel canto style singing, or the rich, dark, full sound of the orchestral brass section, to name but two examples. These are the sounds

74 One of Giroux's best examples is discussed in chapter 1: his analysis of the "heroin chic" advertisements of the mid-1990s, in which images of emaciated and addicted humans were dissociated from the socio- historical conditions whence they arose. A more recent example is BMO Financial Group's co-opting of Bob Dylan's protest song, "The Times They Are a-Changin." In order to capitalize on its emotional appeal to the "baby boomer" audience, the song was reconceived to announce the inevitable arrival of convenient, electronic banking - in many ways the antithesis of the anti-capitalist, anti-establishment sentiments that originally inspired the lyrics. 75 Giroux, Disturbing Images, 17. 188 most favored in Western art music. There are obviously many situations, however, in which a gravelly vocal tone or a strained, bright, edgy brass sound is preferable, such as in traditional Blues singing or mariachi trumpet playing, respectively. And, as Lawrence

McCullough notes, in Irish music, "fiddlers who use a high degree of vibrato in order to attain a more polished tone are generally criticized for playing in a manner alien to the tradition."76

Indeed, even within the context of Western European art music, the homogeneous sound of international symphony orchestras is a relatively recent occurrence, reflective of the blandness of globalization rather than any transcendent musical values. For example, critic Jaime Weinman comments favorably that the sound of the Budapest Festival

Orchestra, which represents an exception to homogeneity, reminds one of the time when

"national and regional characteristics ... used to define the way musicians played."

Weinman's remarks remind us that the notions of "standard" tone and "acceptable" stylistic interpretation are quite recent in the orchestral world. With this in mind, it should always be explained to students that there is no such universal attribute as "good sound," but that sound is only good relative to some context-specific purpose.

Although many proponents of classical training may grant that sound quality is relative to context, it is often argued that "proper" technique is not. Classical training

Lawrence McCullough, "Style in Traditional Irish Music," Ethnomusicology 21, no. 1 (Jan., 1977): 91. Of course, this yearning for authenticity within a practice that constantly evolves is described by some, such as Harry White, as "narrow purism." This attitude may or may not be on the decline (See White, "The Need for a Sociology of Irish Folk Music. A Review of Writings on 'Traditional' Music in Ireland, with some Responses and Proposals." International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 15, no. 1 (June, 1984): 3). But that is ultimately beside the point. Whether the accommodation of local traditional Irish performing ideals to the ideals of classical, Rock, or various other musics is perceived as a threat to cultural values or an inevitable fact of musical evolution and globalization, a pluralism of performance ideals must exist in order for two or more established styles to affect one another in the first place. 77 Jaime J. Weinman, "There's Something About Budapest: Finally, an Orchestra That Doesn't Have That Homogenous, 'International' Sound," Maclean's, January 30, 2006, 53. 189 enables the most efficient use of the body to achieve technical mastery over the voice or instrument regardless of context, or so the argument goes. Yet in jazz performance, instrumentalists "learn alternate fingerings or valve and key combinations that, however unconventional by the norms of classical music performance practice, enable improvisers to execute intricate jazz figures that are otherwise awkward or impossible to perform."

Similarly, in traditional folk fiddling, "unorthodox" holding positions and techniques are particularly well suited to the folk repertoire and playing style. Linda Burman-Hall notes that the more "comfortable" positioning of the instrument relative to the body found in southern American folk performance results in the lack of vibrato so characteristic of that style. Additionally, the "shortened" bow grasp, "about a third of the way up from the frog

... facilitates the short, vigorous strokes, more vertical than horizontal" that are also more conducive to folk music.79 The fact that most fiddle tunes are in the keys of G, D, or A is a direct result of the predominance of first position playing that arises from the

"unorthodox" holding position.80 Thus absence of classical technique (which may better facilitate performing in C#, for example) is not a limitation when performing folk music repertoire - which has evolved out of folk music techniques - on the same instrument.

For this reason, the phrase "proper technique" should always be modified by the same caveats as the phrase "good sound."

Aside from being told which specific performance techniques are ideal, students are often indoctrinated into beliefs about how they should generally comport themselves when performing. The most common issue seems to be "visibility," or the question of

Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 107. 79 Linda C. Burman-Hall, "Southern American Folk Fiddle Styles," Ethnomusicology 19, no. 1 (Jan., 1975): 48. 190 whether students should be seen to express themselves when they perform. Historically, arguments about visibility are connected with two opposing aesthetic ideals, which Goehr dubs "the perfect performance of music" and "the perfect musical performance." The first ideal is associated with the Werktreue concept, a formalist notion that it is the work of music that matters and that performances exist solely for audiences to access works.81 In its extreme form, this view holds that performers are simply mediators between composer and audience and thus should strive for "transparency, invisibility, or personality negation." The second ideal values the act of musicianship in and of itself, and is often associated with the virtuoso ideal, which emphasizes "human presence, visibility, drama, and the immediacy of communication."83 The first position, associated with Eduard

Hanslick, German idealism and, more recently, the pianist Glenn Gould, strives to realize music's "pure" expression without the diversions of extra-musical content, such as the facial expressions or physical gyrations of a performer. When Gould famously abandoned live performing in favor of the recording studio, he assumed that recordings would provide more direct access to works by virtue of eliminating "the detrimental distractions of the performer's live presence."84 By contrast, those who upheld the virtuoso ideal often maintained that visual elements assist in shaping one's understanding of a performance.85

Goehr presents a compelling argument to the effect that these two contrasting ideals are to a considerable degree co-dependent and, for this reason, neither conception

81 Goehr, The Quest for Voice, 140-141. 82 Ibid., 145. 83 Ibid., 166. 84 Ibid., 133. 85 Ibid., 155. Goehr notes that Stravinsky, who is often associated with the Werktrue ideal, in fact offers an impassioned argument for visibility on the basis that one cannot fully understand a musical performance without the visual element. Igor Stravinsky, The Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (Cambridge, Mass., 1942). Cited in Goehr, The Quest for Voice, 155. 191 has managed to dominate the Western tradition, despite the common assumption that the former ideal had gained supremacy by the nineteenth century. These two competing conceptions are evidence of what Goehr calls "the positive quality of critical conflict within a practice."87 They, and other conflicting conceptions of performance, should be emphasized whenever possible. When teaching band, choir, or orchestra, if we are tempted to imply to students (as often seems to be the case) that restriction of unnecessary body movement and facial expression is the correct way to approach performance, we should humbly recall that this ideal has not even managed to exert hegemony within the classical tradition, let alone others. And we should be equally careful not to stifle the corporeal aspects of popular music performance when incorporating it into the curriculum, as these aspects are crucial to its identity and value.88

3. Approaching Improvisation Pedagogy Critically

Since the advent of the National Standards there has been an increased interest in improvisation pedagogy, as indicated by a spate of recent journal articles intended to help teachers address what is now an official content standard. In improvisation pedagogy, musical forms are generally presented to students as static frameworks within which the act of improvisation takes place. Establishing boundaries between the known and the unknown, between what is "fixed" and what is thought to be variable, is pedagogically necessary. The ability to objectify forms and styles is particularly important when

86 Ibid., 135-173 and, in particular, 171. 87 Ibid., 135. 88 The devaluing of corporeality in performance contexts is arguably tied to the hegemony of formal analytic tools (discussed below) that value rational aspects of music to the extent that they leave little room for the corporeal. John Shepherd advances the idea that the sense of corporeality imbued in popular music by its textures and processes should form the basis of a new kind of analysis that might be applied to all musics. "Music and the Last intellectuals," Journal of Aesthetic Education 25, no. 3, Special Issue: Philosophy of Music and Music Education (Autumn, 1991): 111. 192 learning to improvise. The idea of setting boundaries is also freeing insofar as it can relieve the sense of paralysis one experiences when facing an overwhelming number of musical possibilities without any context to limit and shape them into meaningful musical statements. Beyond providing a starting point for students and helping them to feel more comfortable by limiting their choices, form - and particularly harmonic form - is simply indispensable to the act of improvisation. As Berliner states, "learners must... master the chord progression of each piece as a fundamental guideline because of its roles in suggesting tonal material for the melody's treatment and in shaping invention to its harmonic-rhythmic scheme."89

The necessary objectification that attends the process of learning to improvise, however, can lead to the perception that forms are fixed, immutable, and ahistorical. This can be especially problematic if the teaching and learning of those forms is not offset by activities and discussion centered on their dynamic aspects. A brief sampling of articles from Music Educators Journal suggesting various approaches to teaching improvisation to novices will suffice to demonstrate the propensity for reifying musical forms that characterizes improvisation pedagogy. Although prefacing suggestions with a discussion of literature may seem unnecessary, the critical approach being suggested here is not so much a method itself as an additive, a counterweight to the reification of musical forms associated with improvisation pedagogy methods. Hence the methodological context in which a critical approach to improvisation might come into play is an important part of the illustration.

Christopher Keyes (2000), in suggesting ways to introduce secondary school students to improvisatory twentieth-century art music, echoes John Kratus in stressing the

89 Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 71. 193 importance of "pre-conceived structures and/or constraints."90 Keyes states, "With a structure firmly in place, the improviser's mind is free to focus on more immediate

(foreground) material."91 Keyes frames spontaneous melodic variation in terms of the familiar foreground/background dichotomy. But students might all too readily assume that the relation between foreground and background is static. In discussing the challenge of communicating improvisatory material to an audience, Keyes credits the pre-given framework that guides student choices:

Since the tempo, expression marks, dynamics, range, and pitch structure of a completed score already dictate the musical direction, combining patterns based on these specifications into a structure that communicates with an audience is to some extent guaranteed, providing that the orchestra can manage the given 92

constraints.

This statement hints at the dialectical tension between form and content by emphasizing the crucial role of the pre-existing framework in "communicating" the improvisation to the audience. But any "communication" with the audience is predicated on a previous understanding of at least some structural features whose abstract significance is the result of historical sedimentation. What is absent from Keyes's discussion of constraints is a sense of historical context.

Keyes suggests that students might eventually modify the score or even use it as a template from which to create their own improvisational framework, ideally culminating in the development of a personal style.93 This is a laudable goal. But there is always the risk that they may perceive improvisational/compositional constraints as "stand alone"

90 Christopher Keyes, "Teaching Improvisation and 20th Century Idioms," Music Educators Journal 86, no. 6 (May, 2000): 19. Keys also cites John Kratus, "A Developmental Approach to Teaching Music Improvisation," InternationalJournal of Music Education 26 (1996): 27-38. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., 22. 93 Ibid., 22, 50. objects, unconnected to historical or cultural contingencies. In that case, whatever personal styles students develop may be guided by unconsciously accepted norms associated with the improvisational framework with which they are working . Perhaps more than any other genre, it may be tempting for students to view twentieth-century music as ahistorical since its materials are so far removed from the tonality and modality to which they are accustomed.

Michael Bitz (1998) discusses genres that are appropriate for beginning improvisers. Styles whose lack of harmonic and melodic complexity and relatively slow tempos make them conducive to improvisatory experimenting by novices include: bluegrass, blues, ska, reggae, rap, klezmer, and rock.94 Bitz's motivation for writing the article stems from his concern that jazz, the music most commonly associated with improvisation, is too complex a genre for novice improvisers. Describing a genre as

"only a vehicle for creative learning," he advises, "if one genre works better than another, the teacher should use it."95 Bitz's comments ring true and students could certainly benefit from improvising on the forms he suggests. The concern once again, however, is the implication that genres are static things with fixed attributes.

Adopting a different approach that is subject to the same problem, Bob Hinz

(1995) explains improvisation to the uninitiated music teacher by using the subject/object dichotomy."96 The performer of a notated work is described as "partially objective," maintaining some degree of distance from the music, while the improviser

Michael Bitz, "Teaching Improvisation outside of Jazz Settings," Music Educators Journal 84, no. 4 (Jan., 1998): 22. 95 Ibid. 96 Bob Hinz, "Helping Students Master Improvisation," Music Educators Journal 82, no. 2 (Sep., 1995): 33. 195

on the other hand, is telling a story that ties into the circumstances of the moment, rather than attempting to render a definitive interpretation of a work that is a 'fixed object' and that, for the most part, remains unaltered from performance to performance.97

Hinz contrasts improvisation with notated works by claiming that performers of the latter

no try "to render an 'ideal' expression of the work, regardless of the circumstances." In the case of improvisation, "every facet of the music - dynamics, articulation, phrasing, harmony, rhythm, melody, and form - is directly under the control of the improviser."99

Just as several authors mentioned in the previous chapter situate jazz at the subjective pole of an unacknowledged dialectic, Hinz describes the improviser as a completely free subject unencumbered by historically conditioned performance constraints of any kind.

And the real loser in this portrayal of improvisation is notated music, which is apparently transcendental as a result of being notated, precisely the position that a critical music educator should seek to avoid implying.

Another potential problem in improvisation pedagogy is that cliche or standard tonal progressions may be thought of as natural. This risk is understandable considering that students will be most comfortable abandoning notated music in favor of a harmonic context with which they are already familiar. Cindy Bell (2004), in an article that encourages choral teachers to assist their students in improvising harmonies, suggests leading students through a sequence of exercises to teach them to sing different chord tones within basic progressions involving I, IV, and V chords. The students should then be presented with various folk or popular melodies and be encouraged to "hear" where appropriate harmonies might go. They should make recommendations and decide when a

97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 32. chord should change. The resultant skill is described as the ability to create "harmony on the spot."101 The danger in this case is that students will not recognize the socially constructed parameters that make their harmonic choices seem logical or natural.102 In fact, the limited chord choices and expectation of functional harmony guarantee that students participating in such exercises will not create so much as recreate standard harmonic templates.

In addition to the reification of harmonic and structural forms and genres in improvisation pedagogy, there is the issue of implanting or strengthening the idea that teleological ways of understanding music are natural or correct. This tendency often manifests itself in the criteria that are applied to determine "good," "logical," "coherent,"

"unified," or "meaningful" improvisations. For example, Benjamin Tomassetti (2003) advises teaching beginning blues improvisation by emphasizing phrase structure and dramatic shapes. Students are introduced to "question phrases" and "answer phrases" (the latter of which resolve on the tonic) and are encouraged to develop the ability to "end each solo with a logical musical statement that comes to rest on the tonic note."103

Student solos should eventually acquire "definite dramatic shapes with cohesive musical endings," a sign of "a natural and mature flow of musical energy."104 Thematic development is characterized as the key attribute of composition.105 Similarly,

100 Cindy Bell, "Harmonizing and Improvising in the Choral Rehearsal: A Sequential Approach," Music Educators Journal 90, no. 4 (Mar., 2004): 31-36. 101 Ibid., 31. 102 Indeed, it will not likely occur to students that the pleasant sounds of the major third and sixth intervals that they are "naturally" drawn to when improvising harmonies are a construction of the fifteenth century, owing to the widespread influence of "faux-bourdon" style in European composition. Grout and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 5th ed., 132-133. 103 Benjamin Tomassetti, "Beginning Blues Improvisation Pedagogy for the Non-Jazz Specialist Music Educator," Music Educators Journal 89, no. 3 (Jan., 2003): 20. 104 Ibid., 19,20. 105 Ibid, 20. 197

Christopher Azzara (1999) lists motivic development, an understanding of tension and release as evidenced by melodic and rhythmic resolution strategies, and "a sense of style" as the main criteria for evaluating student improvisations.106 And Hinz explains that improvisation involves "the compositional elements, such as rhythm and thematic development, that unify a piece."107

None of these authors' implications or comments is incorrect when functioning strictly within the set of aesthetic values, such as teleology, organicism, or unity, that have come to be associated with western European art music and, by extension, with jazz and many other improvisational genres. Tension and release, cohesiveness, motivic development, and "logical" phrase endings have become core attributes of most music we listen to precisely because we have come to presume that those ways of "hearing as" are best. Pedagogical methods for teaching fluency in certain styles of performance do not generally deal with the larger question of why we value particular attributes associated with those styles and what other possibilities we may be overlooking in the process of

"naturalizing" those attributes. As with the problem of reified language, however, if we were to stop and question the assumption underlying every action, lack of action, comment, or lacuna, we would embark on an infinite digression. The suggestion here, rather, is that music educators simply alternate between whatever improvisation pedagogy method they choose and critical problem posing so that students might gain a sense that styles and forms are dynamic and that the values normally associated with

"good" improvisation or composition are socially constructed. Such values need not be attacked; rather, the point is to uncover their contingent nature whenever it risks

106 Christopher Azzara, "An Aural Approach to Improvisation," Music Educators Journal 86, no. 3 (Nov., 1999): 23. 107 Hinz, "Helping Students Master Improvisation," 36. 198 becoming hidden by reification. The following pages offer several suggestions with respect to how such problem posing could occur.

Suggestion a: Historicizing the musical parameters. This first suggestion involves trying to portray forms such as the twelve bar blues, the blues scale, or the thirty-two bar song form as dynamic, historically changing phenomena. The idea of fractured music history, already discussed in connection with genres, could be fruitfully applied to contextualize not only some of the styles in which students may be asked to improvise, but also many harmonic and structural forms. For example, Burnham notes that our contemporary understanding of chords as occupying places on a grid, such as in the familiar I-IV-V-I progression, was uncommon prior to the development of Riemann's theory of functional harmony.108 The difference between hearing chords as accompanying harmonies and hearing chords as functions may seem merely semantic, but it is not. As Burnham states, with the advent of Riemann's theory the progression of tonic, subdominant, dominant, tonic took on the quality of a "quasi-abstract category" because "all surface harmonic entities either fulfill one of these functions directly or act as variants of one of them."109 Once the idea of a T-S-D-T grid is in place, it is natural for many of us to want to superimpose the concept on all music that has chords, including music that is partially or entirely modal and tonal music that was not conceived under the rubric of functional harmony.

Much music was and can be created without recourse to the harmonic function grid. This should be borne in mind when undertaking spontaneous harmonization

Bumham, Beethoven Hero, 82-83. Ibid., 82. 199 exercises such as those encouraged by Bell (see pp. 195-196). Although a folk or blues tune in the key of A may contain the chords A, D, and E, there is no reason to assume that they fulfill the same function as those in Mozart's Sonata Alia Turca. As Mark

Gridley explains, the harmonic structure of the blues was historically devoid of such functionality. In fact, "the chords ... were originally almost incidental to the melodic line

- whatever chords the singer could play."110 The now familiar I-IV-I-V-IV-I framework developed historically out of what were originally purely practical harmonic choices.

It follows that when introducing frameworks for improvisation or discussing compositional frameworks, teachers should endeavor not to imply that songs lacking

"logical" chord progressions (in terms of the functional harmony we so often internalize) are somehow inferior. This is because they may well have been intended as chord successions. There is also the issue of Roman numerals as convenience rather than for any imputed functionality. The convention of using Roman numerals to designate chords has extended far beyond its traditional use in "common practice" music, as a quick glance at many jazz harmony books or popular music analyses will show. Tomassetti uses the following scheme, which has become widespread if not universal, to show the harmonic form of the standard twelve bar blues:1U

phrase 1) I71717 I7 phrase 2) IV7 IV7 I717 phrase 3) V7 IV717 I7

The advantage of using Roman numerals is that the model can be quickly transferred to all twelve keys. Yet, in the case of the blues, Roman numerals do not indicate function, as in "common practice" music. For example, "dominant" sevenths need not resolve, because chords with added lowered sevenths do not function as true dominants in the

110 Gridley, Jazz Styles, 31. 111 Tomassetti, "Beginning Blues Improvisation Pedagogy," 19. 200 blues. Nor should the V-IV root motion in the third phrase be considered weak. It is simply a well acknowledged part of the tradition. This is just one example of a case where Roman numerals, adopted for practical reasons, may be mistakenly interpreted as functional if care is not taken to explain the difference.

The scale normally taught alongside this harmonic form also presents a potential problem. The "blue notes" of the seven tone scale C Eb F F# G Bb C (shown here in bold type) have for convenience only come to be designated as a lowered third, a raised fourth (or flatted fifth) and a lowered seventh. Historically, blues intonation is based on microtonal pitch manipulations, part of a style of African-American singing eventually adapted to solo wind instruments, whereby pitches that lie between those of the Western chromatic scale were often performed for expressive effect. This involves any number of pitch gradations that lie, typically, between the third and lowered third and between the seventh and lowered seventh. However, other pitches, such as the fifth, are subject to this treatment.112 The blues scale, with its apparently fixed "blue notes," is therefore simply a crystallization of some of the more common performance practices associated with the blues. Berliner calls it a probable "construction of more recent jazz pedagogy, which, in turn, reflects the terminology of analytical writing about jazz."

It would be unreasonable to expect an average music teacher to acquire the historical background to enable her to contextualize all of the possible forms and genres that might be encountered in an improvisatory situation. She can make strategic choices, however, knowing that once one or two examples are discussed in depth, students should hopefully get a sense that the dynamic relation between form and content holds in other

Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 790 (footnote 25). 201 musical situations. Historicizing a musical form for a younger student might begin simply by explaining that forms do not generate "hard and fast" rules for all situations, or that improvisational and compositional forms have grown out of specific practices. In some situations it may be more appropriate to provide a fuller explanation of the historical sedimentation of content into form, in whatever language is suitable for the context, be it secondary school or an undergraduate class.

Suggestion b: Questioning criteria. A second strategy for problematizing the assumed stability of the ground against which improvisation occurs might involve having discussions about the criteria by which we generally judge the quality of improvised musical statements and, by extension, compositions. Encouraging dialogues that interrogate the assumed universality of teleological listening, "logical closure," and similar values, as suggested earlier, would be applicable in this situation as well. The

"hearing as" exercise outlined above could also be used to reveal hidden criteria by which we tend to judge these activities.

Suggestion c: Noticing the Codification Process on a Microcosmic Level. A third strategy involves exploring the process by which content sediments into form on a microcosmic level through a series of experiential learning exercises involving group improvisation. In this scenario, students can potentially discover how short, extemporized musical statements that they "create" can be used as "vocabulary" in interactive improvisation and transformed into structural elements for subsequent improvisational frameworks or compositions. This type of activity can work for either melodic or 202 harmonic improvisation, and is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of instrumental or vocal situations.

The exercise is based on a small scale simulation of the long term effects of interactive improvising on the development of forms and style characteristics. As discussed in the previous chapter, experienced jazz improvisers are intuitively aware of the ongoing process of commodification that their musical statements undergo, creating what Berliner calls a "perpetual cycle between improvised and precomposed components."11 Jazz improvisers react to a constantly shifting harmonic and rhythmic framework supplied by a rhythm section (comprised of drums, bass, and chordal instruments). The often spontaneous musical statements of the rhythm section serve as structural parameters for the soloist, who also quotes and reacts to the musical statements of her colleagues in the immediate performance, and to those of bygone artists and others whose performances she is aware of. Through her improvisations, she contributes to the framework being supplied by the rhythm section, which is reacting to her and consequently shifting the context appropriately.115

In transferring this idea to a pedagogical situation, the exercise will look quite different depending on experience, education level, and other factors. And although the concept is derived from interactive jazz improvisation, a jazz context need not be established. Almost any stylistic framework will suffice. The goal is to emphasize the interactive aspect and the way in which improvised musical statements are conditioned by the structural parameters of form, while contributing to the ongoing development of

114 Berliner, Thinking in Jazz, 222. 115 Monson describes this process, saying "time players become soloists become time players all in one tune." Ingrid Monson, "Riffs Repetition, and Theories of Globalization," Ethnomusicology 43, no. 1 (Winter, 1999): 52. 203 new forms. This would necessarily be a long term project, requiring multiple improvisation/composition sessions, which could be followed up by reflective activities such as group discussion or journaling.

As a specific example of an activity of this type that might be undertaken with younger students, a teacher may play an ostinato figure on the piano in a simple Latin style, adding a D minor chord for accompaniment in the middle register. She might then ask a student to experiment and find any two or three notes that seem to fit the harmony

(the two or three notes might be chosen from a D Dorian scale, if she prefers a less aural approach) and devise a short rhythmic motif, using the chosen notes to execute it. She may then alter the ostinato figure and/or the accompaniment rhythm on the piano to mimic the rhythm that the student devised. Another student might then be asked to improvise over a brief period of time (say four or eight measures) using either the same rhythm and altering the pitches, or vice-versa. Slowly, over repeated attempts, the students should develop a dialogue with one another using the various motifs and rhythms that have developed out of the process. The complexity of the musical vocabulary that they develop will vary depending on the context, as will the extent to which a teacher wishes to involve pre-existing theoretical structures as starting points.

Recordings of student improvisational performances could be made, which could then be listened to, discussed, aurally analyzed, or even transcribed if practical. Ideas generated from improvisation sessions could also be formalized, either by habit or notation, into compositional material and used to create compositions or designated as the basis for further improvisational frameworks. Most improvisation pedagogy approaches are built around the idea of providing parameters for students, and students are doubtless 204 aware that parameters shape what they "say" musically by limiting and therefore guiding their choices. But students may not easily perceive the relation between precomposed and spontaneous musical material. Encouraging them to explore the process through which their own musical statements are formalized is one possible way of helping them to understand that relation.

In order to situate the outcomes of the exercise in a larger context, the formalization that occurs could be compared with a historical example. While undertaking such an exercise, teachers should be mindful that development, in the modern aesthetic sense, is not necessary for formalization. We would do well to heed

Monson's concerns about deep-seated modernist bias against "riffs" (short melodic phrases that do not "develop" but are used repetitively instead), which make up a good deal of African-American and world popular musics.116 Both riffs and motifs (the latter term implies a sense of development) are prone to formalization, the former owing to repetition and the latter owing to their roles as structural elements in the creation of new musical ideas.

4. Depicting Music Theory as Dynamic

Both the problem of reified theory and the role of theory in objectifying musical forms have already been discussed. An obvious countermeasure would be any attempt to show the dynamic nature of music theories by explaining the social and historical conditions that gave rise to them and thus emphasizing their contingency. Examples, such as Max Weber's insight that the "rule" prohibiting parallel fifths is rooted in specific musical practices (such asfaux-bourdon style) rather than abstract reason, should be

116 Monson, "Riffs, Repetition, and Theories of Globalization," 31. 205 shared with students whenever practically possible. As obvious as it will (hopefully) be to some educators, many students may not realize that most of the "rules" of theory that we teach them, such as the prohibition of parallel fifths or what constitutes 'good' voice leading, are only valid within the confines of late Western (primarily Germanic) harmony, and are simply not applicable to much of the music they encounter.

As Schoenberg writes, theory is perhaps best regarded as "a system of presentation ... that does not pretend to clarify the ultimate nature of the things

110 presented." In this regard, discussions and explanations of music theory should strive to frame theorizing as a distinctly human enterprise, an ongoing project whose noblest goal is to help us find new ways to structure our understanding of music, not to seek

"eternal laws" or "a yardstick ... by which to measure artistic worth."119 Perhaps a most pressing need is to avoid implying that tonality is the end point of an evolutionary process, particularly when examining early music or popular and folk music that is highly modally influenced. As stated in the previous section, the presence of a chord with a flatted seventh in a popular tune does not necessarily imply a dominant function.

Discussing the socially constructed nature of teleological listening may be helpful in this regard, as would finding ways to analyze such music "on its own terms" insofar as that is possible, while acknowledging that such analysis will always be somewhat of an abstraction. The following example will illustrate the extent to which theoretical constructs can become reified.

Adomo, in Aesthetic Theory, states that if a teacher "is not a pedant," she will demonstrate the contextual limits of such a prohibition (280). 118 Arnold SchSenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), 11. Originally published as Harmonielehre (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1911). 119 Ibid., 8. Example: Music Theory and Normative Listening. A particularly challenging issue for critical music education in connection with theory is that of so called structural listening. Coined by Subotnik, the term "suggests the ideal of a musical structure that, by virtue of its inner logic, gives an abstract universal intelligibility to music."120 Subotnik and other scholars are concerned by the traditionally conceived relation between theory and listening, in which listening tends to become normative in response to the various propositions advanced by dominant theories of musical structure. In the words of music education philosopher Estelle Jorgensen, "structural listening is assumed by many expert musicians, although listeners often do not hear music in the way these musicians think they should." Consequently, the enculturation of students into a dominant set of values associated with structural listening inhibits them from structuring their listening experiences in ways that they otherwise might.

Yet educators and students may be unaware that, even within the context of

Western art music, the historical development of various music theories has resulted in the parallel development of different sets of criteria for structural listening. For example, the nature of the relationship of any one chord to a tonic within a piece that strikes a listener as tonal will be largely determined by what David Lewin calls the "long historical/cultural shadow" of whatever theory exerts the strongest influence on the listener, often without her awareness.122 As Lewin points out, a chord built on the fourth tone of a scale can be interpreted variously as a "fourth degree harmony" (indicating the listener's tendency to hear the root of the chord as the fourth in a series of degrees), a

120 Subotnik, Deconstructive Variations, 187. 121 Jorgensen, Transforming Music Education, 81. 122 David Lewin, "Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception," Music Perception 3, no. 4 (Summer, 1986): 342. 207

"subdominant" (indicating a spacial relationship to the dominant), or a "dominant preparation" (indicating a functional relationship to the dominant, i.e., the dominant is already constructed in the listener's mind whether it is subsequently heard or not).123

These three different hearings are the products of such historical/cultural shadows as

"tetrachordal analysis of the major scale .... Continental harmonic theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," and Schenkerian theory, respectively.124 Although we may be influenced to believe that the third hearing is the "correct" one in many situations, a theoretical G in the bass invoked by a listener as part of her reception context has no more to do with the actual sound than does a theoretical C, D, and E invoked by a listener who hears the F as the fourth root of a succession. 5

Lewin draws cautiously on phenomenology in arguing that the reified language of theory and analysis, in conjunction with what he calls "geometric metaphors" - the tendency to assume that the score (and other spatial models) "fix" musical events on a

Euclidean plane - force us into accepting a series of false dichotomies about musical events:

[B]y saying, 'The harmony of measure 12 is ...,' we are already falsely constraining our musical perceptions by implicitly asserting that there is one phenomenological object called 'the harmony of measure 12,' and we are also constraining our perceptions by saying of this object that it 'is,' putting it at one location in one present-tense system that renders falsely coextensive a number of different times ...126

Each of these different times: when a listener in a recital hall hears measure 12, when a listener hears the measure on a recording, or the second or seventh time the measure is heard on the same recording, for example, occurs within a different context and each

123 Ibid., 343. 124 Ibid, 342-343. 125 Ibid., 343. 126 Ibid., 358. listening therefore summons a unique "family of mental constructs for perceiving the passage of time."127 Lewin's model even allows for different perceptions to occur at the same time without conflict because it accounts for them as "different formal objects within the model, not one object called "the harmony of measure 12."128 The notion that we must choose between different perceptions of a musical event in order to lend coherence to a theoretical musical structure is, to Lewin, "not just wrong but fantastically wrong."129

Joseph Dubiel also takes issue with the assumption that musical structures as theoretically proposed and musical structures as actually heard should be isomorphic. He advances instead a definition of structure as any acknowledgment of a musical event in which some relationship holds, including "any kind of juxtaposition, contrast, or affinity."130 This extremely inclusive definition acknowledges the problematic concept of musical structure by refuting the notion that it must have a "one-to-one audible correlate to be audibly relevant."131 At issue is the extent to which hearing a structure is presumed to involve mastering it in the sense of "being (or becoming) able to give it back in the

127 Ibid., 359. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. Although phenomenology is a useful starting point for dismantling the myth of objectivism, it is problematic from the perspective of Critical Theory because it accepts that 'natural' phenomena can be 'given' in experience, if only all preconceptions, assumptions, and a priori ideas that normally interfere with experience can be "bracketed out." However, it is false consciousness, precipitated by ideology, that prevents any such unmediated access to phenomena according to Critical Theory. As Buck-Morss explains, this means that the concreteness of a particular phenomenon cannot be accessed through direct experience, but only when it is grounded "in its dialectical, mediated relationship to [social] totality." For Adorno, "only by the mediation of conceptual reflection could this relationship be understood precisely because it was not immediately given in experience." Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative Dialectics, 73. The phenomenological emphasis on individual perception leads Giroux to conclude that "while it is true that some phenomeologists have focused on the relationship between the social construction of classroom knowledge and the major tenets of positivism, they generally ignored the forms and social practices involved in its transmission." Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling, 38. 130 Joseph Dubiel, "Uncertainty, Disorientation, and Loss as Responses to Musical Structure," in Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing, ed. Andrew Dell'Antonio, 173-200 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 173. 131 Ibid., 187. terms in which it was set up." Contrary to popular conceptions, hearing something, in the sense of responding to it intensely and, perhaps even appropriately, may involve a sense of disorientation, confusion, or loss. Using various illustrative cases, Dubiel argues that values currently associated with structure, such as "logic, pertinence, [and] comprehensiveness," are extremely limiting and may "actively lead us away from good

[listening] possibilities."133

For example, Dubiel suggests that music may be appreciated differently if we occasionally abandon "implicative" accounts of it, by which he means the tendency to think that musical events within a piece are "caused" by other events. What Dubiel calls

"the weight of analytical tradition" shapes our concept of the way pieces progress such that there is little value attached to sounds that go astray, while great value is attached to sounds that only seem to do so, in keeping with the unspoken maxims of unity and coherence.134 Referring to an unrealized modulation to E major implied at the beginning of Bach's "Prelude in C-sharp minor," he states:

[T]he routinely 'sophisticated' way to handle an unrealized modulation would be to acknowledge that lesser minds might ignore it and then counter that, if we do recognize it - recognize it as unrealized, that is - then we can find such-and-such interesting reflections of it later in the piece; and in that sense, the modulation turns out not to be lost at all, as nothing in a great piece is allowed to be lost.

Ordinarily, we are conditioned either to hear the unrealized modulation as a subtle unifying element that only seemed not to fit into the larger plan, or to hear it as simply

132 Ibid. 133 ibid. 134 Ibid., 193. 135 Ibid. going off course, possibly in an attempt to "fool" us into "mistakenly getting a momentary sense of E major.

But Dubiel presents two alternative ways to hear the implied E major tonality in the Bach prelude. The first option refuses to give precedence to the larger harmonic motion over the temporary E major sound:

Thus it is no mistake to hear the local E major; it's simply that something larger was going on as well, and a realization of this gradually takes over. If an event sounds like a modulation for a moment, then it is a modulation for a moment; if this modulation isn't borne out by the continuation, then it isn't.137

A second alternative hearing goes further in challenging the positive value ascribed to fulfilled implication insofar as it celebrates the sense of loss engendered by the quickly vanishing E major event. More specifically, this alternative hearing acknowledges both the listener's role in creating the mental conditions for anticipating the E major tonality and the role of the notes in bringing that sense of anticipation, and consequent loss, to consciousness.138 In this hearing, a dissonant B natural that occurs later in the piece would not be interpreted as a positive reference to E major (in order to "rescue" the sense of loss) but "as an indication of just how far we are from a recovery of E major."139

Dubiel points out that references are generally construed as positive (in order to act as unifying elements) even though a resemblance can just as easily be negative, its meaning derived from not sounding (exactly) like the structure it references.

This example illustrates the power of pedagogy to shape students' understanding and valuation of musical structure and, consequently, their listening habits. Whether the

136 Ibid., 195. 137 Ibid, 196. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., 197. 140 Ibid. 211

E major sound in the Bach Prelude is heard as a false harmonic clue, a localized event neither more nor less important than the larger harmonic movement that it temporarily obscures, or a sound that simply becomes lost may be a matter of personal taste, but the analytic tradition that permeates most teaching habits almost ensures that the first scenario will be chosen. For evidence one need only examine "the most conventional and limited harmony book," which will likely emphasize the difference between "real" and

"apparent" modulations. Our apparent need to categorize musical events in this manner may also owe something to the wide-spread influence of Leonard Meyer's theory that aesthetic response to music is based on the perception of musical implications and consequent thwarting of expectations.142 Whatever the story of the E major event, Dubiel notes that "it ought not to be the theory that decides it for us."143

Suggestion a: Undertaking Critical Music Analysis. In terms of practical implications, music educators may be able to erode the hegemony of dominant modes of structural listening using two strategies. The first entails bringing to light possible alternative hearings through a close reading of musical examples that unveils what Martin

Scherzinger calls "a trace of contingency lodged within the logic of any structure (at its origin)."144 By demonstrating that a given structure cannot with certainty "be" option a or option b, such "formalist" analysis is actually deconstructive insofar as it forces us to resist the logic of "the kind of either/or methodological commitment that wants to fix the

141 Ibid., 193. 142 See Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956). 143 Ibid. 144 Martin Scherzinger, "The Return of the Aesthetic: Musical Formalism and Its Place in Political Critique," in Beyond Structural Listening: Postmodern Modes of Hearing, ed. Andrew Dell'Antonio, 252- 277 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 258. 212 meaning of a musical event irreducibly."145 An example of such critical formal analysis is

Lewin's work on Schubert's song Morgengrufi, in which Lewin illustrates the undecidability of the measure 14 harmony, concluding that it can be both an F minor and an altered D minor chord (other hearings are, of course, possible).146 As Scherzinger insists, exposing the contingency of a structure precludes the advancement of any one particular political agenda.147

According to Scherzinger, this particular use of music analysis demonstrates the wrong-headedness of that branch of new musicology that holds that the only antidote to

'the ideology of the purely musical' is a purely contextual approach to musical inquiry. In

Adornian fashion, he argues that our new found awareness that music's aesthetic autonomy is socially constructed does not negate the significance of "close music analysis." Rather, the failure to construe "world and work" dialectically leads to the mistaken notion that one or the other is "the determining factor of musical experience."

In our own field, Regelski makes this mistake by associating all analysis with "cultural exclusivity." Regelski alleges that undertaking analysis necessarily reifies the score and is tantamount to implying that music should only be considered autonomously, a position associated with the Western art music tradition.149 Yet critical music analysis has the potential to unveil the very problems that vex Regelski in a way that avoiding the cyclical nature of reification will not. The undecidability of structures, generally masked by reification, is evidence of the complex relationships that hold between society and musical work.

145 Ibid., 259. 146 Lewin, "Music Theory," 358. 147 Scherzinger, "Return of the Aesthetic," 258. 148 Ibid., 254. 149 Regelski, "Taking the 'Art' of Music for Granted," 37. 213

Suggestion b: Modifying Discourse. A second strategy, one that may be more feasible when dealing with younger students, relates back to the issue of discourse. It entails attending to and altering (when necessary) our instructional language in connection with our desire that students listen "for" certain things in music. Dubiel explains:

'[D]o you hear that?', asked with reference to a structural feature, may be a bad question, at least without sufficient attention given to the necessary prior question 'what would it be to hear that?' And the answer to this question cannot be counted on to sound like a report of the seizing of some information.150

The "mere" acknowledgment that there exist multiple ways of hearing a structure may be helpful in illustrating the reification process, as might suppressing the urge to "bad- mouth" initial musical perceptions that our minds subsequently want to modify based on theoretical expectations.151 But even more so than theory, it is our habitually "sloppy" use of words such as "the" and "is" that leads to an unquestioning acceptance of the either/or dichotomy.152 Perhaps posing questions such as "What do you hear that harmony as?" or

"How many different ways do you think that measure might be heard?" constitutes the first step toward a remedy.

Additionally, music educators should be concerned with their use of the word

"important," particularly when dealing with theory and analysis. As Lewin points out:

'Important' is too imprecise a word to be useful in critical discourse. The word causally suggests unspecified criteria of aesthetic value, as if the values had been stated explicitly and the word were descriptive. 5 (emphasis added)

In education, the word "important" is often used as a signal to garner student attention, but the absence of explicitly stated criteria can mask specific aesthetic agendas. Perhaps

150 Dubiel, "Uncertainty, Disorientation, and Loss," 187. 151 Lewin, "Music Theory," 361. 152 Ibid., 360. 153 Ibid., 362. 214 more crucially, the word can cause a listener to conflate "systemic priority," such as a tonic being more important than a subdominant within a specific hierarchical tonal theory, with some vague notion of (universal) aesthetic importance.154

5. Analyzing the "Gaps" for Concretization

Closely related to theory's rigidifying tendencies is the predisposition of analysis to emphasize abstract qualities at the expense of the concrete. One is often inclined, particularly in pedagogical situations, to use analysis to show how music fits (or, perhaps more tellingly, fails to fit) into predetermined models. This tendency is well documented.

For example, speaking of the post-Beethoven sonata in the third volume of his sweeping study, A History of the Sonata Idea (1959-1969), William Newman notes the importance of a mid-nineteenth century shift "from a loose, casual concept of a free, even a fantasy, form to a tight, fixed concept of a highly specific form, specific enough to crystallize in the textbooks and even to become a criterion by which sonatas soon were evaluated."

Notably, it was not until the late 1830s that theorists began to describe the properties of

"sonata form," a fact that underscores the fluidity of the concept up to that point.156 This fluidity is also acknowledged by Charles Rosen (1980) in his text on sonata forms.

Concerns about forms, such as the sonata (later the sonata allegro), hardening into musical laws or standards are certainly not new. For example, in 1891 Bernard Shaw was upset with the tendency of his contemporary music critics to chastise Chopin, Liszt,

154 Ibid, 366. 155 William S. Newman, The Sonata Since Beethoven, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), 27. Originally published by the University of North Carolina Press, 1969. 156 Ibid, 31. A. B. Marx and Carl Czerny were the first to state the principles of sonata form and their explanations were not summarized in a dictionary entry until 1865. Ibid, 33. 157 Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980), Preface and 155. 215 and Wagner for their "inability" to work with form, by which was meant sonata form.

Shaw referred to the exporting of sonata form criteria to all other music as "an unwarranted piece of pedantry."158 In his discussion of the history of the sonata, Newman

(1983) advances three definitions of form that overlap somewhat with Adorno's views.

Form, he notes, may be perceived:

(1) dynamically, or in action, as a generative process ... (2) Form may be viewed, text-book fashion, as a mold, or standardized design, with all the conveniences of quick reference that such classification permits and all the dangers of Procrustean analysis and false criteria that they pose. Approaching the form as a mold puts the emphasis on everything that is typical or common practice ... (3) Form may be viewed as a unicum - that is, as the one and only result of a particular corpus of generative traits and/or a particular set of variants in a mold ... approaching form as a unicum puts the emphasis on everything that is a-typical - in other words, on whatever may distinguish it from other forms.159

In Newman's explanation, the third sense of form derives from the interaction between the first two (form as generative process and form as mold). For example, in the first movement of Chopin's Sonata in B Minor, op. 58 there is a departure from the textbook model of sonata form when the recapitulation begins (m. 151) with the second theme without any reference to the first theme.160 When focusing on such "peculiarities," the form of Chopin's Op. 58/i can be seen as a unicum.

Newman's conception of form has much to offer, but it lacks the dialectical slant of Adorno's explanation. Specifically, despite Newman's nuanced understanding of form, he perceives deviation from a standard as evidence of a particular composer's contribution to the "evolution" of that form. In that regard, "peculiarities" are only of interest when they can later be shown to have "advanced" a form. Newman in fact goes

Bernard Shaw, Music in London 1890-94, weekly criticisms contributed to The World, originally issued as an anthology in 1932; 3 vols. London: Constable, 1949, 209, quoted in Newman, Sonata Since Beethoven, 36. 159 Newman, Sonata Since Beethoven, 110-111. 160 Ibid., 111. 216 on to list the various "advances" that were accomplished through the straining of conventions during the high-Romantic and late-Romantic periods of the sonata's

"evolution." As for musical traits that do not, in hindsight, fit into the evolutionary model?

Unfortunately, not all of the late-Romantic strains on harmonic and tonal tradition were quite so enterprising or worthy of respect. In the same style category, a good many other sonatas show advances, hence cannot strictly be called epigonic. But these 'advances' tend to strain the good taste rather than the intelligibility of tradition, mostly by making cliches ('barber shop' harmony) out of the standard altered-chord progressions, by overloading the active chromatic chords with half- step pulls, and by adding 2ds, 6ths, 7ths, and 9ths to diatonic as well as chromatic chords for the sake of piquancy or pungency.161

The obvious problem with this analysis is that it merely sustains the "great men" narrative in two ways: (1) by failing to acknowledge that "lesser" (i.e., supposedly less inventive) composers are very much a part of the historical process of sedimentation because they help to exhaust the possibilities of subjective expression within forms, whatever some may think of their choices, and (2) by dismissing the possibility that the ways in which forms crystallize are ultimately governed by specific social values - such as the undesirability of "barber shop" harmony transgressing the sonata form - that may be called into question by the minority who do not hold them. To argue that certain

"deviations" to a given form must be desirable because they eventually resulted in the permanent alteration of that form (while others were consigned to history's waste basket) is to engage in a circular argument, a self-assured reinforcement of one's values. Such judgments, while allowing that forms are malleable, nevertheless imply that forms are the result of a natural evolutionary process and mask the contingency of the aesthetic values that "filter down" into them.

Ibid., 133. 217

Nevertheless, it is laudable that textbooks, such as Grout and Palisca's A History of Western Music (1996) contain occasional disclaimers that the forms presented therein should be understood as abstractions.162 The question then is whether specific content that does not fit into those forms is interpreted as a basic reminder of the concrete particularity of individual members of any class, and thus the manner in which categories, as Adorno argues, only really ever manifest themselves in concrete examples.

The lesson that emerges from this way of thinking is that any (notion of an) abstract form that currently exists, because it is the product of a series of contingencies, may just as easily have evolved into some other configuration.

This can be better understood with the help of a parallel argument from evolutionary biology, raised by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 1996. Gould argues that our tendency to interpret evolutionary theory as describing a directed movement toward progress (as measured by increasing complexity in organisms) is a fallacy that results from investing undue importance in the miniscule amount of complexity that exists amid an ocean of simple and, by any reasonable measure, far more successful organisms, namely bacteria.163 Apart from human arrogance, the reason for this perceptual error is simple: when illustrated by a distribution curve, evolution is necessarily right-skewed in favor of progressive complexity. This is owing to the existence of a "left wall" - a boundary beyond which organisms cannot simplify. Since life began at or very close to this left boundary, the law of averages insists that, over time,

162 For example, the authors write, "The outline of sonata form is obviously an abstraction, dwelling particularly on the key scheme and the melodic-thematic ideas. So understood, it fits a good many sonata movements of the late Classic period and the nineteenth century, but there are many that depart from it in creative ways." Grout and Palisca, A History of Western Music, 5th ed., 472. 163 Stephen Jay Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York: Harmony Books, 1996), 20, 29, 167-216. 218 some complex organisms will arise. But these organisms (humans included) occupy the microscopic "right tail" of the distribution curve, an enormous deviation from the modal average: single-celled organisms, which occupy the large center.164 Gould then explains that to extrapolate a linear pathway from this right tail of complex multicellular organisms to their ancestors in the middle of the distribution, from among the "bushes" of variation that arose by chance, constitutes a cultural fabrication - a myth that we create after most of the bushes have gone extinct:

When an evolutionary bush has been so pruned by extinction that only one lineage survives - a twig from an earlier arborescence, a sliver of former copiousness - then we can fool ourselves into viewing this tiny remnant as a unique culmination. We either forget that other pathways to extinct lineages once existed, or we scorn them as 'dead ends' - irrelevant side branches from a supposed main trunk. We then bring forth our conceptual steamroller to straighten out the little path from the surviving twig to the ancestral stock - and, finally, with the positive spin of a consummate evolutionary trendmaker, we praise the progress ,...165

Here is where the parallel with musical sedimentation becomes evident. Although variation in musical traits results not from an evolutionary process but from the vagaries of social norms and aesthetic tastes, the "selection" of certain of those variations to become canonized into forms (through historical sedimentation) is no less contingent than that which occurs when organisms adapt to localized environments. The false notion that a particular result of differentiation was the inevitable goal of movement, as opposed to a random outcome of total variation, is what Gould calls "the fallacy of reified variation."166 Newman commits this fallacy by labeling "epigonic" any variations of sonata form that cannot be shown to have "advanced" the form to the next "stage" in its

164 Ibid., 178-181. 165 Ibid., 64. 166 Gould intentionally uses the term reification, despite the vernacular tone of his book, in order to emphasize the way in which our assumptions about progress cause us to treat concrete variations as abstract means, representing the entire evolutionary history of life. Ibid., 38. 219 evolution, as if the pathway to the current outcome were the only one that possibly mattered.

Gould presents a series of rigorous arguments to demonstrate that the pathway to a given, complex outcome of variation is anything but inevitable:

If we could replay the game of life again and again, always starting from the left wall and expanding thereafter in diversity, we would get a right tail almost every time, but the inhabitants of this region of greatest complexity would be wildly and unpredictably different in each rendition ... .168

Gould is speaking of physical entities, fossil records and living organisms. This is where the analogy appears to break down because music has ephemeral, not physical, qualities.

However, music's evanescence is all the more reason to suspect reification of variations that appear to lead inexorably to a particular form. This is because the "evolutionary dead ends" that we perceive may not be extinct at all but may continue to thrive (possibly in great numbers) in forms that we do not notice because they are excluded from dominant aesthetic values, such as are many popular or folk musics.

Two caveats for music analysis emerge from the above ideas. First, analysis should not only examine common features but should also pay special attention to the

"gaps" between those features, elements that do not fit easily into textbook molds, such as the Chopin recapitulation that avoids referencing the initial theme, or the popular tune that does not quite fit the twelve bar blues pattern. This latter practice is already one that many textbooks (such Rosen's and Grout and Palisca's) encourage. The practice of emphasizing gaps, however, merely serves abstract notions of form if variations are reified as evidence of "improvements" to form (in the case that they cumulatively

167 Estelle Jorgensen draws on an earlier work of Gould in order to make a similar point about false assumptions of linearity in cases of so-called musical evolution. See Estelle Jorgensen, In Search of Music Education (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 43. 168 Gould, Full House, 175. influence an accepted form in some way) or, conversely, if they are shown to be lacking value (in the case that they do not). This is not to say that the pathway from a particular variation to a historical alteration in form should not be discussed. The pathway, however, should not be depicted as predetermined or inexorable. This false view can be offset by portraying the "dead end" variations as elements that could just as easily have led to the emergence of different forms than those currently canonized, given an alternative set of prevailing aesthetic values.

6. Exploring the Limits of Notation

The extent to which notation contributes to the reification of musical values by making music appear fixed and unalterable has already been discussed in some detail.

Helping students to understand the limits of notation, i.e., its reductive tendencies, is a potentially valuable critical strategy that can be undertaken in many different educational contexts, including performance situations, and classes in theory, analysis, or history, to name a few. One possible approach would be to discuss performer responses to the notation of twentieth-century Western art music, as opposed to "common practice" music. Leonard Stein draws attention to the difficulty many performers have interpreting composers' intentions when reading modern music, noting that this difficulty arises from the absence of a dominant set of contextual cues. Prior to the twentieth century, "the individual composer was called upon merely to designate certain deviations from common practice or to suggest subtleties of execution, if he so desired."169 The movement by many modern composers toward extreme precision in score marking and

169 Leonard Stein, "The Performer's Point of View," in Perspectives on Notation and Performance, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone, 41-50 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976), 42. 221 alternatives to standard notation is evidence not only of the impossibility of notation capturing the composer's ideas in their entirety, but the breakdown of dominant cultural norms that provided performers of an earlier era with an appropriate context in which to read music.

This also suggests a practical exercise. When students face the challenge of trying to negotiate notated music that does not call to mind a familiar context (such as an arrangement in an unfamiliar dance style, an avant-garde piece, or a "lead sheet" that outlines a Rock tune they have never heard), they may be forced to appreciate the extent to which they ordinarily rely on social conventions to provide contextual cues to "fill in the gaps" that notation invariably leaves behind. Various world musics that may not lend themselves to Western notation could be used to reveal the limits of the latter, with the caveat that the importance of contextual cues must be thoroughly addressed, as such exercises become counterproductive if a Western art music context is simply assumed.170

There are many other possible ways of demonstrating the relative poverty of notation. Students could be introduced to the various ways in which ethnomusicologists have struggled to codify the many oral/aural musics of the world; they might be asked to try to transcribe some of Billy Holiday's singing, in order to understand the impossibility of capturing the subtle nuances of micro-tonal pitch manipulation inherent in Blues singing; or they might try to represent graphically the changes in timbre of a popular song that relies less on melodic or harmonic differentiation for its aesthetic appeal. The resulting graph, which would make the corresponding "lead sheet" seem barren by

170 This of course raises the issue of "authentic" performing contexts, which are impossible to achieve in a formal educational environment. But that does not negate the value of performing different musics so long as it is explained to students that some formalization of these musics will inevitably occur as a result. As has been argued throughout, formalization occurs naturally in all music, anyhow. Classroom education merely accelerates the process. 222 contrast, would demonstrate the inability of standard notation to deal with timbre, thus relegating it, by all appearances, to inferior status.

Additionally, music educators should openly discuss the biased (but widespread) view that precisely notated music is more highly evolved than more spontaneous manifestations of music, such as improvised music or folk music that exists in unfixed form in hundreds of regional aural variations. This will undoubtedly necessitate more work on the part of teachers, for as Roman Haubenstock-Ramati suggests, the widely held Western belief that precisely composed music represents the "developed" state of spontaneous music is the result of "a certain indolence," implying that one is often too intellectually lazy to investigate alternative views.171

Finally, music educators should be aware of the extent to which not only notation but the way it is presented can be ideological. For example, the presence of rehearsal letters and numbers - which are ubiquitous and necessary, particularly to ensemble music geared to pedagogic use - are arguably perceived as more than simply useful reference points to make the rehearsal process more efficient. To students and teachers, rehearsal markings are signposts that imply the presence of important structural landmarks. They thus subtly dictate how students should listen to music and how teachers and ensemble directors should rehearse it. Since performers are generally directed to begin playing at a rehearsal marking following a stoppage, the subtleties of transition sections may be seen by students as aesthetically less important. In consequence, a very specific form of

"hearing as" is imposed on students through the various hierarchies of the written page.

Educators can raise awareness of this issue by discussing it openly, or by having students

171 Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, "Notation - Material and Form," in Perspectives on Notation and Performance, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone, 96-101 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976), 96. 223 graphically illustrate music heard on a recording such that their finished products indicate their preferred points of interest and importance. Such an exercise can be undertaken by students regardless of their notation reading skills, and the results (similar to the "hearing as" exercises suggested earlier) may indicate some interesting differences in preferences for organizing and valuing musical sounds.

The foregoing discussion does not presume to exhaust all of the possible specific educational contexts in which musical concepts or ways of understanding may become ideological and strategies that may be employed to counter them. To paraphrase Neil

Postman, it merely exhausts this author's imagination. Having dealt with a number of such possibilities, however, the argument will now broaden to include the possibility of perceiving theories, methods, and attitudes toward music education as reified forms.

These will be the subjects of the final chapter. CHAPTER FIVE PROBLEMATIZING METHOD IN MUSIC EDUCATION

The responsibility of education is ... not only to provide persons with techniques but, more importantly, to provide techniques with critical, informed, and humane persons.1

As a way of summarizing and drawing conclusions from the specific ideas raised in chapter 4, this chapter focuses on the problematic notion of method in music education. This is followed by an examination of some common obstacles that must be overcome if music educators are to approach their profession more critically by interrogating accepted forms, embracing and teaching conflict, and thus (by drawing attention to the historical contingency of reified ideas) discouraging or decelerating the reification process. In using the term "method," I refer to both senses of the general definition: (1) "a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something" and

(2) "orderliness of thought or behavior."2 The first sense emphasizes the importance of instrumentalism to method. A method exists in order to accomplish a particular goal or bring about a desired outcome. Presumably, the faster, more efficiently, and more completely the outcome is achieved, the better the method.

It is this instrumental aspect of method that comprises the theme of the present chapter. The central characteristic of instrumentalism and the idea of orderliness

(particularly valued as the hallmark of scientific method3) can be seen to extend well beyond instructional methods per se to theories about and attitudes toward music education. For this reason, a critique of method should include theories and attitudes.

1 Isreal Scheffler, Reason and Teaching (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1973), 135. 2 Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed. 3 Feyerabend's argument, that scientific method as it is commonly understood is a flawed construct that fails to account for the unmethodical manner in which scientific knowledge actually advances, will be discussed shortly. 225

Criticism of music education theories and methods (and of music educators who adhere to them) on the grounds that they often unquestioningly embrace the values of instrumentalism and orderliness already exists in some of the more recent literature in the field. The concerns of those scholars are presented here in the context of the ideological problems that have been the focus of this study. The following discussion is organized into five sections: Part I is an overview of the problematic role of scientific method in the development of theories; Part II analyzes the presentation and reception of dominant music education theories; Part III analyzes, for illustrative purposes, the ideological potential of two music learning methods; Part IV studies arguments with respect to implementing technology in order to demonstrate the strong influence of instrumentalism on attitudes toward instruction (it will argue that the "technological imperative," as it applies to education, is simply a reified attitude toward technology); and Part V, the conclusion, explores themes of conflict and controversy, suggests possible reasons for their nullification in practice, and briefly summarizes the major themes of the study.

Before continuing it will be helpful to review the argument so far. This study has been concerned with defending the notion that systematic thought, when allowed to

"harden" through reification to the point where it is accepted as a true representation of objective reality, becomes inimical to critical thought and can become a means by which the ideological representations of others may come to dominate one's thinking. This occurs through the acceptance of such representations as natural or given. Examples of this problem in music and music education have been examined in some detail. Further, it has been argued that negative dialectics, through its endless cycle of negation, provides an appropriate model for understanding the paradoxical nature of reification, which is an inescapable part of consciousness and, of course, learning. Negative dialectics stresses the need to maintain a constant vigilance, lest one fall into the trap of what Giroux calls

"bad subjectivity," or the belief that the objectification of knowledge can somehow be transcended and the cycle of reification broken.4

Adorno's form <- -> content dialectic was presented as a key way of thinking about phenomena that may allow music educators to assist students in focusing on the process, rather than fixating on the products, of reification in order that its effects on musical understanding may be comprehended, and so that students might hopefully find such insights applicable to their experiences of the world in general. Specifically, forms, because they are seen as the historical sedimentation of subjective content, are understood as having socially constructed origins. Consequently, critical music educators should turn their attention to forms of all kind, not only musical forms, but also the forms of music instruction, especially those whose systematization makes them appear natural or unassailable.

The notion of the frozen metaphor is particularly helpful for understanding the ways in which forms of musical understanding have become reified and generally accepted as second nature. In order that the processes through which their social contingency is constantly masked might be revealed, these forms, and by extension all musical subject matter, should be taught from a historical perspective whenever possible.

Specific examples of reified forms in music education, such as theoretical systems, tonal hierarchies, historical or repertory canons, and linguistic frameworks, have been addressed. Some suggestions as to how these forms might be interrogated and historicized have also been offered. It follows that complex systems of musical

4 Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling, 125. 227 knowledge intended to explain (music learning theories) or prescribe (music instruction methods) should also be subjected to critique, and it is to these that the discussion now turns.

I. Overview: The Method of Theory

If a theory is understood in the most limited sense as "a system of ideas intended to explain something," it can be likened to method insofar as it is a means to the goal of explanation. The problem with this simple view of theory is that, in the absence of self- reflexivity that allows for built-in critique, a theory will have no way of correcting for the fact that it is simply an explanation of some aspect of the world as it presently appears.

As Cherry holmes notes, this means that the traditional understanding of theory, if it is used as the basis for learning theory, will inherently reinforce the status quo, since theories tend to describe practices as they currently exist:

The problem with traditional learning theories is, they are based on knowledge claims about practice (after empirical observations, testing, etc.). Therefore, theoretical knowledge claims about (current) practice provide 'a basis for planning and control.' Is this implausible or unreasonable? Yes, if one is interested in anything other than naive, acritical social reproduction.6

Theories, particularly if they are identified as "scientific," are often assumed to be: (1) the result of empirical observation and testing, and (2) objective explanations of certain aspects of reality. But, as we shall presently see, the second condition does not follow from the first. Because all explanations are incomplete, it follows that all theories are

5 Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11* ed. The term's meaning is much more nuanced within particular disciplines, often assuming an oppositional stance to traditional scientific theories. For example, Althusser used the word "theory" to refer to Marxist philosophy, but it can also refer to Critical Theory or the French literary theories of Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, or Baudrillard. In English studies it may refer to "a blend of Marxism, psychoanalysis, and structuralism." Macey, Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, s.v. "theory." 6 Cherryholmes, Power and Criticism, 76. 228 incomplete as well since "researchers and theorists must choose what they wish to explain."7 The real problem often resides not in theories per se but in their reception, since the partial explanation that a theory offers is often assumed to be complete and unconditional once it has been generally accepted (notable exceptions are theories whose explications are worded dogmatically, such that their intent is to convince an audience of their timelessness from the outset). We have a human tendency to accept knowledge of the world presented in fragments as if it were whole, and this leads Cherryholmes to conclude that "descriptions of practices without criticism endorse the practices described."8 The social historian and political scientist Howard Zinn agrees, saying, "A description is never simply neutral and innocent... Every description is in some way a prescription^ There is no such thing as a theory that undertakes neutral description, for the choice of what to describe (as well as the language with which to describe it) always constitutes a personal appraisal of some sort.

This argument was first advanced by the philosopher of science Michael Polyani in 1958. Polyani notes that in the search for knowledge it is impractical to select any hypotheses for verification other than those that have a high chance of being true and, further, that the same holds for deciding what is to count as evidence. For this reason, the notion of science as the act of impersonally accumulating evidence that presents itself

"automatically in respect to hypotheses selected at random" is ludicrous.10 Polyani agrees with the critical theorists that subjectivity cannot be purged from the pursuit of scientific

7 Ibid., 79. 8 Ibid., 83. Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-examining American Ideology (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 11. First published in 1990 by Harper Collins. 10 Michael Polyani, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, rev. ed. (1958; repr., New York: Harper and Row, 1964). 30. 229 theories. His principle thesis is that the human act of asserting any statement as fact is necessarily accompanied by a personal commitment, which derives from a framework of belief. Since facts can only be asserted within a framework, Polyani concludes that the ultimate bases of our scientific beliefs cannot be asserted, but must simply be acknowledged as part of this (subjective) framework. In this sense, all knowledge is personal, as even the most "objective" facts involve appraisal and commitment on the part of the knower. Hence, seemingly objective theories that are built upon such facts contain important subjective (although generally hidden) components that underscore the partiality of the theories.12

These conclusions indicate that the widely-held belief that scientific theory and method can be value-free and "uncontaminated" by subjectivity is simply false.

Unfortunately however, as Regelski (1996) points out with regard to music education research, scholars in our field often embrace that very notion of science.13 In the debate over whether the "objective" and "methodical" approach to research found in the physical sciences is appropriate for a subject such as music, it generally goes unnoticed that

"pure" scientific research is, strictly speaking, neither objective nor necessarily methodical.14 Ample evidence for this latter claim is found in the work of Paul

11 Ibid., 60. 12 Polyani writes that "the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal co-efficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in so doing the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity." Ibid., 17. Thomas A. Regelski, "Scientism in Experimental Music Research," Philosophy of Music Education Review 4, no. 1 (Spring, 1996): 8. 14 Regelski cites numerous sources who argue that the scientific method is not objective, including Albert Gilgan, whom he quotes as saying that "the interests and day-to-day activities of investigators are to a large degree a function of variables not explicitly dealt with in most treatises on the scientific method." Albert R. Gilgan, Contemporary Scientific Psychology (New York: Academic Press, 1970), 10. Cited in Regelski, "Scientism in Music Research," 8. In arguing that so-called pure scientific research is not necessarily methodical, Regelski quotes Thomas Kuhn, who states that "much scientific behavior, including that of the very greatest scientists, [has] persistently violated accepted methodological canons." Thomas S. Kuhn, "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, I. Lakatos 230

Feyerabend. In his appropriately titled book Against Method (1975), Feyerabend presents a lengthy argument defending the following thesis: advances in scientific understanding do not result from the systematic application of scientific method, by which theories either stand or fall on the basis of supporting evidence gathered from the available pool of facts that have withstood rigorous testing. On the contrary, Feyerabend argues, the principle of counterinduction, by which unsupported, ad hoc, or previously disproved hypotheses are called upon, is not only useful but necessary for the development of scientific theories.15 This is because

the material which a scientist actually has at his [sic] disposal, his laws, his experimental results, his mathematical techniques, his epistemological prejudices, his attitude towards the absurd consequences of the theories which he accepts, is indeterminate in many ways, ambiguous, and never fully separated from the historical background. It is contaminated by principles which he does not know and which, if known, would be extremely difficult to test...... It is this historico-physiological character of the evidence, the fact that it does not merely describe some objective state of affairs but also expresses subjective, mythical, and long-forgotten views concerning this state of affairs, that forces us to take a fresh look at methodology. It shows that it would be imprudent to let the evidence judge our theories directly and without any further ado. 6 (italics in original)

The phrases that Feyerabend chooses to emphasize in these passages express the impossibility of eliminating interpretive, historically conditioned factors from observation. He refutes the classical empiricist notion, advanced by Bacon, that it is possible to filter out natural interpretations after identifying them through analysis, saying, "Eliminate natural interpretations, and you also eliminate the ability to think and to perceive."17 Thus "ideological components" lie dormant in facts and observation

and A. Musgrave, eds. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 10. Also cited in Regelski, "Scientism in Music Research," 8. Kuhn's argument reinforces that of Feyeraband. 15 Feyerabend, Against Method, 50-51, 53, 61-63 and passim. 16 Ibid, 51, 53. 17 Ibid, 61-62. 231 statements, where they are immune from critical examination yet are used to test and refute theories.18

The inevitable result of this situation is a contradiction between facts and theories such that "hardly any theory is consistent with the facts."19 This is because certain facts are unavailable to researchers unless they consider alternatives to the theory that they wish to test. These alternative facts cannot be discovered, however, if one upholds the consistency condition, which states that new hypotheses should be consistent with accepted theories. Yet such alternatives have played an indispensable role in the history of science, as Feyerabend illustrates using the case of Gallileo. Through a series of detailed supporting arguments, he demonstrates that Galileo, in reviving the Copernican principle and arguing against the geocentric view, proceeded counterinductively. Not only did Galileo not make reference to independent observations or experiments, but he employed propaganda and ad hoc propositions in order to advance his view, which eventually caused a large-scale shift in thinking that only after the fact enabled the collection of appropriate supporting evidence. Examples such as this, whereby the hidden ideological components of language and method mask the partiality of prevailing theories (or worldviews) and can only be overcome by recourse to counterinduction, lead

Feyerabend to the following conclusion: knowledge advances not according to principles traditionally associated with scientific methodology, but rather as a result of

18 Ibid., 63. 19 Ibid., 51. 20 Ibid., 67-79. The same story of Galileo is told by Richard Morris, who asserts that "scientific discovery is as illogical and unpredictable as creative activity in any of the arts." See his chapter, "Inventing the Universe," in Creativity: The Reality Club 4, ed. John Brockman, 130-148 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 131. Polyani uses Einstein's discovery of relativity to make essentially the same point. When Einstein intuitively discovered the principle, "unaided by any observation that had not been available for at least fifty years before, our positivistic textbooks promptly covered up the scandal by an appropriately embellished account of his discovery." Polyani, Personal Knowledge, 11. 232 contradictions that are recognized between "partly overlapping" theories that are

"mutually inconsistent."21

One might sense a parallel between Feyerabend's account of the history of science and Adorno's account of the history of music. In both cases, ideology works to smooth over fractured, socially contingent ideas and molds them into forms that appear whole and natural (in the case of history) or methodically generated (in the case of science). Both scenarios result in the illusion of a smooth, uninterrupted continuum, and in both cases the only remedy is to historicize the ideas in order to reveal their roots in conflict, human subjectivity, and partiality. Such historicization is made possible through an awareness of a plurality of conflicting views.

Feyerabend is acutely aware of the pedagogical implications of this position, as he facetiously remarks that such a "pluralistic methodology" does not conform to the traditional, reproductive role of schools, a point with which critical pedagogues agree:

Pluralism of theories and metaphysical views is not only important for methodology, it is also an essential part of a humanitarian outlook. Progressive educators have always tried to develop the individuality of their pupils and to bring to fruition the particular, and sometimes quite unique, talents and beliefs of a child. Such an education, however, has very often seemed to be a futile exercise in day-dreaming. For is it not necessary to prepare the young for life as it actually is? Does this not mean that they must learn one set of particular views to the exclusion of everything else?2

II. Avoiding Totalized Theoretical Views of Music Education

What are the implications to music education of this outlook, whereby pluralism and contradiction are required to offset the ideological effects of particular, reified views, and whereby method, rather than being an essential aspect of theory development, is a

21 Feyerabend, Against Method, 27. 22 Ibid., 38. 233 hindrance to the advancement of knowledge? The most obvious answer is that music educators should avoid limiting their consciousness by deriving their knowledge of music education entirely from within the confines of one prevailing theory. No one theory can offer a truly objective view of any aspect of reality. Yet as theories solidify and gain adherents over time, the concretization of their partial views ironically results in "the gradual transformation of revolutionary ideas into obstacles to thought."23 Feyerabend quotes John Stuart Mill to explain how as theories become popularized, they become less well understood because their nuances, their "problematic aspects," dissolve into slogans.24 If one subscribes to a theory wholeheartedly, and particularly in the absence of historical knowledge pertaining to the theory's origin, there is less likelihood of perceiving areas of overlap or dialectical tension between that theory and any rival.

Accordingly, there is increased likelihood that the theory in question will become reified or, as Feyerabend prefers to say, fossilized.

M.E.A.E. and Praxialism: A Case Study

The problem of theory fossilization can be illustrated by examining both the presentation and reception of the two major theoretical approaches to music instruction that have dominated the educational landscape for the past fifty years. Although there are more than two contenders in the area of music education philosophy, Bennet Reimer's

(1970, 1989, 2003) Music Education as Aesthetic Education (MEAE), and David J.

Elliott's (1995) praxialism are widely acknowledged to have had the greatest impact on the field. Although readers will hopefully be familiar with the two philosophies, I will

Ibid., 30. Feyerabend credits John Stuart Mill with this idea. 234 attempt to summarize their main points of contention and place them in historical context in order to make the point that the presentation and reception of both bodies of work have, for various reasons, followed the pattern of fossilization described by Feyerabend.

It is interesting to note that Reimer's reason for developing a comprehensive philosophy in 1970 was that there existed at that time very little in the way of rationale to justify music education as a profession, a situation which he felt was particularly unfair to pre-service music teachers. 5 Music, as he notes, had yet been unable to take its place among the "major disciplines" in the curriculum which, in the post-Sputnik era of

"rigorous" education, had defined themselves as "ways of knowing" about reality.26

Reimer's solution was to be found in absolute expressionism, a theory of aesthetics put forth by Suzanne K. Langer. After concluding that pure formalism and referentialism are extreme and untenable, Reimer came to believe that absolute expressionism could supply the much needed rationale for music education. Its central tenet, that "the experience of art is related to the experience of life" points to the significance of music - a significance to be found not in the external world of musical functionalism, but in the aesthetic qualities of works of art themselves.27 Beginning with Langer's position that music is an

"unconsummated symbol" representing the forms of feelings (not to be confused with feelings themselves), Reimer holds that music education, if conceived as aesthetic, is "the education of human feeling, through the development of responsiveness to the aesthetic qualities of sound."28 Although the phrase "educating feelings" is controversial, Reimer

25 Bennett Reimer, A Philosophy of Music Education, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 3,5. 26 Ibid., 8-9. 27 Ibid., 25. 28 Ibid., 39. Suzanne Langer articulates her theory of the relationship between artistic forms and human feelings in great detail. "A work of art," she states, "is like a metaphor to be understood without translation or comparison of ideas; it exhibits its form, and the import is immediately perceived in it. One might well 235

explains that he takes it to mean the enrichment of one's life through significant insight

into the nature of one's feelings.29

Based on Langer's exploration of art symbols as non-discursive, Reimer

maintains that (contrary to the "cold" intellectual goals of pure formalism) the "import" that one "receives" through an aesthetic experience should not be confused with knowledge (in the everyday sense) or information.30 Essential to the aesthetic experience,

which in Reimer's philosophy constitutes the primary objective of educational practice,

are the following: 1) "instrinsicality," in the sense of being removed from everyday

"instrumental" concerns, 2) involvement with the expressive qualities of a work, and 3) the presence of some object or "thing" containing the aesthetic qualities to be perceived.31

Reimer provides numerous examples of how teachers can instruct with this goal in mind

as he describes what aesthetic music education might look like in general music and performance classes.

Although there have been many challenges to the aesthetic arguments (in particular, Langer's) that underpin Reimer's philosophy, the major challenge to MEAE

call it a metaphorical symbol.... The art symbol, however, does not rest on convention. There are conventions in art, and they do change, but they govern only the ways of creating the symbol and not its semantic function. ... The import of art inheres in the symbol... and the reality it conveys has been transformed by a purely natural process into the only perceptual form it can take. Feeling is projected in art as quality." Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Abridged Edition (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 47-48. Originally published in two volumes in 1967. See also Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). Originally published in 1942. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 65. 31 Ibid., 75-76. 32 These refutations have mostly centered on the problematic notion of nonconceptual knowledge. Obviously, none of Langer's claims about the import one receives through aesthetic experience can be supported, as they cannot be described using discursive language. Further, as Koopman points out, "Langer unwarrantedly moves from the idea that the forms of music and the forms of feeling are isomorphic to the conclusion that the former yield deeper insight into the latter; she provides no arguments whatsoever for this conclusion." Constantijn Koopman, "Music Education: Aesthetic or 'Praxial'?" Journal of Aesthetic Education 23, no. 3 (Autumn, 1998): 6. 236 itself has been articulated by David J. Elliott in his 1995 book Music Matters. Borrowing from Lydia Goehr, who has attacked the primacy of the "work concept," Elliott maintains that the aesthetic ideal of the autonomous artwork "serve[s] to conceal music's social and performative aspects by diverting attention away from musical processes to musical outcomes ...."34 He draws heavily on the ideas on Philip Alperson (the first scholar to speak of a "praxial" philosophy of music35) among others to propose that a philosophy of music education is needed that reflects this alternative and, in Elliott's view, more appropriate way of conceptualizing music.

It is important to note that Elliott was responding to what he perceived as

MEAE's inability to accommodate such things as the actions of jazz improvisers or the musical practices of many non-Western societies, whose value seems to rest (either entirely or largely) in process rather than product. He was also concerned that performing and listening had become too segregated in schools owing to MEAE's alleged focus on

"the consumption of aesthetic objects."36 Reimer contends that aesthetic listening is democratizing in that it allows access to musical understanding and enjoyment for all students, not just those in the performance stream, to which Elliott counters that such an approach effectively ghettoizes the "so-called general music students" by barring them from performing. Besides, Elliott also observes that performing is inextricably bound with listening. To this end, he advocates a philosophy in which "music performing ought to be a central educational and musical end for all students."

33 See Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. 34 David J. Elliott, Music Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 25. 35 Regleski notes that Alperson first coined the term in a 1990 paper that appeared in The Journal of Aesthetic Education. Thomas Regleski, "The Aristotelian Bases of Praxis for Music and Music Education," Philosophy of Music Education Review 6, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 22. 36 Elliott, Music Matters, 32. 37 Ibid., 33 Rejecting the aesthetic experience (along with the concepts of the aesthetic object and aesthetic perception) as irredeemably eurocentric, Elliott proposes instead that

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's idea of "flow" is a more appropriate universal concept.

According to Elliott, flow describes how people involved in music making everywhere achieve "optimal experiences" when they engage in a type of musical problem-solving and suddenly find themselves able to meet the performing challenges of a given socio- musical context.38 Aesthetic properties are not really universals, according to Elliott, because the aesthetic way of perceiving music is a Western construct, whereas an approach that focuses on the cognitive aspects of music making would appear to avoid this pitfall because people of all cultures make music regardless of whether or not they share the western concept of art objects.

This is in fact the central tenet of Elliott's philosophy of music, which underlies his educational paradigm: that the practice of music, although diverse, is universal. He insists, however, that music is not properly understood outside of its performance context, which is always culturally determined.40 It is for this reason that Elliott considers multicultural music to be better served under his praxial philosophy. Praxialism seeks to emulate "authentic" performing contexts in the classroom because "it is always the musical community or practice that determines the nature and appropriate use of musical understanding."41 In this way, Elliott attempts to redress what he considers a major flaw

38 Ibid., 115-117. 39 Ibid., 39. 40 Ibid., 207 41 Ibid., 177. There is an apparent inconsistency in the attempt to reconstruct notions of classroom music around the principle that music is best understood in its original context. This issue is raised by Koopman, who notes, with a hint of irony, that whatever may be said of the aesthetic approach, it is at least well served by the isolating effects of formal education. The same cannot be said of contextual approaches applied to formal settings (Koopman, "Aesthetic or 'Praxial'?" 14). Recall the problem of universal transcendence versus particular knowledge discussed in the previous chapter. of MEAE, which is the tendency to ascribe aesthetic qualities to works of other cultures

(when dealing with multicultural music) that were not intended to be perceived as such.

Reimer would likely respond by reiterating a position he articulated in his own philosophy: "Much of the world in which humans live can be regarded for its aesthetic qualities, whether or not it was intended for that purpose."42

Attempts to Historicize the Polemic

There have been numerous scholarly debates during the past decade concerning praxialism's challenge to MEAE. Often those involved have represented one perspective or the other. But some of the most interesting and potentially fruitful contributions have been made by scholars (most of whom are non-North Americans) who have preferred to discuss what they perceive as a sometimes problematic relationship between the authors of these two philosophies and the primary sources whence their writings evolved. Non-

North American scholars, perhaps thankfully removed from the emotional tone of the debate as it exists on home soil, have tended to downplay perceived differences between the two philosophies and often try to show that these differences are largely artificial.

One of their concerns is that Reimer and Elliott occasionally turn to reductionism in order to render their arguments salient to educators (a charge, incidentally, that Reimer and Elliott have both leveled at one another at various times). This strategy is undoubtedly necessary in a field that is, as Jorgensen notes, "practically oriented" and in which "ideas need to be translated into action as musical instruction."43 Yet the reductionism that necessarily occurs when theoreticians and philosophers attempt to

42 Reimer, A Philosophy of Music Education, 2nd ed., 43. 43 Estelle R. Jorgensen, "Four Philosophical Models of the Relation between Theory and Practice," Philosophy of Music Education Review 13, no. 1 (Spring, 2005): 32. 239 communicate ideas to music educators is problematic because it inevitably leads to the reification of nuanced ideas.

For example, Pentti Maattanen claims that Reimer either misunderstands or misrepresents the ideas of Dewey. Maattanen's main charge against Reimer is that he misconstrues the philosophy of pragmatism, and thus the nature of aesthetic experience as Dewey defined it. Briefly, because Reimer distinguishes between conceptual (or linguistic) meaning and aesthetic (or artistic) meaning, he must explain this dichotomy by saying that conceptual meanings "point outward," to things other than themselves, while expressive qualities of an artwork are self-referential: they "are captured in the art object itself." According to Maattanen, the idea that conceptual meaning is gained solely through sense perception is a position of classical empiricism that Dewey argued against.

Labeling his particular brand of empiricism "experimental" in order to distinguish it from this view, Dewey maintains instead that "meanings are given by action or practice."45

There can be no meaning, conceptual or otherwise, that does not derive from the interaction of perception and action. This leads to Reimer's main problem: because he places the expressive qualities of art in the object itself, meanings must be simply perceived. Yet Dewey, according to Maattanen, says that "meanings are ultimately modes of practice."46

This leads Maattanen to conclude that "Dewey and Reimer have completely opposite conceptions of the meanings which are found in art."47 There is an important distinction, he says, between Dewey's use of the term "object" of art (its physical

44 Pentti Maattanen, "Aesthetic Experience and Music Education," Philosophy of Music Education Review 11, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 64. 45 Ibid., 65. 46 Ibid., 66. 240 manifestation) and "work" of art (the manifestation of its aesthetic experience) which

Reimer apparently overlooks.48 The interaction between a student and the music she contemplates (whether through listening alone, or performing and listening) is crucial to

Reimer, but only as a means to an end. Whereas in Dewey's pragmatism, "the action and its consequence must be joined in perception. This relationship is what gives meaning."49

In Maatanen's view, this misunderstanding demonstrates that the praxialists (specifically

Elliott and Regelski) have no reason to distance themselves from the aesthetic experience. He states:

[The praxialists] seem to take Reimer's definition of [aesthetic experience] at face value, and because it is a very narrow and idealistic definition, they abandon it altogether and claim that the notion of aesthetic experience is useless. I can understand this reaction to Reimer, but I do not understand how Dewey's naturalistic (anti-Kantian) notion of aesthetic experience has escaped the praxialists' attention.50

Additionally, Maattanen believes that Reimer's concept of aesthetic experience, because it is perception-based rather than interaction-based, is too individualistic.51 It overlooks the pragmatic concept of shared social knowledge and "dooms" musical meaning to the

"subjective realm of intrinsic feelings that cannot even be named and communicated.52

Because the meanings interpreted from art works are socio-culturally determined, the

48 Ibid., 64. 49 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1980), 44. First published in 1934. Cited in MSattanen, "Aesthetic Experience and Music Education," 65. 50 Ibid., 66. 51 This is a controversial claim. Reimer would undoubtedly argue that interaction is a crucial part of the aesthetic experience. But the sticking point for Maatanen, as stated above, is whether that interaction is perceived as a means to an end or valued as the actual generative source of aesthetic meaning. Reimer does appear to lean toward a symbolic, as opposed to interaction-based, definition of aesthetic meaning in claiming that "the primary function of aesthetic education ... is to help people share the aesthetic meanings which come from expressive forms." (A Philosophy of Music Education, 1st ed., 68). He does not specifically stipulate that aesthetic meaning comes from purposeful interaction with expressive forms, thus he would seem to be implying that aesthetic meaning is embodied in said forms (in the form of non- discursive symbols, as Langer would say). In fact, in the same paragraph Reimer refers to aesthetic meanings as "embodied." Ibid. resulting aesthetic experience cannot be "completely private and isolated" despite being subjective.53

Somewhat ironically, Heidi Westerlund observes that Elliott's philosophy also suffers from an overemphasis on individualism. Despite emphasizing that music making occurs in social contexts, Elliott describes flow, the linchpin of his theory, in terms of individual cognition and capabilities. Thus an overemphasis on flow neglects important social aspects of music learning.54 Even Maattanen admits that although Elliott's philosophy is closer to the spirit of Dewey's work, the pragmatic view that "human cognition is an irreducibly social phenomenon" stands in stark contrast to Elliott's

"individual philosophy of mind."55

Elvira Panaiotidi similarly claims that Elliott has made the same mistake as

Reimer by failing to note that "aesthetic qualities are relational by their nature." This is significant to the present discussion because Elliott dismisses the idea of aesthetic qualities on the basis of their supposed embodiment in art objects.56 Panaiotidi also notes that Elliott, in trying to replace the aesthetic concept with the psychological model of flow-experience, simply substitutes one universal for another. The values of "enjoyment, self-knowledge, and self-growth," which derive from flow, are posited as universal despite Elliott's disdain for "ahistorical and acontextual definitions."57 This would not be a problem, she says, had he found a way to reconcile his essentialist claim with his relativist claim. However, Panaiotidi feels that Elliott has not firmly established the

53 Ibid., 68. 54 Heidi Westerlund, "Reconsidering Aesthetic Experience in Praxial Music Education," Philosophy of Music Education Review 11, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 55, 57. 55 Maattanen, "Aesthetic Experience and Music Education," 68. 56 Elvira Panaiotidi, "What is Music? Aesthetic Experience versus Musical Practice," Philosophy of Music Education Review 11, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 75. 37 Ibid., 83. universality of flow. Worse still, Csiksentmihalyi's flow and Dewey's aesthetic experience are eerily similar.59 She concludes that the aesthetic is an inappropriate criterion for distinguishing the two philosophies as different paradigms because Elliott's view simply represents a "hidden aesthetics."60

Finally, Constantijn Koopman notes that there are strong similarities between

Monroe Beardsley's concept of the aesthetic experience and Elliott's flow. Koopman describes these commonalities as "felt freedom (i.e., uplift of spirit, absence of distracting thoughts and feelings), the active exercise of constructive powers of mind, integration and strengthening of self, [and] enjoyment and intrinsic value."61 Koopman argues that

Elliott overlooks this parallel in his zeal to "attack" the aesthetic concept of music. In doing so, he collapses important distinctions between various aesthetic theories (such as

Beardsley's and Langer's) implying that aesthetics is a coherent body of theory that has

"remained largely intact"62 over the past two centuries.6 Koopman further charges that

Elliott wrongly associates the concept of "the musical work as an ideal aesthetic object" with aesthetic theory in general, whereas "this notion is absent from most contemporary aesthetics."64

It is extremely doubtful that these nuanced arguments ever reach the vast majority of music educators, who in some cases will choose to align themselves with one or the other of these "paradigmatic" views. Further, these examples of reductionism or misrepresentation of primary sources, if they are correct (and there seems to be at least

58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 85. 60 Ibid., 86. 61 Koopman, "Aesthetic or 'Praxial'?" 7. 62 Elliott, Music Matters, 26. Cited in Koopman, "Aesthetic or Praxial?" 6. 63 Koopman, "Aesthetic or Praxial?" 6. 64 Ibid., 6. 243 some merit to these charges, although it is outside the scope of this study to investigate them in minute detail), apply only to the presentation of the two philosophical positions

by their authors. One can safely assume that, as with any other complex sets of ideas, popular reception has likely further simplified and rigidified the major principles of both

systems of thought.65

There is evidence to indicate that each philosophy was, in its own way, presented

in a manner that would increase the likelihood of its acceptance by music educators as the reigning paradigm. In the case of MEAE, despite the fact that at least three alternative

frameworks were proposed in the late 1950s, "there was no competition, let alone

struggle, among them."66 Panaiotidi attributes MEAE's unopposed nomination to two

factors: (1) the aura of scientific and philosophical legitimacy that Meyer's and Langer's

aesthetic theories lent it, and (2) even more importantly, MEAE "was systematically

developed into a fully-fledged theory at both philosophical and curriculum levels which

enabled its relatively smooth conversion into an operative paradigm." Equally

As an example of how nuanced ideas are easily lost, see the following articles in Music Educators Journal, which give voice to a debate (following the reception of Reimer's philosophy) about the ongoing tensions between aesthetic and utilitarian aims of music education. Authors either attacked aesthetic music education as intentionally isolationist, implying that for music to be appreciated aesthetically it can serve no broader human functions (a position never taken by Reimer) or spoke glowingly of the aesthetic experience as offering important insights to students while failing to mention that these insights are (according to the theory) nonconceptual in nature. Patricia Coates, "Alternatives to the Aesthetic Rationale for Music Education," 69, no. 7 (March, 1983): 31-32; Carol Gonzo, "Aesthetic Experience: A Coming of Age in Music Education," 58, no. 4 (Dec, 1971): 34-37; Paul Haack, "Put Music in Human Context," 70, no. 1 (Sep., 1983): 14-15; Kenneth H. Phillips, "Utilitarian vs. Aesthetic," 69, no. 7 (March, 1983): 29-30. 66 Elvira Panaiotidi, "The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education," Philosophy of Music Education Review 13, no. 1 (Spring, 2005): 62. The alternative frameworks were "the pragmatist and realist platforms sketched by Foster McMarry and Harry Broudy respectively and the initial variant of MEAE developed by Charles Leonhard and Robert House." Ibid., 61. One could also add to the list of overlooked templates Abraham Schwadron's 1967 book, Aesthetics: Dimensions for Music Education (Washington: Music Educators National Conference). 67 Panaiotidi, "Nature of Paradigms," 62. This last point is crucial, as it reinforces Jorgensen's remark about the need for music educators to have theory translated into practical directives, and thus goes a long way toward explaining the sheer dominance of MEAE for so many years. Interestingly, Reimer has made it perfectly clear that although his philosophy went essentially unchallenged for more than two decades, it was never his intention to discourage the advancement of alternatives. In the preface to the second (1989) 244 significant are remarks by Elliott indicating the fundamental incompatibility of his praxial position with MEAE, and implying that the former, as the more sound theory, should replace the latter.68 Panaiotidi remarks that praxialism's advocates tend to interpret the arrival of the new conception "as a paradigm shift in Kuhn's sense, namely, they underline the discontinuity between their own approach and MEAE" with the goal of displacing MEAE rather than using tensions between the two theoretical frameworks to advance music education knowledge in new directions.69

Music Education Theories and Dominant Paradigms

Scientific and philosophical legitimacy should not be underestimated as a factor causing embryonic theories to overtake their rivals and develop into accepted theories.

This is because prevailing intellectual climate has a crucial bearing on theory development. Thus an understanding of the connections between music education theories and paradigm shifts in psychology, general philosophy, and aesthetics - areas from which music education philosophers and researchers tend to draw - will help students and pre-service teachers to historicize the theories in question. For example,

John Berns (2000) contrasts Elliott's praxial philosophy with Edwin Gordon's Music

Learning Theory in order to demonstrate that they are, to some extent, the historical products of sets of oppositional paradigms: in Gordon's case, psychological behaviorism,

edition of A Philosophy of Music Education, he in fact expresses surprise that by that time no alternative philosophy had yet been proposed (p. xiii). The fact that Reimer himself is not dogmatic seems to indicate that the "teacher-friendliness" of MEAE's instructional materials did, as Panaiotidi suggests, play a role in the theory's dominance. 68 Elliott, Music Matters, 5, 38. Cited in Panaiotidi, "Nature of Paradigms," 63. 69 Panaiotidi, "Nature of Paradigms," 63. 245 empiricism, positivism, and structuralism, compared in Elliot's case to cognitivism, post- positivism, and constructivism.

Although the two bodies of work differ categorically (Gordon's is strictly a music learning theory with no pretense of being a comprehensive philosophy and concerns itself only with occidental music), nevertheless, Berns's examination of the language and claims of both men's work reveals different dominant epistemological influences.

Gordon's extreme emphasis on observable behaviors is typical of the stimulus-response principle underlying behaviorism, a theory "so entrenched in education that it was largely unchallenged" during the time Gordon developed his theory. And Gordon's conception of hierarchical learning levels shows structuralist assumptions, as does his claim "that children are born with a finite amount of music aptitude."71 Berns shows that Elliott, by contrast, is strongly influenced by cognitivism via the theories of Gardner and

Csikszentmihalyi.72 Further, Elliott's highly contextualized definition of music reveals itself to be conditioned by the prevailing winds of post-structuralist, constructivist, and post-positivist attitudes, in contrast to the positivism and empiricism that dominated

Gordon's intellectual landscape during the 1960s and 1970s (more on Gordon's theory will follow shortly).73

Many separate "critiques" of Elliott's and Gordon's work have been written (I use scare quotes because, as will be discussed shortly, scholarly discussion of Gordon's work has been overwhelmingly panegyric.) However, Bern's historical juxtaposition is

70 Berns, "A Critical Analysis," 73. 71 Ibid., 88. 72 Ibid., 102, 104. Although Berns concludes that Elliott's use of these two theorists is a "manifestation of the influence of cognitivism on Elliott's work" (104), he overlooks the equally plausible possibility that Elliott sought out the views of cognitivist psychologists to support a pre-existing notion of musical experience already contained in the seeds of his theory. Consider the examples provided by Feyerabend and Polyani! 73 Ibid., 106-107. 246 beneficial because it allows the two theories to be seen as representatives of different paradigms (within psychology, philosophy, knowledge theory, aesthetics, etcetera). It attempts to locate theories, which might otherwise be subject to some universal standard of right or wrong, in specific socio-historical contexts. Of course, this is only a positive course of action if the theories are not entirely reduced to the paradigms whence they supposedly derive, otherwise any sense of nuance or dialectical tension that may reside in them will be obliterated. Further, locating theories within historical paradigms is only valuable if paradigms are understood as, partial ways of knowing that come to prominence and that wrongly become accepted as complete for a given period of time.

Using a similar strategy, Panaiotidi attempts to historicize the theories of Elliott and Reimer by showing them to be, respectively, representatives of the Aristotelian notions of praxis and poiesis.74 Not to be mistaken for the simplistic reduction of

"product versus process," the concepts ofpraxis and poiesis both admit the dialectical necessity of music as object and music as process. The poiesis view emphasizes that musical objects, through their special qualities, are the vehicles through which the process of personal enrichment occurs. The praxis view, by contrast, locates value directly in musical actions, out of which products necessarily emerge.75 The indispensability of product and process (although in different roles) to both views precludes the possibility of identifying one or the other as a complete explanation, regardless of their different emphases:

The proposal to consider tins praxis and poiesis paradigms as complementary does not run counter to the claim of their rivalry, since though they diverge (or even contradict) in their ontological assumptions, which in the final analysis determine

74 Panaiotidi, "Nature of Paradigms," 52. Panaiotidi actually claims that all music education theories can be identified with one of these two "super-paradigms." 75 Ibid., 57. 247

the nature of their conflict, each excludes essential aspects and qualities of the performative activity and musical works which are thematized by the other.

This necessary dialectical tension between product and process unfortunately disappears in polemical debates, which are often reflective of specific agendas (such as the need to justify music education in the post-Sputnik environment, or the need to develop a theory that recognizes the value of jazz improvisation) that attempt to locate music at one or the other of these ontological poles. Such polemic increases the likelihood that both the praxis and poiesis views will become reified.

III. Methods of Music Instruction as Reified Forms

It has already been argued that highly systematized and prescriptive methods of music instruction are inimical to critical thought. This issue will now be explored in more detail. Since it would be impractical to provide descriptions and analyses of all influential music learning methods in order to assess their ideological potential, two key examples will suffice: the method generated from Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory, and the

Kodaly Method.77

Gordon's Music Learning Sequences

Although Gordon produced a theory, out of that theory he generated a method.

This method consists of a series of skill and content learning sequences, which are far more important in Gordon's value system than techniques or materials (such as sheet

Some North American Kodaly advocates prefer to dissociate Kodaly's ideas from the word "method." However, Kodaly himself uses the term in his writings, as do notable Kodaly authors such as Lois Choksy. See, for example, Choksy's The Kodaly Method: Comprehensive Music Education, 3r ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999). music), since the latter two elements may or may not be used in a way that services method. Early on in his influential book, Learning Sequences in Music (1988), Gordon makes what he considers a crucial distinction between the terms "technique" and

"method." While technique is simply defined as a pedagogical aid that works to accomplish one or more objectives, method is "the order in which sequential objectives are introduced in a course of study to accomplish a comprehensive objective, a goal.79

Gordon defines "appropriate method" in terms of correct sequence (i.e., a logical sequence of activities that has been scientifically proven to obtain learning outcomes).

The measurable outcome of greatest interest, according to Gordon, is the ability to audiate musical patterns, and this outcome provides the basis of his theory. As previously mentioned, the theory posits a rigid hierarchy of learning skills, which underlines strong structuralist assumptions about musical knowledge.

Gordon's emphasis on pattern recognition and hierarchical learning practically guarantee that his method, if followed closely, will present music to the student as a

"given" phenomenon. Woodford remarks on this problem:

Musical thinking and creativity are described as processes somewhat akin to solving a jigsaw puzzle whereby the listener assembles discrete tonal and rhythm patterns into sequential and hierarchical order. Leaving aside for the moment the question as to whether this particular mode of musical thinking is advantageous to children, Gordon's theory does not explain how individuals are to come up with their own original musical patterns and ideas. His theory, then, is neither constructive nor generative in nature.82 (emphasis added)

Edwin E. Gordon, Learning Sequences in Music: Skill, Content, and Patterns, 3 ed. (Chicago: G.I.A. Publications, 1989), 30-31,241. 79 Ibid., 28 80 Ibid., 29, 191. In fact, the terms "music learning theory" and "music learning sequences" are synonymous in Gordon's view (19). 81 Ibid., 7, 22. Audiation is defined as "hearing and comprehending music silently" (7). There are various types and stages of audiation in Gordon's theory. 82 Paul Woodford, "Evaluating Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory from a Critical Thinking Perspective," Philosophy of Music Education Review 4, no. 2 (Fall, 1996): 88. 249

Gordon's theory thus suffers from the problem, identified by Cherry holmes, that is endemic to all traditional learning theories: it reinforces a reproductive view of the phenomenon in question (and by extension, one could argue, society in general). The highly systematized manner in which Gordon's musical patterns and tonal and rhythmic taxonomies are presented, together with endless appeals to logic, order, and the results of empirical testing, function to mask the socially constructed nature of music and present it instead as a natural phenomenon with universal underlying principles. Further, by limiting its scope to conventional Western practices, Gordon's theory encourages an ethnocentric view whereby the attributes of Western music are associated with those supposed universal principles (see the discussion on synecdoche in chapter 3).83

A further problem with Gordon's theory is that it focuses on individual outcomes, while ignoring "the social framework in which musical thinking takes place."84 Apple argues that the very form of such systematized curriculum teaches the idea that individualism is valuable and collectivism is not.85 Hierarchical, outcomes-based approaches to teaching such as Gordon's thus serve "the logic of capital." This is not only because we consume goods and services as individuals, but because the atomization of knowledge itself commodifies it, while hindering our chances of perceiving the locus of control.86

Of additional concern is the extent to which Gordon's theory is permeated by absolute statements supported by appeals to scientific knowledge. For example, the theory is predicated on the belief that all children possess objectively measurable

83 Woodford has also criticized Gordon's theory on the basis of ethnocentrism. Ibid., 90. 84 Ibid., 87. 85 Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, 32. 86 Ibid., 153-154. 250 amounts of music aptitude, with which all are born, and which fluctuate somewhat in response to environmental conditions up to age nine and never thereafter.87 Standardized aptitude tests play an important role in the theory, since they are to be used by teachers to best decide how to adapt the learning sequences to individual student needs. There is a hard distinction drawn between the objective measures of such tests (as shown by their validity and reliability) and the subjective evaluations of teachers who interpret their results. When there is disagreement between the two, valid test results are perceived as a valuable corrective to teacher perceptions.88 And the results of such tests should be used as the basis for physically separating students into hierarchical groupings within a single class, so that their individual aptitude differences can best be accommodated during group instruction.89 Aside from appeals to science, Gordon's language is rife with unconditional directives, which seem to strengthen the case for absolute certainty.90

One of the greatest concerns from a critical pedagogy viewpoint, however, is the preponderance of prescriptive material that the theory has generated. Apple claims that pre-packaged curricula contribute greatly to the deskilling of teachers by moving the locus of control out of the classroom and into the hands of publishers and those who create "teacher-proof methods and lessons (see chapter 1). Gordon's theory, which is highly methodical and prescriptive to begin with, has generated a series of method books for classroom use entitled Jump Right In, which represent a kind of vertical integration of theory and practice similar to that which accompanied Reimer's philosophy (Hanley and

87 Gordon, Learning Sequences in Music, 3rd ed., 1-2. 88 Ibid., 5. 89 Ibid., 233. 90 As a typical example, see p. 231, where Gordon writes, "Teachers must follow the sequence outlined in learning sequence activities. They must not teach theoretical understanding as a readiness for symbolic association, and they must not attempt to teach symbolic association without the necessary readiness .... " (emphasis added) 251

Montgomery refer to that earlier series of books as "an attempt to develop a 'teacher- proof package"91). Method books, perhaps even more so than textbooks, implicitly present meanings as fixed by presenting learning outcomes in "logical" sequence and by quietly emphasizing some values at the expense of others. For example, some method books place rhythm exercises in the back matter or at the end of each "lesson," a reflection of the Western tendency to treat rhythm as less important than pitch discrimination or tone production.92 So-called comprehensive method books, particularly those geared to beginning stages of music instruction, provide musical content, warm-up exercises, skill-developing activities, and theoretical information, all in a manner that suggests "appropriate" timelines, thus furnishing the teacher in some cases with ready- made lesson plan outlines for the duration of a given course. Although they are undeniably valuable and time-saving, method books that represent particular theories or approaches, such as Gordon's (which also contain sample tests and ratings scales), do not indicate that fact in any obvious way in their contents. Consequently, music teachers might easily implement a particular theory without knowing much, if anything, about it.

And even if teachers are knowledgeable of the underlying theory, they may not necessarily disclose to students (or student teachers!) that their resource materials are derived from it, let alone discuss its partiality.

Hanley and Montgomery, "Contemporary Curriculum Practices," 122. 92 See, for example, Standard of Excellence (San Diego: Neil A. Kjos Music Company, 1998). 93 Interestingly, the biographical information on the website of one Gordon advocate simply lists one of her accomplishments as having presented "numerous workshops focusing on a natural sequence of music learning that prepares students for comprehensive music literacy" (emphasis added) http://www.esm.rochester.edu/faculty/?id=234. Similar lack of reference to Gordon is evident in a number of "practical" articles published in Music Educators Journal that are aimed at music teachers who may be unaware of alternative approaches. As mentioned in chapter 1, the tendency of Gordon and his advocates to refer constantly to his ideas simply as Music Learning Theory (with capitalization and without prefacing this term with Gordon's name) arguably has the ideological effect of nullifying alternatives. 252

Finally, Gordon's Music Learning Theory presents perhaps the best example of reification because its widespread appeal in certain quarters of the United States has arguably approached cult-like status. Evidence includes: over forty educational publications and/or electronic resources currently available through GIA Publishing; the establishment of the Gordon Institute for Music Learning (GIML), a non-profit organization with its own bi-annual journal (Audea) devoted to disseminating Gordon's theory and offering an accreditation program that certifies teachers to become fluent in the method;94 a proliferation of articles whose aim is to instruct music teachers in how to apply the method in various contexts while seldom if ever questioning the underlying assumptions of the theory; 5 and in certain universities, a learning culture that - owing to a strong presence of Gordon's proponents - can best be described as orthodox with regard to prevailing attitudes toward the theory.96 One Gordon advocate and author of a

http://www.giml.org/index.php 95 For example, between 1991 and 1992 The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning devoted a series of articles to Gordon's Music Learning Theory which, with one exception (Scott C. Schuler, "A Critical Examination of the Contributions of Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory to the Music Education Profession," 2, nos. 1-2 (Spring/Summer, 1991): 37-58) were not the least critical of any of the assumptions embedded in the theory. The few concerns raised were limited to the statistical significance of tests related to applications of the theory. Most researchers seem content to discuss the best ways to apply the theory to classroom situations. See for example: Richard F. Grunow, "The Evolution of Rhythm Syllables in Gordon's Music Learning Theory," 3, no. 4 (Winter, 1992): 55-66; Peter Gouzouasis, "The Comparative Effects of Two Tonal Pattern Systems and Two Rhythm Pattern Systems for Learning to Play the Guitar," 3, no. 4 (Winter, 1992): 10-18; Scott C. Schuler, "The Effects of Gordon's Learning Sequence Activities on Vocal Performance Achievement of Primary Music Students," 2, nos. 1-2 (Spring/Summer, 1991): 118-129; and the following articles in the same issue: June C. McDonald, "The Application of Gordon's Empirical Model of Learning Sequence to Teaching the Recorder," 110-117; Christopher D. Azzara, "Audiation, Improvisation, and Music Learning Theory," 106-109; Robert A. Cutietta, "Edwin Gordon's Impact on the Field of Music Aptitude," 73-77; Darrel L. Walters, "Edwin Gordon's Music Aptitude Work," 65-72; Maurice E. Byrd, "Gordon's Sequential Music Learning and Its Applicability to General Music," 59-62. 96 Two notable examples are, at the time of this writing, the Music Education Department of the Eastman School of Music, and the Music Education Area of the Michigan State University College of Music. Faculty at those schools who are strongly associated with Gordon's theory include: Christopher Azzara (author of "Audiation-based Improvisation Techniques and Elementary Instrumental Students' Music Achievement," Journal of Research in Music Education 41, no. 4 (Winter, 1993): 328-342; and "Audiation, Improvisation, and Music Learning Theory," (see footnote 95); Richard Grunow (a principle author of Jump Right In, author of the following chapters: "Music Learning Sequence Techniques in Beginning Instrumental Music" (with Denise K. Gamble) and "Tonal Learning Sequence," both in Readings in Music 253 textbook intended for practical use by teachers, Eric Bluestine, goes so far as to refer to the principles of the theory as "irrefutable truths about music and music education."97

This phrase, along with the phrase "universal truths," is actually used repeatedly throughout the text, constituting a supreme example of dogmatic prose. All of these factors contribute to a messianic zeal among music educators who gravitate toward ideas that are immediately grounded in actions.98 Indeed, the pseudo-religious following that

Gordon's body of work seems to have inspired is appropriately described using the term

Regelski reserves for the technical-rationalist worship of methods: "methodolatry."99

The Kodaly Method

Another system of instruction that has achieved a high degree of "vertical integration" is the Kodaly Method. This method, which uses indigenous folk music to teach sight-singing skills100 in a systematic manner in order to achieve the primary objectives of music literacy and an appreciation for the masterworks of Western art music, has been criticized on the basis of its Eurocentrism, scientism, and elitism.101 But for present purposes it is important to try to assess the degree to which North American adaptations of the popular Hungarian system (which was gradually internationalized) continue to demonstrate these tendencies. The well known Kodaly specialist Lois Choksy

Learning Theory, 194-207, and 37-44 (Chicago: GIA, 1989); Kathy Liperote (author of "Audiation for Beginning Instrumentalists: Listen, Speak, Read, Write," Music Educators Journal 93, no. 1 (Sept. 2006): 46-52); and Cynthia Taggart (co-author with E. Gordon of Jump Right In: The Music Curriculum (Chicago: GIA, 2004), co-editor of Readings in Music Learning Theory, and author of five additional published articles on the subject of Gordon's Music Learning Theory). 9 Eric Bluestine, The Ways Children Learn Music: An Introduction and Practical Guide to Music Learning Theory, 2nd ed. (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2000), 60-61. 98 Jorgensen, "Four Philosophical Models," 32. 99 Regelski, "Critical Theory as a Foundation for Critical Thinking," 10. 100 The reason for the focus on singing is that instruments are considered not only unnecessary but counterproductive to early music education. Lois Choksy, The Kodaly Method I: Comprehensive Music Education (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999), 16. 101 See, for example, Woodford, "Is Kodaly Obsolete?" 10-18. 254 gives some indication of this in her numerous publications. In prefacing the second

(1988) edition of The Koddly Method, she explains that the primary reason for revising the 1974 text was not a reconsideration of any of the underlying principles, which

"remain immutable," but rather that the first edition was not sufficiently prescriptive. She states, "[prior to the second edition] I realized that in my own university teacher-training classes I was having to give far too much through lectures simply because it was not 'in the book.'"102 By 1999, the situation was further "improved" with the appearance of a third edition containing a new chapter of extremely detailed long-range plans and specific lesson plans that, if followed closely, would seem to render the classroom teacher little more than a human delivery mechanism for the instructional sequence. Although the chapter on planning leaves some room for teacher autonomy (for example, the division of outcomes into grade levels is dependent on factors such as students' previous musical experience, and teachers are encouraged to adapt the sequence to suit the indigenous folk musics of non-English speaking students), the stated goal is that the teacher develop a detailed long range plan that is flexible only in the sense that daily lesson plans may progress faster or slower but never deviate from the specified sequence of instruction, once it has been set.104

Also problematic from the perspective of ideology critique are the structuralist assumptions that continue to go unchallenged by Kodaly's adherents. Strict sequence is

102 Lois Choksy, The Koddly Method: Comprehensive Music Education from Infant to Adult, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988), xiii-xiv. Choksy's use of the term "teacher-training" (as opposed to education) is perhaps telling. 103 To be fair, Choksy recommends breaking out of the sequence by drawing on material that is beyond the current learning level of the child. But she makes it quite clear that such actions are not part of the child's education proper. Songs that fall outside of the (scientifically proven) sequence cannot be pedagogical. Therefore they must be taught by rote, purely for the sake of enjoyment. This does not indicate a relaxing of structuralist principles, but simply a wish to alleviate children's boredom. Choksy, The Koddly Method: Comprehensive Music Education, 3rd ed. (1999), 174. 104 Ibid., See chapter 8. 255 emphasized in Kodaly's approach because the organization of subject matter is believed to reflect "normal child abilities at various stages of growth."105 Kodaly's belief that children's music learning invariably occurs in fixed stages, following a Piaget-like model, has been challenged on the grounds that it does not accurately reflect postmodern views of knowledge and it reduces complex learning processes to simplistic, generic formulae.106 Yet, if Choksy's texts are any indication, faith in the scientific claims of a universal sequence of learning continues to provide the bedrock of legitimacy for this methodical approach. Moreover, such claims as "the major second, minor third, and perfect fourth appear to be part of a universal musical vocabulary for young children,"107 casually map Western tonal constructs onto children's chants the world over, almost as if such constructs as interval names and tonic solfa were parts of musical phenomena themselves and not simply one way among many to conceive of music. Indeed, the limited tools with which the Kodaly teacher must work (tonic solfa, hand signs, and a specific set of rhythm syllables) reinforces the idea that they are the only "correct" tools possible for teaching and learning music, and therefore the only correct way to conceive of music.

Perhaps the most obvious problem from the vantage point of ideology critique is the method's built-in mechanism for reinforcing assumptions about what constitutes good music. In the most recent (1999) edition of The Kodaly Method,m Choksy reiterates the principle claim, inherited from Kodaly, that music education of the highest quality must utilize as its materials only "authentic" children's games and songs, "authentic folk

105 Ibid., 10. 106 See Woodford, "Is Kodaly Obsolete?" 14-15. 107Choksy, The Kodaly Method I: Comprehensive Music Education (3r ed.), 11. 108 The third edition consists of two volumes. I refer here to the first volume. 256 music," and "good composed music, that is, music written by recognized composers."109

Leaving aside for a moment the absurd tautology underlying the third item, Woodford has shown that the assumption that music educators can rely on the renderings of folk song collectors and ethnomusicologists to be "pure" or "untainted" is highly spurious.110

More importantly, the notion that an authentic version of any song exists is a particular

Western construct that is generated from the "music as conduit" metaphor (see chapter 3) and as such it has the potential to severely limit students' understanding of the dynamic nature of songs. Moreover, even those folk songs deemed authentic and worthy of inclusion in the Kodaly canon are placed in the middle tier of a hierarchy, with the masterworks of Western art music at the pinnacle.111 This is evident in the fact that folk music is used instrumentally. It functions primarily as a means to teach music literacy

(with which it is not traditionally associated) and to access art music. It should go without saying that this elitist view has the ideological potential to reinforce values associated with Western art music, particularly literacy, complexity, and composition (as opposed to improvisation or oral traditions), as naturally superior.

Summary

The preceding discussion demonstrates the ideological potential of theories and methods if accepted unconditionally and indicates the importance of placing systems of thought about music learning in socio-historical context and contrasting them with alternatives in order to reveal their partiality. If theories and methods are perceived, either through presentation or reception, as dogma or pseudo-religious texts, they become

109 Ibid., 15. 110 Woodford, "Is Kodaly Obsolete?" 14. 111 Choksy, The Kodaly Method, 2nd ed., 184. 257 rigidified and assume the qualities of second nature. This suggests that the most appropriate ability to nurture in pre-service music education candidates is not related to any specific set of instructional skills. Rather, it is, in the words of Bowman, the ability

"to recognize the fallibility of what once seemed irrefutable."112 But, as Feyerabend's work demonstrates, the inescapability of reification makes this an uphill battle.

Jorgensen, citing Langer, perhaps articulates this idea best in saying that

"throughout history, generative ideas have typically been reduced to narrow and restrictive interpretations that gradually lose their power."113 She feels that this point is particularly salient to music education, a field in constant search of legitimacy and prophets. Yet "as disciples propagate their prophet's ideas, they also participate in those ideas' destruction by proceeding to codify them."114 The effects of this codification must be fought by encouraging students to examine the conflicting ideas that give birth to systematic thought about music learning and methods of music instruction, thus unveiling their socially contingent nature.

IV. Music Education and the Reification of Technology

The discussion will now turn to an example of how attitudes toward music instruction can become reified and consequently present similar ideological problems. In the same way that written and spoken language mediate music instruction, so do electronic technologies to the extent that they are involved in the process. And, like music instruction methods, technological ways of thinking can become second nature. The presumption that technology is the most efficient, appropriate, and even inevitable means

112 Bowman, "Educating Musically," 67. 113 Jorgensen, Transforming Music Education, 125. 258 to accomplish the goal of educating places technology in the category of method in the sense that it is assumed to be means-ends oriented. Unfortunately, as Postman points out, the problems that methods set out to solve are technical, not ethical or philosophical (or, by extension one could argue, musical) in nature.115 Thus methods do not pose questions about the values underlying the framing of the (technical) problems they set out to solve.

Like other methods, technological methods of educating assume a neutral stance: their only ostensible function is to facilitate learning. They are thus not generally perceived as shaping the learning process or inculcating students with any particular values. Like other

"frozen" methods of instruction, technological instruction masks its mediating role in the learning process. As a result, technologies become invisible forms whose effects go largely unnoticed.

When we (mis)perceive technology in this manner it becomes second nature, given and inevitable, and the outcome is a dangerous dissociation from its social origins.

This all too prevalent view precludes a critical stance by preventing educators from asking such questions as: Does this technology serve to fragment knowledge? Who controls this technology, and to what ends? The field of music education seems particularly susceptible to the mistaken view that technological developments are inevitable, as evidenced by a marked lack of critical discussion regarding the manner in which commercial technologies should be used in the music classroom,116 and an

Postman, The End of Education, 27. Postman actually uses the term "metaphysical" to describe the kinds of problems technology fails to address. 116 For evidence of this, see Peter Webster's review of literature on the subject, in which only three examples of critical views from within the field of music education are offered (Austin, Argersinger, and Caputo) out of well over one hundred authors cited. Peter Webster, "Computer-Based Technology and Music Teaching and Learning," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, 416- 439. 259 increasing number of secondary and post-secondary job postings seeking music educators who are "comfortable" with the latest technologies.

To perceive technology as inevitable, however, is to assume that the forms in which it is presented to us and the ways in which it should be used are somehow beyond our control. This way of thinking represents the abandonment of any means/ends discussion that might clarify our potential role in its uses or abuses. The use of technology in music education must be guided by a critical position, not simply the creed of efficiency or what Heather-Jane Robertson identifies as "the technological imperative"

- the notion that whatever can be done in the realm of technology should be done.117

Echoing Ong's argument about the ideological effects of print, as opposed to oral, technology, Postman states, "The uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself- that is, ... its functions follow from its form."118

Building on the thoughts of Marshall McLuhan he entreats us to recognize

that embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.119

Postman goes on to explain that this is what McLuhan means by his famous aphorism,

"the medium is the message." To say that technology shapes and influences our environment, however, is not to say that it determines precisely what that environment will be. Although McLuhan argues that any technology, as a type of media, "has the power of imposing its own assumptions on the unwary," he nevertheless maintains that

"prediction and control [are possible by] avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus

117 Heather-Jane Robertson, No More Teachers, No More Books: The Commercialization of Canada's Schools (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1998), 97. 118 Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 7. 119 Ibid., 13. trance." Although the reader may suspect hints of technological determinism in the claim that technologies have the power, through their structures, to act upon us, it is precisely a determinist stance that critical educators must seek to avoid. For as the subtitle of McLuhan's most famous book indicates,121 technologies are extensions of our thinking selves and not autonomous entities whose development and uses lie entirely beyond our control.

When music educators refuse to acknowledge the social origins of technology, they perpetuate the ideology of the technological imperative. They consequently allow technology to determine fully their environments by submitting themselves and their students to whatever "ideological biases" may exist in current technologies. By extension, they also submit themselves and their students to the authority of those whose interests such ideology serves.

Questioning the Technological Imperative

Since Horkheimer and Adorno spoke of the "totally administered society," a number of more recent thinkers have echoed their concerns about our unquestioning acceptance of various technologies or our blindness to the societal changes they initiate.122 For example, the political scientist and social critic John Ralston Saul views the Western obsession with the worship of technology as a natural outgrowth of our

120 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966), 30. First published in 1964. 121 Ibid. 122 For example, early treatments of the subject include Jaques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), originally published as La Technique ou Venjeu du siecle (Librarie Armand Colin, 1954); and Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity (New York: Halcourt, Brace and Company, 1954). See also Gregory H. Davis, Technology - Humanism or Nihilism: A Critical Analysis of the Philosophical Basis and Practice of Modern Technology (Boston: University Press of America, 1981); and Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology, rev. ed. (1999; repr., Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1990). 261 obsession with rationalism. In parallel with the Frankfurt theorists, he views the Western industrialized world as one enslaved by the fragmentation of knowledge through specialization, a process caused by "the dictatorship of reason." The perils of instrumental reason are evident when technology is embraced in the name of efficiency only, without any consideration of larger contexts.123

It is critically important that members of society understand and contribute to shaping the forces of technology as they develop, for the alternative is passivity, at which point we risk allowing others to use technology for purposes of control. Loss of control inevitably occurs when an individual submits to the demands of a new technology by unquestioningly learning the specialized skills necessary to accommodate to it. Although specializing one's skills is a way of adapting to one's environment, the resulting fragmentation of knowledge leaves the individual unprotected in the event that her technological environment changes and her newly acquired, specialized skills become obsolete. This is one of the inherent dangers of specializing in order to adapt to new technology.124 Saul argues that the fragmentation of knowledge through specialization has removed the individual from meaningful participation in society, and that our society is no longer democratic as a result.125

To cite but one example of instrumental reason, Saul describes how the railway systems in the United States, Canada, and Britain, and the postal systems in the United States and Canada have been "subjected to universal standards of organization and efficiency," which "inevitably" involve "a devotion to computerized methodology, arguments in favor of lean manpower, and calculations of new investment versus possible financial returns." All of these "rational" undertakings have resulted in poorer service, which has had the spiraling effect of reducing the total number of customers and thus decreasing operating capital and fulfilling the prophecy that the systems were unsustainable to begin with. By contrast, neither France's postal service nor Germany's rail service had, as of 1993, been subjected to such "logical" systems analysis, and they both continued to have relatively thriving service in these areas as a result. John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993), 266-269. 124 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966), 74. 125 Saul, Unconscious Civilization, 40-75. 262

Prescriptive versus Holistic Technologies

When examining the ideological implications of technology in the music classroom, it is useful to borrow some terminology from experimental physicist and social critic Ursula Franklin, who places technologies in one of two categories depending on how they affect users. "Holistic technologies" are those which leave the "doer in total control of the process."126 They are most commonly associated with the idea of "craft," since artisans control the process of their own work from beginning to end. For this reason, they represent specialization by product. "Prescriptive technologies," on the other hand, represent specialization by process, since they involve splitting a process into clearly identifiable steps, each of which is executed by a different worker or group of workers.127 The consequent separation of conception from execution results in deskilling, a problem that Apple claims is pervading the teaching profession.128 Prescriptive technologies incorporate all major goals into their designs in such a way that making decisions once the process has begun is not an option. They are "designs for compliance" since control over the entire process moves to the organizer, boss, manager, etcetera.

While extremely effective and appropriate in areas such as materials production, they come with an "enormous social mortgage": a culture of conformity in which society gradually accepts that there is only one way to do a given task. The primary concern here is that prescriptive technologies are increasingly used to accomplish tasks that should be done holistically: those activities, including teaching, that require caring and necessitate immediate response and adjustment.129

Franklin, The Real World of Technology, 12. Ibid. Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, 32, 144-146. 263

Case Study: MIDI Technology and Composing. Using this terminology, one can examine specific instances of the use of technology in the music classroom in order to determine the conditions under which it would be prescriptive or holistic. Consider, for example, the use of MIDI130 technology for the purpose of teaching music composition.

A particularly contentious question is whether MIDI is capable of delivering an

"authentic" musical experience.131 The effects of "quantizing" music ("correcting" rhythmic irregularities that occur during the input of musical data by "rounding off to a predetermined rhythmic value) and the fact that sound is produced through electronic synthesis are said to have a dehumanizing effect. There has been phenomenological debate over whether such instruments are "played" in the traditional sense132 or even whether musical performance itself will cease.133

These arguments, interesting as they are, tend to sidestep the crucial issue of student autonomy. Loss of the physical skills or musical knowledge necessary to create or interpret music autonomously constitutes a very real problem for music education because autonomous thinking and doing, according to all of the arguments being developed in this study, should be primary goals of education. If music education technology leads to a relinquishing of autonomy with regard to musical skills or knowledge, the technology in question is either highly prescriptive, or is being utilized in a prescriptive manner. An examination of MIDI technology reveals that it can be utilized either holistically or prescriptively with regard to composing. If teachers teach only the

130 Musical Instrument Digital Interface. The term refers to an industry standard protocol that enables electronic instruments, computers, and other equipment to communicate, control, and synchronize with one another. 131 Randall D. Ulveland, "Electronic Instruments: Played or Used?" Music Educators Journal 85, no. 1 (July, 1998): 29. 132 Ibid. 133 For example, see Bennett Reimer, "Is Musical Performance Worth Saving?" Arts Education Policy Review 95 (Jan.,/Feb., 1994): 2-13. 264 minimum musical concepts and skills necessary to use the software, there is likely to be a transfer of autonomy (from student to software) whether the software is inherently prescriptive or not. If, however, students are capable of creating musical products without the help of software, then software is merely facilitating the act of composing, without limiting knowledge of the entire process.134 This would be an example of holistic use of technology in the music classroom. At the other extreme, if students are entirely dependent on technology to create music, it is being used very prescriptively. This will occur, for example, if students cannot understand the basic musical concepts that inform their choices, if they lack the rudimentary keyboard skills to input simple musical structures such as triads, or if they cannot execute any of their musical choices at any tempo without the aid of software.

This line of argumentation does not imply any formalist assumption about the value of complexity, nor does it imply that the joy of composing should be fractured by the routine memorization of arpeggios and scales for months prior to the creation of music. Christopher Small is correct in arguing that we are wrong to conceptualize musical activities, such as composing, as the end products of sequences of abstract rule memorization. Students can and should learn to compose holistically. However, unless teachers endeavor to empower students by encouraging them to gain some control over the parameters of the creative process, computer-assisted composing will not be a holistic activity. If too much dependency is shifted onto music software, a fragmented

134 Of course, the form of any technology will dictate its "ideological bias," to quote Postman, thus MIDI technology by its very nature alters our concepts of composing and promotes certain choices and actions at the expense of others. But this does not mean that creative teachers cannot meliorate the ideological effects of technologies that might be prescriptive, in this case by rescuing much of the autonomy that risks being transferred from student to software maker. This is no different than saying that the existence of the printed word does not prevent educators from encouraging the development of memory and oral skills. 265 understanding of the process of composition will result, and the byproduct of fragmented understanding is potential loss of control. Consider, for example, the following hypothetical scenario. If the software designers of an educational program should decide to eliminate a function that allows the playback of diminished chords, then students who have not been given the knowledge of diminished chords (or the skills to execute them) would lose this option when composing. Although we assume software makers would have no reason to do such things, their decisions are ultimately market driven, thus educators have no way of knowing what those decisions might be in the future.135

The most common strength attributed to MIDI as an educational tool is that it

"democratizes" composing by taking composition out of the hands of specialists and giving it to "the masses." The following is an excerpt from a typical article that attempts to convince educators of this benefit:

MIDI technology is particularly good for awakening the creative spirit in people by allowing them to focus on musical ideas rather than the mechanics of playing an instrument or learning musical notation. ... MIDI might be described as an 'assistive' technology for the artistically challenged. It represents one more way in which technology can make the world of art more accessible to people who consider themselves outside its domain. The realm of music is no longer restricted to those who are traditionally trained. It is open to anyone who can hear musical ideas and who is willing to take the time to learn MIDI technology to capture those ideas. In other words, all you have to be able to do is think music or hear it in your inner ear, not necessarily understand it in the conventional sense. It reveals the musician within ,...136 (emphasis added)

" Webster cites a similar example, which is offered by jazz educator Charles Argersinger. Argersinger is concerned that because music notation software renders scores with such ease, students' abilities to develop their "inner ears" will be hampered. Of course, the software does not prevent students from creating scores without the touch of a single key, but its particular "ideological bias" certainly encourages the quicker option. Charles Argersinger, "Side-effects of Technology on Music and Musicians," Jazz Educators Journal 26, no. 1 (1993): 33. Cited in Webster, "Computer-based Technology and Music Teching and Learning," 423. 136 Jason Ohler, "The Promise of MIDI Technology," Learning and Leading with Technology 25, no. 6 (1998): 7, 10. In a technology-based society, our knowledge of the world and the various processes within it becomes increasingly fragmented through the development and proliferation of various specialized languages, which are intended to obscure understanding to all but those specialists in particular fields.137 In this example, MIDI technology is being hailed as a means for the "average person" to circumvent the specialized language of musical notation so that she may enter the world of music composition through technology. This would seem to make it a unifying, rather than fragmenting, force until one realizes that the function of music notation is not to obscure understanding but to facilitate it. The author is not promising that the technology will offer a clearer, more lucid language with which to "translate" the technology of musical notation, so as to enable better understanding. Rather, he is offering the opportunity for students to partake in composition with less knowledge of music by substituting superficial, incomplete knowledge of a software technology for complete knowledge of the technology of music notation. Although the student no longer understands the entire process, the musical product can still be created, seemingly with more facility, because the remainder of the procedural knowledge now resides with the programmer.

Ironically, technology is often advertised as a means by which "ordinary people" can access knowledge previously in the domain of experts when the reverse is generally true. To learn the keystrokes that enable a software program to execute what a programmer has "taught" it to do is hardly to gain access to that expert's knowledge. The fact that a sophisticated automatic camera can take pictures the likes of which only an expert photographer could have taken thirty years ago does not make its user more knowledgeable about photography. Granted, it allows access to the world of high quality

137 Saul, Voltaire's Bastards, 475. 267 photos, but such photos reflect the accomplishments of the engineers and technicians who design the camera much more than they reflect the accomplishments of the users. In this way, modern technology acts as a mediating force that often works to dissuade us from understanding the intricacies of various disciplines.138 Regardless of the ostensible goals of music education software, its net effect should not be a trading of musical knowledge for technical manipulation skills, particularly if such fragmented knowledge is tied to commercial interests.

The above example raises an additional issue. By claiming that whatever can be heard in the inner ear can be "captured" through the use of MIDI, the author gives the false impression that MIDI is simply facilitating the student's musicianship, rather than acknowledging that musical ideas are necessarily mediated by whatever technology one interfaces with, be it acoustic or digital. For example, any software program is limited in timbre by its design, in combination with the level of sophistication of the sound playback device. Further, if a student is using a keyboard that lacks touch sensitivity, the palette of sounds that can be used for inspiration or final product will be further limited.

Touch sensitivity and changes to timbre resulting from human performance factors are examples of compositional parameters that theoretically encompass a continuum of infinite gradations. The claim that MIDI technology can "capture" whatever sounds are in the inner ear is clearly unfounded. This is yet another example of false subjectivity. It is ideological to promote the idea that students possess total freedom to express themselves creatively without acknowledging the mediating forces (whether they be musical forms, linguistic conventions, or technologies) that shape the products of their efforts.

Bill McKibben, The Age of Missing Information (New York: Penguin, 1993), 34. Public Music Education and Private Interests

The journalist and social critic Naomi Klein asserts that, within North American society, there is not much that remains within the public sphere.139 Justification for

Klein's concern is evident in calls for music curricula to be increasingly centered around commercial technology - Cubase, Cakewalk, Band in a Box, Finale, Sibelius, Virtual

Studio Technology, etcetera. All of these products, because they are market driven, have the potential to steer curriculum in the direction of private interests. Critical music educators must be aware of the extent to which the development of technology is controlled by corporations, as this might conflict with its ability to serve the needs of education. The unfortunate result of market driven technologies in the classroom is that the technical skills that students are acquiring may not be of any lasting value, even in a utilitarian sense, as there is no guarantee that the software on which we are so enthusiastically "training" students will be extant in even five years. The danger is that teachers may be "locking students into technology that will be obsolete by the time they graduate."140

This begs the question of whose needs are being served. According to Franklin, the problem lies in the misappropriation of what she calls the "production model" by schools. Systems that require judgment to determine the direction of their evolution are best perceived as "growth models," since in nature growth is an unpredictable phenomenon whose outcome is determined by responses and counter-responses to constantly changing contexts. Production models, by contrast, assume "stable and invariant" contexts and are designed "to maximize efficiency and effectiveness" and

139 Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Toronto: Knopf, 2000). 140 Saul, Unconscious Civilization, 69, 142. Also see Robertson, No More Teachers, 129. 269 minimize unpredictable responses. An example of thinking that is congruent with the production model can be found in the "pleasure principle argument." This is a popular position that envisions technology as a pleasurable means to ensure enrollment in music programs. In a (2000) publication of The American Music Teacher, an article appears that is typical of such appeals to educators:

You and I know that playing music will provide a more sustained and viscerally satisfying reward over time than any computer game ever could. But try telling that to the six-year-old with a new Nintendo system who hates being forced to practice the piano. The point is, we need to 'fight fire with fire.' If fun always beats work in the real world, we must enthusiastically strive to make music learning fun. In so doing, we will create more music makers by giving students not only what they need, but also what they want... [Eventually, we must] embrace the technology [because] ... [we] cannot fight a tidal wave. To be relevant to young people in the twenty-first century, we must speak their language and use their tools. To miss this point is to eventually go the way of the vinyl record album and the typewriter. Change is not easy - but it is a reality ... Ignore [this technology], and we risk becoming an anachronism.142

Only a cursory inspection of this argument is needed to note the appeal to base education on a production model in which students are perceived as consumers and education as a consumable product. The most glaring fault in this argument is that, in a market driven production model, companies use advertising in order to sell us things that, in many cases, we do not need. The instrumentalist notion of education as something designed by great thinkers and artists, and administered by competent, objective teachers has been largely abandoned in light of postmodern criticism.143 The proposal, however, that students should perceive their education as a commodity and, consequently, choose whether or what to "purchase" based on the pleasure principle of consumerism is morally bankrupt because it reduces educational experience to the level of conspicuous

141 Franklin, Real World of Technology, 80-81. 142 Brian Chung, "The Ones that Got Away," The American Music Teacher 49, no. 6 (2000): 25-26. 143 Wilfred Carr, For Education: Towards Critical Educational Inquiry (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1995), 122. consumption. In a production model, the effectiveness of technology as a tool to boost enrollment seems to matter more than the educational content itself.

Notably, the author of the aforementioned article, Brian Chung, was (at the time of the article's publication) chair of the Board of Trustees for the Music Teachers'

National Association Foundation, and also president of Kawai America Corporation.

Apparently the editors of The American Music Teacher did not perceive any conflict of interest between these roles, as they did not find it necessary to include Chung's discourse in the advertisement section of their publication. To state that his intense interest in involving children in music technology likely stems from his stake in Kawai is to state the obvious, but more notable is the underlying assumption that he is endeavoring to

"sell" to teachers. Chung's argument is fallacious because it is based on a presumption of the technological imperative. Technology must be embraced, because to fight against it means that one will become "an anachronism." Such rhetoric undermines any sense of autonomy educators might feel with regard to shaping technology, as they are made to believe that there is no middle ground to be had. The either/or fallacy leads educators to perceive critical analysis of technology as a fearful, oppositional stance rather than a concern over issues of control. Further, as J. M. Mangan comments, "the indisputable cachet of modernism surrounding educational computing ... makes those who question its necessity seem terribly backward."144 There is little doubt that many who might challenge the appropriateness of particular technologies in the classroom are fearful of being labeled Luddites.145

144 J. Marshall Mangan, "The Politics of Educational Computing in Ontario," in Sociology of Education in Canada: Critical Perspectives on Theory, Research and Practice, ed. L. Erwin and D. MacLennan, 263- 277 (Toronto: Copp, Clark, Longman, 1994), 275. 271

Underlying Causes of the Technological Imperative

Postman, in locating the beginnings of the technological imperative in the Age of

Invention (otherwise known as the nineteenth century), draws attention to an important correlation between that idea and the newly emerging view of humans as mere components of the marketplace:

The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in ... objectivity, efficiency, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as 146

consumers ....

The connection that Postman makes between the reified notion of the technological imperative and the neoliberal notion of unfettered capitalism is correct, and it explains why the technological imperative is often so extravagantly promoted in education. Specifically, the idea that learning should be increasingly technology-driven is closely associated with the larger movement to shift education into the private sector, an association that should not escape the notice of music educators. The first clue that a technology rich education might cater more to private interests than public is that there is no solid empirical evidence that educational quality is actually improved through the addition of computer technology. Despite a barrage of propaganda trumpeting the educational advantages of computers, both the Third International Math and Science

Study (1996-1998) and a ten year longitudinal study underwritten by Apple Inc. (1987-

1997), were unable to report any significant advantage for computer use when measuring student achievement147 (this despite the latter study resulting in "probably the most

Postman, Technopoly, 42. Robertson, No More TeachersJS, 133-135. 272 frequently cited article promoting computer technology in education"148). Rather, according to Mangan (1994), there is compelling evidence to demonstrate that, in the

Canadian province of Ontario, the introduction of computers into the educational arena in the 1980s was undeniably based on an intentionally constructed rhetoric of need, which was meant to obfuscate the fact that the underlying rationale for educational computing was driven by business interests.14

Apart from selling software and hardware to schools, businesses stand to gain from any curriculum in which technology features prominently, thus ensuring an overabundance of "appropriately" skilled potential workers who (as a bonus) are more likely to adopt docile, compliant attitudes toward the status quo as a result of having been primarily exposed to a technical, skills-based type of education.150 Technology-driven education is linked to movements toward "relevancy" and "practical implications," which are thinly veiled code words for skills that serve the marketplace. 5 For example,

Robertson, writing in 1998, notes that in North Carolina even the subject of calculus was dropped from the curriculum after it failed to meet state policy guidelines that "required its content to show 'immediate application to the real world.'" A decade later, this attitude's prevalence in Canada is evidenced by two Ontario city high schools and even a middle school that presently boast of publicly funded "International Business and

148 Ibid, 134. 149 Mangan, "Politics of Educational Computing," 275. To give a sense of the extent to which technology, education, and private sector interests have been fused in the province of Ontario, a career guide prepared by the software industry was distributed to students as young as fourth grade. It encouraged students to consider pursuing a career in software. In 1996, Ontario's Minister of Education requested that each student have a 'career file' that should begin in the first grade. Robertson, No More Teachers, 61, 30. 150 Overabundance is the appropriate term, at least in Canada, since a 1996 survey found that half of all university graduates and employed workers under age thirty-five possessed skills that they were unable to use in their jobs. Further, eighty percent of service workers claimed computer literacy yet had no access to a computer. Robertson, No More Teachers, 62. 151 Ibid, 76 and passim. 152 Ibid. Technology" programs, which accept significant investments from a host of technology firms in exchange for which the programs are entirely geared toward teaching the values of entrepreneur ship. Technology skills are central to this mission, which, as one of the school principals explains, involves teaching even the works of Shakespeare in terms of their relevance to business contexts.153

The demand for "computer literacy" to be deemed a basic requirement for all students traces its roots to the 1983 corporate-sponsored critique of American education,

A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.154 The computer skills that are touted by the private sector as highly desirable essentially involve the manipulation and retrieval of ever increasing amounts of information.155 But accessing and "managing" information is in no way related to, and may actually preclude, the critical ability to understand ideas in depth. This view of information technology is profitable to business interests because avoiding the need to digest or critically contemplate ideas is equivalent to separating technological thinking from ethics. Thus the functions that business assigns to technology are not likely to be called into question. Marcuse writes that the artificial separation of science and logic from ethics led to the rise of "one-dimensional thinking," or identity thinking, in Adorno's terms - the situation associated with the quantification of nature, whereby the discovery of "pure" objectivity is thought to heal the rift between appearance and reality. This unification is illusory, of course, and results in ideology.

Parallels between Marcuse's ideas and the "meta-ethical" stance of technology advocates

153 The comment was made by the principal of Gordon Graydon High School, the flagship school for the International Business and Technology program in Ontario. In 1997, Graydon had 78 business "partnerships" for only 440 students, a truly astonishing ratio for a public institution. Ibid., 286. Graydon's program is still flourishing and two other Ontario schools have since initiated IBT programs. http://www.aamartin.ca; http://northparkss.peelschools.org (accessed Dec. 19, 2007). 154 Robertson, No More Teachers, 128. 155 Ibid., 139. 274 who insist on its inevitability are easily noticed.156 Further, an emphasis on manipulating the surface forms of information often seems to take precedence over a focus on content.

As Robertson astutely notes, "many of us will sit transfixed before an animated

PowerPoint presentation, no matter how banal the content."157 Such "edutainment" aspects of technology have in common with advertising the potential to annul critical thought.

The music education community should be wary of passively agreeing to

"partnerships" with private technology corporations (much like the "partnerships," described by Koza, that have already been struck between MENC and private corporations such as Disney - see chapter l).158 Music educators should be concerned about the potential for prescriptive technologies and the issues of compliance that may result from such "partnerships" if they are not truly collaborative. It is in the best interest of corporations to perpetuate the myth of the technological imperative because the sense of "giveness" that consequently surrounds technology precludes questions about hidden agendas and control. As Robertson states:

Environments intended to condition teachers and students to embrace technology, not just use it, are not environments that foster critical thought about technology - or any other subject. Critical theory invites us to step back and make sure our enthusiasm for computers in the classroom is not just collaboration with the urban planners of the global city.159 (emphasis added)

Ironically, proponents of an unquestioning acceptance of technology often argue that music software liberates students from the control of teachers. Morrison (2002), for

156 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 146-147. 157 Robertson, No More Teachers, 142. 158 Recall from chapter 1 that the dire consequences of such partnerships, in terms of the dubious messages promoted, the dependency on private interests, and the proliferation of corporate welfare schemes that erode the public domain, are described by Koza in "No Hero of Mine." 159 Robertson, No More Teachers, 137. 275 example, envisions MIDI technology as a potential means to emancipate students from

"corporate music making."160 Technology is seen in this instance as a postmodern savior to help education to escape the constraints of traditional approaches to pedagogy. The author overlooks the possibility, however, that training students in the language of a particular software program might result in transferring that control to a private company.

As already explained, MIDI is often portrayed as empowering because students do not have to learn traditional notation to use it.161 Traditional notation, however, is not confined to use in places where a particular brand of software is available. As Elliott admonishes music teachers, "any domain of knowledge deemed a school subject must not only be legally accessible to all, it must be personally accessible to all."162 Certainly, computers are widespread, but are they universally available in the homes of the poor to lower middle class? More importantly, if such "empowerment" is dependent on the purchase of expensive equipment or software (which must be continually updated), how can it be said to be empowering in the sense that learning to read or write is empowering?

Admittedly, traditional notation has limitations, and these have been discussed in some detail; however, neither its mastery nor its continued use is contingent on the presence of any particular brand of software or hardware and, in this sense, it has much greater longevity than what Robertson fittingly refers to as the artificially curtailed "shelf-life" of many of today's trendiest software application skills.163 And in cases where families can

160 R. Morrison and P. Farrow, "Technology: Educational Tool or Latest Gimmick?" Education Canada 42, no. 2 (2002): 46-47. 161 Reimer, "Musical Performance Worth Saving?" 4. 162 Elliott, Music Matters, 302. 163 Robertson, No More Teachers, 289. Robertson lists several historical examples of "the endless cycle of edu-tech hype and disappointment," including directives that students should be taught to program in BASIC (1983), program in LOGO (1984), undergo individualized drill and practice (1986), learn various word processing programs (1988), learn hypertext multimedia programming (1992), and learn internet skills (1994). Note how quickly each skill set becomes obsolete. As a case in point, Robertson describes ten 276 afford to purchase these technologies for the home, compatibility requirements dictate that educators are effectively working for corporations when they make decisions about educational technology since they are simultaneously creating a demand for specific brands of compatible home software.164

The Secondary Effects of Technology

Another crucial issue for music education is the tendency to underestimate or ignore the far reaching impact that the introduction of a single technology will have on an entire complex system. A new technology will always restructure the system into which it is introduced regardless of that technology's specific purpose.165 Thus, music educators should be concerned about such secondary effects of computer based learning as the potential isolation of students from one another, and the acceptance of individualism as a more prized value that communalism. An emphasis on computer based learning may result in a loss of what Franklin calls "implicit learning," or learning that results from the social situations students find themselves in, such as when working in groups. Implicit learning encompasses "social understanding and coping skills, ranging from listening, tolerance and cooperation, to patience, trust or anger management."166 Additionally, if students are educated primarily by computers in isolation, we will sacrifice one of the primary goals of education in a democracy: "to show individuals how they can function together in society."

year old Costa Rican students being taught LOGO on Commodore 64 computers in 1989 in open air classrooms lacking running water. At the time, the now obsolete program was considered an "educational essential." Ibid., 129. 164 Ibid., 126. 165 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 24. 166 Franklin, Real World of Technology, 170. 167 Saul, Unconscious Civilization, 142. Currently, music education often provides model opportunities for cooperative learning to take place. Music educators should be mindful of the fact that the social interactions that occur in music education are very complex. They thus may not be aware of how altering those dynamics might change the learning process for students. As

Jorgensen cautions, the "plethora of social events comprising music education" are not very well understood by researchers, let alone teachers.168 Further, school music instruction is unique in that it often involves the kind of interplay and collaboration for which other subject teachers take great pains to set aside special time. At this time of mounting pressure from politicians and others who wish to conceptualize schools as little more than training grounds for the workplace,169 music educators would do well to consider the value of implicit learning and think carefully before implementing the kinds of instructional changes associated with increasing reliance on technology that have likely already altered the social dynamics of so many of their colleagues' classrooms.

Secondary effects should also be considered with regard to musical goals.

Swanwick has done research indicating that the musical outcomes of group, as opposed to individual, instruction tend to be somewhat different.170 Also, some research has indicated that working interactively may be more conducive to creativity than traditional

Estelle Jorgensen, "On Building Social Theories of Music Education," Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 116 (Spring, 1993): 33. 169 According to Giroux, the conservative educational reforms that began in the 1980s have created a "new public philosophy," which values only those aspects of education that directly serve the economy. Moreover, this "new philosophy" has reformulated the concept of citizenship to mean "possessive individualism" and a preoccupation with patriotism that is "made synonymous with the tenets of economic productivity and national defense." Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life: Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 16-17. See also 20. 170 Keith Swanwick, Musical Knowledge: Intuition, Analysis and Music Education (New York: Routledge, 1994), 151. 278 one-to-one models.171 This research has special significance for composition, and indicates that music teachers should endeavor to structure computer based learning such that opportunities for student interaction are built into the model.

Toward a More Critical Stance

The critical music educator must not assume that using technology is simply a more efficient way of accomplishing the same thing with a different tool. Any technology that is chosen for use in the classroom, as with language, mediates the learning experience and in so doing projects tacit values (such as individualism) and shapes the quality and content of students' educational experiences. To submit to the technological imperative is to accept a technological framework as given and to dissociate technology from those who have a vested interest in it. One key to constructing viable alternatives that will increase student autonomy may be found in Franklin's concept of "redemptive technologies," defined as those which involve humanist values, thus accomplishing for us what we wish them to do. Redemptive technologies appropriate for the classroom use a

"bottom up" approach, meaning that they are developed in direct response to the situational needs of users, taking specific contexts into consideration.172 For the music classroom, this means an environment in which students neither unquestioningly embrace nor fearfully avoid technology, but evaluate it in terms of their musical and pedagogical needs. To do this, students must be able to assess whether particular software can help them to learn about music and accomplish musical tasks more easily, but without

171 Lesley Claire, "The Social Psychology of Creativity: The Importance of Peer Social Processes for Students' Academic and Creative Activity in Classroom Contexts," Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 119 (Winter, 1994): 26. 172 Franklin, Real World of Technology, 131. controlling their access to musical knowledge and leaving them overly dependent on the software.

To ensure that technology in the music classroom ultimately serves the needs of music education, educators should be more actively critical by recommending technology that is inherently less prescriptive and by utilizing technology in holistic ways. Music educators should strive to ensure that students do not form bonds of dependency with software companies, and they should not hesitate to become more deeply involved in the development of educational music software.173 The advent of graduate degrees in music technology and the recent concern that music undergraduates are "fluent" in current software application skills174 is yet another sign of our field's passivity, since the priority is not shaping technology but ensuring that educators know how to use what is being handed to them without question. The term "computer literacy" is actually an ill-defined

"catch all" phrase that often means "to feel comfortable with" or embrace computer technology. This is hardly, as Robertson observes, a position associated with critical thinking.175

This emphasis on "knowing how" to use current software programs is antithetical to the goals of a critical music pedagogy. Unrelated to the higher aims of education, the obsession with "fluency" in current software is simply a concern over "minor technical manipulations."176 It would be better for the profession if such newly founded graduate

173 According to Webster's (2002) survey, most efforts at actual software development seemed at that time to be focused on the goals of music education research. Webster, "Computer-based Technology and Music Teaching and Learning." Additionally, Fred J. Rees (2002) points to the growing evidence of music educators designing courseware for internet-based distance learning. "Distance Learning and Collaboration in Music Education," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, 264. 174 See, for example, John J. Deal and Jack A. Taylor, "Technology Standards for College Music Degrees," Music Educators Journal 84 (July•, 1997): 17-21. 175 Robertson, No More Teachers, 95-96. 176 Saul, Unconscious Civilization, 142. 280 degrees were designed so that "music technology graduates" could question and debate the direction of music education software. Such graduates should help to develop music education software that is, ideally, underwritten by public funds. In this way, our profession might decide how technology should best be used to further educational ends while avoiding the trap of manufactured need, discussed above.

V. Conclusion: Why Are We Not Teaching the Conflicts?

Having provided numerous examples of reified forms in music education, as well as suggestions with respect to how they might be critically interrogated, the discussion will now conclude with a look at some broader issues with which music educators may need to struggle in order to advance a more critical agenda. The issues and suggestions raised in this study indicate that music educators should teach conflict. This is one

(simplified but appropriate) way of looking at the negative dialectic argument. The ongoing cycle of negation that is needed to resist the reification of ideas, and consequently thwart ideology, manifests itself in its most basic form as the need to raise issues of conflict in order to avoid embracing a monolithic belief system. Monolithic belief systems present an enticing, albeit false, notion of knowledge as whole and unified.

Whole being the opposite of partial, knowledge that appears complete cannot logically be seen to support any particular political interest (which, of course, plays into the hands of those whose interests are being served).177 The educational philosopher Israel Scheffler describes this potential problem in terms of an overemphasis on integrated knowledge:

177 In the discourse of political science this approach is known as political realism, or realpolitik. Zinn deconstructs the ideology of realpolitik, saying it is "seductive" because it is based on the "reasonable notion" that one's decisions should be based on reality. But since "any description of [reality] must be a partial description ... a choice is made about what part of reality to describe, and behind that choice is often 281

It is, it seems to me, an educational experience of the highest value ... to learn at first hand the disjointedness and incongruities which no administrative integration can forever hide. Even within any one domain ... it is highly desirable, I think, for the student to learn that the opinions and approaches of experts differ violently, that the community of truth-seekers is not just one happy family, but that truth is born precisely out of their quarrels and clashes .... A student who gets all his [sic] education screened through some neat, integrative framework imposed in advance by others without being forced to make his own sense of the discordances and discrepancies patent in experience, has been effectively protected from thinking altogether.178

The idea that music educators should find ways to expose students, through their teaching, to the many conflicts in their field is certainly not new. George F. McKay made the suggestion a half century ago,179 and it has been echoed more recently in various guises by Bowman (1991), Regelski (1998), Allsup (2001), Jorgensen (2003), and

Woodford (2005) among others.180

Why then, according to the scholars cited in the opening paragraph of this study, does adherence to rigid methods and sclerotic ways of thinking about music that leave little or no room for alternatives apparently continue to be the norm in our field? A corollary question is: why do we generally teach music students and future music educators to assume (in both senses of the word) musical knowledge without

a definite interest, in the sense of something useful for a particular individual or group." Declarations of Independence, 11. 178 Scheffler, Reason and Teaching, 106-107. 179 McKay writes, "Most important... is the presentation of a framework by which the student can understand and participate in the basic and stimulating philosophic ferment which permeates and energizes art creation in a healthy and democratic tolerant society.... This explanatory process is a particularly pertinent necessity to American education, since one of our basic tenets is freedom and willingness to allow philosophical ferment to operate within our artistic life, with no state-controlled value theory being Imposed upon the creators of art." "The Range of Musical Experience," in Basic Concepts in Music Education, ed. Nelson B. Henry, 123-139 (Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education, 1958), 132. 180 See Wayne Bowman, "A Plea for Pluralism: Variations on a Theme by George McKay," in Basic Concepts in Music Education, II, ed. Richard Colwell, 94-100 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1991); Regelski, "Critical Theory as a Foundation for Critical Thinking," 5; Randall Everett Allsup, "Music Education as Liberatory Practice: Exploring the Ideas of Milan Kundera," Philosophy of Music Education Review 9, no. 2 (Spring, 2001): 5, 8; Jorgensen, Transforming Music Education, 27, 125; and Woodford, Democracy and Music Education, 88-89. 282 emphasizing, in parallel, the necessity of problematizing that knowledge? There are many plausible responses to these questions, most of which appear to be interrelated, and these warrant discussion if music educators are to accept the continual presence of conflict and questioning as important aspects of teaching. In what follows, I will discuss six such reasons (some of which can also be seen as symptoms at times, owing to circular relations that hold between many of these phenomena).

First, technical-rationalist thinking, as Donald Schon demonstrates, tends to dominate the professions, a category in which teachers are always trying to show that they deserve membership. Schon writes that

the relative status of the various professions is largely correlated with the extent to which they are able to present themselves as rigorous practitioners of a science- based professional knowledge and embody in their schools a version of the normative professional curriculum.181

In the field of education, an awareness of the correlation between legitimation and the appearance of rigorous, measurable norms that supposedly bestow an aura of scientific legitimacy arguably forms some part of what Glenn Nierman, Ken Zeichner, and Nikola

Hobbel (2002) call "the professionalization agenda." Its advocates desire

an end to emergency teaching licenses, higher standards for entry to and exit from teacher education programs including performance-based assessments, external examinations of teacher content knowledge, mandatory national program accreditation, professional development schools, national board certification for teachers, and autonomous professional standards boards in each [U.S.] state.182

Donald A. Schon, Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1987), 9. Interestingly, despite all the rhetoric about rigor and standards, the two most quantifiable criteria for entry into music teacher education programs, tests of musical skills and GPA, were not found to be reliable indicators of teaching success at the preservice level (Randall Pembrook and Cheryl Craig, "Teaching as a Profession," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, 801). 182 Glenn Nierman, Ken Zeichner, and Nikola Hobbel, "Changing Concepts of Teacher Education," in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, 821. 283

Moreover, a considerable body of literature fails to support the idea that there is a correlation between the various professional standards that have been established in the field of music education and teaching effectiveness In the absence of such a correlation, one must consider the strong possibility that it is what standards represent, rather than what they accomplish, that is important to the legitimation process in our field.

In a related vein, critical pedagogues David Purpel and Svi Shapiro argue that educators are made to believe that professionals concern themselves mainly with technical matters, unrelated to larger public issues such as sociology, philosophy, politics, etcetera. Because they tacitly accept this artificial distinction between the professional and the public domains, those who perceive themselves as professionals are more likely to sidestep crucial political, moral, or philosophical issues in favor of technical solutions to immediate problems.184 The educational philosopher Maxine Greene, writing in the late 1980s, shares these concerns about education's strong ties to what she calls the

"technicist" view, asserting that it is entirely at odds with "a concern for the critical and the imaginative."185 Beynon similarly observes that "even the vocabulary of music education is problematic in that it is steeped in technical rationality with built-in hegemonic meanings."186

The increasing association of professions with technical issues that supposedly lie outside the public domain creates some immediate practical benefits for music educators, if music education is viewed this way. Specifically, there is enhanced status and respect

183 Ibid., 806-807. 184 Purpel and Shapiro, Beyond Liberation and Excellence, 88. 185 Maxine Greene, The Dialectic of Freedom (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), 126. 186 Beynon, "From Music Student to Music Teacher," 100. 284 associated with any profession that appears to possess a unified body of knowledge that is

(i) inaccessible to the general public, and (ii) applicable to specific problems in its purview. This point dovetails with Benedict's assertion (discussed in the previous chapter) that attempts to promote the appearance of complete consensus by music educators are appeals for professional, as well as curricular, legitimacy. If educators as a group have an inferiority complex about their professional status, then music educators, who work in a field of "soft" knowledge, seem to have even more to prove.

Unfortunately, professional aspirations that manifest themselves in this manner push the music education profession (as well as all other professions, of course) toward a mistaken view of knowledge as unified and discoverable in its entirety.

A second, closely related, reason why educators may fail to problematize musical knowledge is that the current fragmented state of knowledge in all musical fields works against this idea. Extreme specialization breeds technical languages that focus on specific problems whose questions are often assumed to be preformed (i.e., the way questions are formed is assumed to be given, and this limits the kinds of answers available).187 Thus specialization distracts from the turbulent historical conditions that underpin knowledge.

As Saul argues, "intellectual splintering" produces a gate-keeping system, complete with

Donald Schon demonstrates that certain professions are governed, for periods of time, by metaphors that cause professionals to assume the form in which questions dealing with major problems will be stated. For example, the metaphor SLUMS ARE DISEASES shaped many of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s because the problem was framed as an issue of health versus sickness. Thus in Schon's example the question, 'How shall we rid our otherwise healthy community of this blight?' would be an assumed starting point for solving the problem. This question is obviously limiting, however, as it fails to recognize the possibility that slums may alternatively be conceived as "natural communities." Donald A. Schon, "Generative Metaphor: A Perspective on Problem-solving in Social Policy," in Metaphor and Thought, 2n ed., ed. Andrew Ortony, 137-163 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 144-145. An additional problem with technical-rationalist approaches is that questions posed are often not sufficiently open-ended to allow for the generation of related questions. For education to be truly relevant, Postman and Weingartner argue, the questions we pose to students should always generate further questions. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (New York: Delacorte Press, 1969), 59-81. 285 secret passwords (specialized dialects, impenetrable to outsiders) that ensures that one must "pass through the existing body of learning" in order to make any intellectual headway.18 The result is that integrated thought becomes extremely difficult. Saul believes that this explains, in part, the overwhelming passivity of many academics when it comes to pressing social concerns.189 He maintains that if the mind is allowed to prematurely narrow, particularly in the absence of a broad, humanities-based education, it is incapable of understanding the larger social and historical contexts out of which specialized knowledge emerges.190

It seems that the more knowledge becomes fractured, the less likely we are to recognize its fractured state, a situation that is extremely problematic from the perspective of ideology critique. Rodney Miller, in his 1993 study of the administration of music programs in higher education, notes that specialization has been steadily increasing over the years to the point that "knowledge that previously was a subset of traditional disciplines has grown to the level of a discipline or even been divided into several parts itself."191 For example, the typical post-secondary music program is divided into five specialty areas (applied music, music theory, music history, music education, performing ensembles) that are themselves subdivided into primary sub-sections (such as voice and keyboard) which subdivide further (piano, organ, harpsichord, etcetera).192

Miller cites not only the expansion of knowledge but also the influence of business as a reason for the increasing compartmentalization within universities in general beginning in

188 Saul, Unconscious Civilization, 178. 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid., 180. 191 Rodney E. Miller, Institutionalizing Music: The Administration of Music Programs in Higher Education (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1993), 15. 192 Ibid. 286 the late nineteenth century. In particular, prominent business leaders who made significant financial investments in schools felt that they could be improved by increasing their organizational planning and thus their efficiency.193 The introduction of modern, business-like administration accelerated departmental expansion and had the balkanizing effect of shifting loyalties "from the university community as a whole to the individual departments."194

The prominence of specialization within the higher study of music, along with the potential need for varying degrees of departmental allegiance, make it seem less likely that academics and music students will be able to integrate the specialized knowledge that they are accumulating and disseminating into a broader contextual understanding that enables them to historicize that knowledge. It has been argued in previous chapters that closed disciplinary boundaries are an impediment to understanding the socially constructed nature of many objective rules, forms, and ways of understanding.

Specialized knowledge, when blocked off from larger realms of socio-historical meaning, appears pristine and untainted by conflict or doubt. A further point for consideration is that extremely specialized music programs (such as operatic performance, sound technician, music business, and, in an important sense, most music education programs) are generally geared to some aspect of the marketplace. Consequently, knowledge imparted in such programs is likely to be considered on the whole as a means to

The influence of wealthy donors also extends to the content of individual courses. Paul Carteledge reports that "in 1995 Yale lost twenty million dollars for not putting on a 'Western Civilization' course in line with the donor's perhaps rather antiquated wishes." "Classics: From Discipline in Crisis to (multi-) Cultural Capital," in Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning, ed., Yun Lee Too and Niall Livingstone, 16-28 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 26-27. 287 employment. And this instrumental aspect will render it somewhat immune from critique.

Scheffler makes this point eloquently in stating that

the notion that education is an instrument for the realization of [utilitarian] social goals, no matter how worthy they are thought to be, harbors the greatest conceivable danger to the ideal of a free and rational society. For if these goals are presumed to be fixed in advance, the instrumental doctrine of schooling exempts them from the critical scrutiny that schooling itself may foster.195

Adorno and Horkheimer comment on the problematic tendency of people to consider themselves only it terms of their job prospects and, therefore, their economic fate.196 By extension, one could argue that knowledge in professional programs is considered primarily in terms of its economic utility.

A third potential impediment to critical thought is found in our prejudices that favor dominant epistemological views. The tendency to associate conflict with unhealthiness can be traced back to the relatively recent (although in some ways continuing) prevalence of positivism and, in particular, overly structural accounts of knowledge. Rigid structuralist epistemologies are incompatible with Critical Theory because they attribute a static hierarchy to knowledge when in actuality such "structures" are (as has been the point of this study to demonstrate) the historical sedimentation of socially constructed viewpoints. Cherryholmes shows how in curriculum studies, owing to the strong influence of structuralism,198 "an array of metaphors related to death

Scheffler, Reason and Teaching, 134. 196 Dialectic of Enlightenment, 175. 197 As Jorgensen points out, this does not mean that we must abandon the idea of structures altogether. It simply means that their "dynamic nature" must be acknowledged, in light of which Jerome Bruner's early structural account of curriculum (as described in The Process of Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, I960)) is seen as "inadequate." Transforming Music Education, 36. 198 Cherryholmes traces the roots of structural models of curriculum to the Woods Hole Conference of 1959, the American response to the Sputnik "crisis" of two years earlier, in which scientific management was applied to education out of fear of Soviet ascendancy. Cherryholmes states, "The driving force [behind the structural model of curriculum] was grounded in political exigencies ... not in the substantive merits of the arguments [for or against structuralism]." Power and Criticism, 138. and illness have been used to describe the field" in light of its lack of consensus on crucial issues, definitions, and approaches.199 The idea that conflict signifies illness or death of a field of knowledge is a gross misconception because "internal conflicts and turmoil are not anomalous but characterize all fields of study."20 Nevertheless,

Cherryholmes feels that scholars in the field of curriculum studies may be more likely to perceive conflict as a sign of moribundity when comparing their situation to that of other fields of study. This is only because "the absence of foundations is simply more noticeable in curriculum."201 One wonders if a parallel situation exists in music education. Perhaps the obvious lack of foundational principles in a relatively young field of study, in which competing philosophies and theories are still (thankfully) fighting it out, is misperceived by music educators, who are prejudiced by long-standing positivist and structuralist assumptions, as a sign of the supposedly inferior state of knowledge in their field.

According to the thinking that derives from this misperception, the situation must be addressed by striving to "unearth" a set of foundational principles that can be agreed upon more or less unanimously and permanently, thus restoring a sense of health and legitimacy to the field. As Jorgensen (2003) notes, the National Standards movement of the 1990s is a perfect example of this type of reaction because it was "predicated on the notion that there is a universal structure [of knowledge] against which standards may be measured."202 Our concern for standardization is seen in this light as an unwillingness to allow alternative perspectives to encroach on what Jorgensen calls "the old scientific or

1UIU., ±_7 A . Ibid. Ibid., 149. Jorgensen, Transforming Music Education, 36. 289 technocratic worldview, dependent on logic and rationality, linear notions of causality, and the primacy of scientific understanding."

One of the reasons this worldview exerts such a powerful influence is because it is constantly reinforced by the widespread myth addressed at the outset of this chapter: that the scientific method - as opposed to randomly generated creative insights or what

Feyerabend calls counterinductive propositions - is the progenitor of all our significant knowledge. The mistaken notion that important revolutions in thought are attributed in all cases to the methodical and consistent process of abandoning old hypotheses in favor of newer, successfully tested ones has led to a view knowledge as a monolithic structure that is constantly being repaired and added to but is otherwise more or less stable. Major paradigm shifts, as Kuhn argues, are not portrayed as the results of counterinduction because textbooks are rewritten after every revolution to mask this fact. According to

Kuhn, textbooks "disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them."204 If, as Feyerabend insists, we have been conditioned - by our respect for method (in Gordon's sense of 'correct' sequence) - to overlook the importance of mutually inconsistent theories to the empirical process itself, then it follows that music educators will probably not consider it important to discuss alternatives that are inconsistent with whatever they believe to be the leading theory or method.

A fourth reason why music educators may be tempted to avoid the many messy conflicts in their field and instead present partial knowledge as if it were whole relates to the unstated maxim of technical efficiency, but as it affects students. If conflicting theories, methods, approaches, or philosophies are brought to light, there will obviously

Ibid., 27. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., 137. 290 be a much greater amount of information for students to deal with. Yet, in our current technically rationalized society, teachers may encounter students who have been pre conditioned to believe that dealing with information means managing and digesting it, as opposed to carefully and critically sifting through it and making value judgments about what is appropriate.205 In the absence of a critical mindset, dealing with information becomes a Herculean task unless it is presented as digestible and manageable. It is simply easier for someone who lacks critical judgment to grasp onto a closed, monolithic belief system than to accommodate massive amounts of often conflicting information. In such cases, students may have already developed a yearning, for completeness of knowledge and an understanding of fixed, universal structures, to which the critical educator may find it difficult not to submit. This has certainly been the case in my own experiences as a teacher.

Northrop Frye (1988) discusses this problem with regard to critical reading. He insists that the challenge should be met head on by educators, who should compel students to engage critically with information, since that is in fact the best way to assist them in dealing with overwhelming amounts of it. Frye stresses that it is crucial for educators to push students beyond passive, receptive modes of reading, which serve no critical function but merely create docile, obedient members of society.206 Insisting that

"the elementary reader is trained above everything else to read things like traffic signs,"207 Frye believes that

Postman writes that our technological culture portrays access to vast amounts of information as the solution to all of our problems, when in fact "our most serious problems" cannot be remedied by this means. Postman, Technopoly, 119. 206 Frye, On Education, 100. 291

the art of reading has to be continued throughout life in order to keep presenting to the student the fact that reading is an active and creative process and that it is also a constant act of judgment. This sense of reading as an act of judgment lessens the panic that so many of us feel when we are confronted with the immense quantity of reading that there is to get through, the feeling that there are so many square miles of print that one needs just to keep up. ... The act of reading as a continuous act of judgment is the key to equality and the key to freedom. Its purpose is the maintaining of the consistent consciousness which is the basis of human freedom and of human dignity."208

Although perhaps less politically charged, Frye's comments about critical reading are compatible with critical pedagogues' concerns about recent responses to the so-called crisis in literacy in North American education. Most reactions to (real or perceived) literacy problems seem to emphasize the development of a "functional" literacy, which serves the utilitarian interests of the marketplace.209 So long as society in general is convinced that the primary purpose of reading is functional, there will be a demand for knowledge that is presented in "neat and tidy" packages, free of conflict. And, related to the previous point, the need to grasp a fundamental underlying structure of knowledge is a logical consequence of this functionalist position.

A fifth reason for the avoidance of conflict in music education is offered by

Beynon (1998). The reader will recall from chapter 1 that Beynon notes the unique aspect of formal education that enables the profession to acclimatize future members to its norms at a very young age. She cites research showing that students entering undergraduate teaching programs have already been exposed to an average of 15,000

For example, Giroux writes, "The crisis in literacy is predicated on the need to train more workers for occupational jobs that demand 'functional' reading and writing skills. The conservative political interests that structure this position are evident in the influence of corporate and other groups on schools to develop curricula more closely tuned to the job market, curricula that will take on a decidedly vocational orientation (and in so doing reduce the need for corporations to provide on-the-job training)." Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life, 149. 292 hours of teaching.210 Predictably, this increases the likelihood that they "may be already socialized (perhaps unconsciously) to the norms and expectations of the profession."211 In the case of music student teachers, Beynon observes that because they often report choosing their career path based on positive experiences in school settings, they "may be more acculturated to the norms of the profession than most." Moreover, she points out that preservice music teachers tend to value their practical experiences much more than their faculty courses, implying that technical expertise is perceived as paramount in relation to theoretical knowledge that may be unrelated to the "real" world of teaching.

Unfortunately, this situation cannot help but reinforce the status quo, since overvaluing practical aims precludes "learning to think critically about learning to teach."213 Beynon writes that

the practicum site and, particularly, the cooperating teacher have a singularly critical impact on new teachers practices in the beginning stages of their teaching careers and may in fact inhibit the latter from trying new forms of practice. 1 (emphasis added)

In Beynon's own study of preservice music teachers, it was indeed the case that the associate teachers exerted "enormous influence over the practices of student teachers in the practicum," who basically conformed to the existing beliefs and practices of the environments in which they found themselves.215

210 Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). Cited in Beynon, "From Music Student to Music Teacher," 83. 211 Beynon, "From Music Student to Music Teacher," 83. 212 Ibid. 213 Ibid., 89. 214 Ibid., 88-89. 215 Ibid., 97. The reader will recall from chapter 1 the important difference between the context of Beynon's study and most American regions: in Ontario, the success of a student teacher's practical session is evaluated by the on-site mentor teacher, not by a faculty representative of the degree-granting institution who comes to visit the site. This may provide additional incentive for preservice teachers to conform to the beliefs and practices of teachers already in the system. 293

Finally, one must not overlook the institutional and other social pressures that work to annul critical thought and practice at the post-secondary level. Although the passivity and conservatism of many music teachers may be attributable to a system that attracts such values and thus perpetuates itself as Beynon suggests, the pressure to accept status quo values as second nature also works to de-radicalize those few critical educators who manage to gain positions of influence within academia. As Zinn explains, universities are

controlled by business, controlled by people who have power and wealth and who make the ultimate decisions. And so it's possible for radical professors to occasionally make their way into the system and stay there and get tenure, but there are two things to note about them: (1) there are not that many of them, and (2) they can be used as examples of the tolerance of the system ,...216

In addition, Zinn argues that the tenure system rewards professors who comply with the dominant institutional structures by legitimating its values.217 It is not surprising, then, that the tenets of music teacher "training" as promulgated in universities, often by professors seeking tenure, appear exempt from critique. Indeed, this appears to be a significant factor in the development of music teacher education programs, as evidenced by the fact that criticism of accepted music pedagogy practices is, according to

Woodford, often considered "heretical" or "treasonable."218

To summarize the points just raised, there are many probable factors, clearly interrelated, that likely dissuade music educators from teaching conflicting views of their subject matter and encourage them instead to present some particular perspective on music education without drawing attention to its partiality. These include: (1)

216 Howard Zinn (in conversation with Donald Macedo), "Schools and the Manufacture of Mass Deception: A Dialogue," in Howard Zinn on Democratic Education (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 62. 217 Ibid., 63-64. 218 Woodford, Democracy and Music Education, 30. 294 professional aspirations that are tied to concerns over the "scientific" legitimacy of knowledge; (2) the current fractured state of musical knowledge, which often encourages a focus on technical problems and assumes their formation to be given; (3) epistemological prejudices that favor structuralist and positivist accounts of knowing; (4) the ideal of technological efficiency that encourages the organization and streamlining, rather than critiquing, of information; (5) the early conditioning of future music educators that makes them more likely to be accepting of norms; and (6) institutional pressures to conform at the post-secondary level. It would be naive and presumptuous to present this list as a complete representation of all the factors that diminish the critical impulse in music education. Further, it is often difficult to distinguish between factors and symptoms in situations where such complex issues are involved. For example, technical-rationalist thinking may be a symptom of an uncritical mindset that is fostered and encouraged in music teacher education and among practicing music teachers in addition to or instead of being a cause.

Nevertheless, the ideas introduced in the above list, as well as those presented throughout this study, have been drawn together in such a way as to provide a context for further thought and discussion about the necessity and possibilities for self-reflexive critique in music education. The idea of critically interrogating forms to uncover their social origins is particularly necessary in teacher education programs, which Giroux describes as "agencies of social control."219 Discussions and actions that focus on this process might lead to a situation in which prospective music educators consider their frames of reference as texts to be continually and critically read throughout their lives. To borrow from Frye's notion, this would instill in them an unwillingness to suspend their

219 Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling, 155. 295 judgment in the face of incessant reification of thoughts into rules, systems, methods, and taxonomies.

A Place for Authority

One of the most important reasons for choosing negative dialectics as the theoretical framework to underpin this study is that it acknowledges the necessary existence of the objective in relation to the subjective pole, and thereby preserves a place

(however problematic and subject to critique) for authority in the music classroom. This point was stressed in chapter 1 and is reiterated here because of its significance. In the same way that form is necessary to content and rules are necessary to creativity, authority is necessary to freedom. This relationship is more than symbolic. Beyond the fact that the two concepts give each other meaning through their binary opposition, the relationship between authority and freedom is practical because teacher authority represents more than simply the oppression of student subjectivity (although it can, unfortunately, manifest itself in this manner). When exercised appropriately, it can function to discourage students from retreating into their own private, subjective worlds, places from which communication and the advancement of common understanding are unachievable.

As has been asserted periodically throughout this study, without some (temporarily) authoritative knowledge position from which to critique, attempts to thwart ideology amount to no more than what Giroux calls "bad subjectivity."

But when authority is sufficiently self-critical it can work at revealing to students its own problematic but necessary nature. Indeed, Adorno's conception, in which one strives to resist the polarization of irreconcilable opposites, is beneficial to today's

220 Ibid., 125. 296 conscientious music educator who is concerned to find some middle ground between objective authority and the subjective understanding of her students. In this postmodern age we must respect different subject positions and the constructed knowledge that emerges from them, but at the same time we must try to protect students from the onslaught of ideology that pervades their daily lives by furnishing them with some means of defense. This would appear to necessitate a constant negotiation to prevent knowledge from being construed as either objectively true or subjectively constructed, since both views are partial and inadequate when considered in isolation.

In Defense of "Critical Formalism"

It has been suggested here that the best means of defense against ideology is likely to be accomplished not by abandoning universal reason in reaction to its instrumentalism, but by using reason against itself in critiquing the forms in which objective knowledge necessarily appears to us. For this reason, many of the suggestions for critique presented here, focusing on the formal aspects of music and music instruction, may seem somewhat politically disengaged in comparison to direct attacks on ideology. For example, no suggestions have been made as to how music educators might directly critique the influence of the culture industry or the "Disneyfication" of society on their classrooms. The reason for this was also provided earlier and will be repeated here: direct attacks on specific examples of ideology, when not perceived as examples, may simply have a proselytizing effect as opposed to engendering a critical stance. It is, of course, impossible to eliminate the possibility that the critical words and actions of educators will be interpreted as gospel, as opposed to an invitation for students to adopt a 297 critical stance for themselves. But that is, in a sense, the central point of this study. It is also precisely why I have argued throughout that we must not neglect focusing on the formal, objective aspects of music education, lest we fool ourselves into embracing the mistaken subjectivist notion we can somehow transcend objectification. Only by grasping the ongoing and inescapable processes of reification can we begin, paradoxically, to resist such processes. That is because accepting the inescapability of reification is an acknowledgement that nothing, including ideology critique, is immune from becoming ideology. This is what negative dialectics teaches, but it is not an easily accepted principle, as evidenced by the constant replacement of one canon by another when attempts to thwart ideology do not focus sufficiently on the process of reification.

Thus, although it is important to continue to draw attention to specific instances of ideology, they should always be framed as examples so that the ongoing historical process (and not simply the particular products of reification at any given point in time) remains in focus. It has been argued that this is best accomplished through what we might choose to call critical formalism. Since forms are the objects of critique in this approach, formalization will (hopefully) be perceived as necessary, and thus the false belief that we can somehow transcend objectification - simply another form of ideology - might be avoided. In other words, if forms constitute the objects of our critique, the likelihood is greater that the process by which socially constructed ideas sediment into objective forms will be perceived by students and others as historical and to some extent inevitable.

Perhaps the simplest way of framing this argument is to say that the constant cycle of negation, the endless need for critique manifested in the form <- -> content dialectic, is merely a way of keeping knowledge as humble as possible. Musical or 298 educational knowledge does not belong solely to us (as in the subjectivist myth), nor does it belong to the ages (as in the objectivist myth). To mistakenly locate musical or educational knowledge at either of these poles is to succumb to reification and ideology.

It results in paralyzing the critical impulse, in the former case, or accepting the hidden social values of others as truth, in the latter case. If students and preservice music teachers are able to negotiate a constant tension between these two positions, then with some luck and humility, they may come to understand the extent to which reification constantly works to make socially constructed ideas appear rigid and fixed in all other areas of their lives. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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VITA

Name: Joseph Paul Louth

Formal Education Ph. D. in Music (2004-2008) and Degrees: The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada

Master of Music (2002-2004) The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada

Bachelor of Education (1996-1997) University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Bachelor of Music (1992-1995) University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Diploma in Applied Music (1988-1991) Mohawk College of Applied Arts & Technology Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Related Work Sessional Course Instructor Experience: University of Windsor (2008)

Lecturer The University of Western Ontario (2006-2007)

Teaching Assistant The University of Western Ontario (2002-2006)

Music Teacher for Bishop Strachan School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2001-2002)

Music Teacher for the Toronto District School Board (2000-2001)

Music Teacher for the Halton District School Board (1997-2000)

Freelance Trombonist and Studio Instructor, Greater Toronto Area (1987-1997) 323

Teaching Assistant Mohawk College of Applied Arts & Tech. (1990-1991)

Honours and Awards: SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2007-2008) The University of Western Ontario

Ontario Graduate Scholarship The University of Western Ontario (2006-2007, 2005- 2006)

George Proctor Memorial Award (for outstanding contribution to Canadian musical scholarship) UWO (2004)

C. G. S. Masters Award (SSHRC) The University of Western Ontario (2003-2004)

The Don Wright Award The University of Western Ontario (2002-2003)

Special University Scholarship The University of Western Ontario (2002-2004)

Teaching Fellowship Aspen Music Festival, Aspen Colorado (1994)

University of Toronto Alumni Award University of Toronto (1993)

Publications: "Critical Formalism as Ideology Critique: A Response to Ted Love." Philosophy of Music Education Review (In Press).

"Lifelong Learning and the Informally Trained Jazz Artist." International Journal of Community Music, Vol. 4 (2006).

"A Response to Valerie Trollinger's 'A Reconception of Performance Study'" Philosophy of Music Education Review 14, no. 2 (Fall, 2006).