Huib Schippers

‘As if a little bird is sitting on your finger...’: metaphor as a key instrument in training professional musicians:

Various researchers over the past decades have established that verbal behaviour constitutes a substantial portion of total instruction time in music. The use of metaphor in these educational practices and the supporting music literature is rich and frequent. Numerous scholars support the view that metaphor in learning and teaching music touches the essence of making music, and cannot be dismissed as ‘impressionistic twaddle’. However, in the formal training of musicians, teaching strategies revolving around metaphor are rarely made explicit. Taking examples from various practices across the world, this article explores the use of metaphor and its potential for communicating greater understanding of technique, structure and musical meaning. The conclusions from this exercise support the argument that there is great potential in fully acknowledging the role of this teaching tool towards competent, sensitive and creative musicianship, both at professional and amateur levels.

Teaching world music in the Netherlands: towards a model for cultural diversity in music education

In the Netherlands today almost one million out of the population of fifteen million are of non-Dutch origin. Large concentrations of people from Turkey, Morocco and Surinam in particular, live in and around the cities. In Amsterdam, more than half the children in primary schools are of non-Dutch background. Similar situations exist in most other European countries. European culture has become multicultural by definition, and music education has to find answers to deal with the situation. The system of music education in the Netherlands can basically be divided into three levels: the conservatories of music, where students are trained to become professional musicians; the music schools, for people who want to learn music but have no professional aspirations; and music teaching in schools, where children are introduced to the general principles of music and music-making. Over the last fifteen years, national and local governments have devoted a great deal of money and effort towards integrating ‘minority arts’ into these institutions to very little effect at first. But since 1990 a new wave of activity has led to encouraging results and possible sources of inspiration for efforts on a European scale.

Tradition, authenticity and context: the case for a dynamic approach

The encounter – and sometimes confrontation – of music with various cultural backgrounds challenges many preconceptions and prejudices on music making and learning. The rise of what is now often called ‘world music’ has not only brought new sound worlds to Western ears, but digs deep into existing systems of belief. In discussing both Western classical and world music, concepts such as tradition, authenticity and context are often used with firm conviction. On closer examination, however, they are applied with ambiguous or even contradictory meaning. A cross-cultural exploration of these concepts reveals that they are not nearly as clear, stable and value-free as they may appear. A more dynamic interpretation of these terms is needed to understand contemporary realities of music making and education at all levels, and to enable teachers to apply these concepts to everyday studio and classroom practices.

The nine domains of community music: Exploring the crossroads of formal and informal music education

While there have been many efforts to define community music, definitions have tended to be either too specific or too general to be of great use to practitioners. Much of the published research on the topic seems to be based on single projects, often conducted by the facilitators involved. While this has led to valuable contributions to understanding the scope and breadth of this field, it has done little to create perspectives that can be applied across the wide gamut of practices referred to as community music activities. Sound links, an extensive research project conducted in Australia with support from the Australian Research Council, has compared six divergent practices across the country with a consistent – principally ethnographic – methodology, yielding a wealth of insights into the working of this phenomenon. One of the key outcomes of the project is not a new definition of community music, but rather a framework that maps out the key ‘ingredients’ of successful practices across demographic, geographic, cultural, and contextual variations. These enable better understanding, planning, execution and evaluation of community music activities.

Designing the intercultural music education of the future - the development of a world music centre in Portugal

to posterity of their trip lies in the fact that they filmed their endeavours. The highlight of one of these films is a scene in which they ’decided to give the boys and girls some modern jazz’. The gramophone is installed and the wife shows the natives how to dance. The husband remarks how their primitive new friends have trouble keeping the beat, but, he notices, the ’little savages’ pick up remarkably quickly. To the best of my knowledge, this is the earliest recorded example of intercultural arts education, and a fabulously ironic picture of pioneers in the field we all take so seriously. It also antedates the conceived beginnings of this area of activity by a number of decades. About seventy years later, a television crew may find a Ghanaian student taking his first gamelan lessons in an old Brazilian villa near an ancient Arab

Practitioners at the centre: Concepts, Strategies, Processes and Products in contemporary music research

This chapter investigates and reports on the establishment of artistic research in the conservatoire setting. As such it draws on trends and issues in both advocating and cautioning the acceptance of artistic practice as research. It draws on examples from international trends in the recognition of creative products as research outputs by government agencies charged with measuring the research capabilities of music institutions. The chapter argues that not all creative outputs are necessarily research outputs but also that, paradoxically, many works from the common practice period would in their time have been treated as research outputs.