‘Artists use a range of media to represent both the harmony and disharmony of the world as presented to them in all its richness of pain, love, horror, beauty, madness and transcendence. It is always an attempt to re-present aspects of the world as presented in the artist’s lived experience. If successful it will produce resonance of feeling between the artist and their audience.’ [1]
Reading the above in close proximity to reading a tweet from Alison Armstrong sharing what has been going in her music room got me thinking.
Y10 students writing a composition for marimbas. They used research into Minimalism +UN Sustainable Development Goal “Life Below Water” to compose. They want people to play it but haven’t put their “Creative Commons” stamp on it yet.
You see I can’t get that Model Music Curriculum out of my head. A whole book could be written about it and it would start with reference to the minutes of the meetings of the Council of Education 1840-41. [2] It would be a story of the struggle for music to find a place in the school curriculum. It would reveal the ebb and flow of dominant ideologies, of prominent voices, quiet voices and those silenced. There would be recurring themes showing the relationships between official policies and the vagaries of classroom practices. But for the time being something more modest.
Robert Bunting brings to our attention the paucity of thought expressed in the MMC towards composing – its constrained understanding of the idea of technique as circumscribed by a tonal and metrical gradus ad parnasum, and this supported by a note by note approach carefully monitoring the child’s musical imagination. And, equally careful to exclude the child’s lived experience and their wider imaginal world connecting to the world itself. It is some way from recognising the ‘child becoming artist’ being nurtured to re-present aspects of the world as presented in the child’s lived experience.
Alison’s tweet was welcome.
Notes:
[1] Steve Brewer, letter to editor. Philosophy Now, Issue 144, June/July 2021.
[2] Minutes of the Committee of Council of Education (1840-41) cited in Rainbow, B. (1965) The Land without Music. Novello.
Music Education Now 