As first published in The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy,Vol. 21, No. 2, 90-97

Previous thoughts developed a bit. Much more to do.

ABSTRACT: What might it mean to understand music is a question worthy of ongoing consideration. This paper offers some perspectives and possible pedagogic implications.

KEYWORDS: Engagement, personhood, teaching

Roy loved music and did so with a profound understanding, or so it seemed to me. In his recent passing I have lost a dear friend who I admired and learnt much from. I shared a room with Roy at college.There was me a music student flushed with adolescent musical arrogance pinning a picture of Stravinsky to my locker, while Roy was telling me about SarahVaughan and how his mother had, in his early childhood, sung him to sleep with Little man, you’ve had a busy day. I became a secondary school music teacher, Roy a secondary school science teacher.

In later years, I would occasionally visit Roy and we would spend time listening to music taken from his vast CD collection, sometimes sharing what we both knew well, sometimes Roy introducing me to the music of composers and music that I had barely or never heard of, and sometimes introducing me to new voices coming onto the Jazz scene.

Roy had been largely self-educated musically – the songs his mother taught him, a vivid memory from school music days, teenage visits to Ronnie Scott’s, rugby club singing, ventures into composing morality song cycles for his grandchildren using the programme ‘Band in a Box’ all featured. Spending time with Roy confirmed my belief that musical understanding was a commonplace and not requiring exalted levels of some particular intellectual understanding destined to be the possession of a few initiates.

Scholarly responses

The question of what it is to understand music continues to engage scholars and educational policy makers alike and not just in England where it has often been posited as the central and determining core of national strategies for music and the official curriculum (Biggin 2007; Wiggins 2015; Rogers 2020: Toyne 2021). Philosophers of music education frequently defer to the idea (see for example Gruhn 2005), and we note the work of culture critic Roger Scruton elaborating the idea in defence of the Western European Classical tradition (2010). Beyond philosophy, a cognitive psychology of music closely attached to musical educational thought and practice has interest too. For example, Robert Walker writing in the preface to Harold Fiske’s ‘Understanding Musical Understanding’, proposes that musical understanding is what the human brain is wired to do and the remarkable thing is that it gets on and does it. It is part of the everyday cognitive activity of the brain and this makes musical understanding something that is ‘personal, private, and intensely meaningful and special to each individual’ (Walker, 2008: xvi). For John Sloboda, musical understanding is a matter of the mind endowing ‘musical events, collections of sounds, with significance: they become symbols for something other than pure sound, something which enables us to laugh or cry, be moved or be indifferent’ (1985: 1). But Sloboda goes further, maintaining that understanding music is a necessary pre-condition to being moved by it in much the same way that we won’t get a joke unless we understand it.We have to be in the know as it were, know the language, know the syntax. Anthony Kemp (1996) points out that this doesn’t account for the way people make sense of music, are moved by music and ‘get it’ without the levels of cognitive complexity suggested by the analogy of getting a joke. So, what is musical understanding? Of course, a vexed question.

One significant and thorough attempt to reveal the mystery of musical understanding can be found in the work of Hans Eggebrecht, musicologist, philosopher of music and sometimes described as cultural elitist of the modernist age. His central concern is with the understanding of music that is a part of the tradition of western art music and intended to be listened to (Eggebrecht 2010).

However, despite what might appear to be a narrowing of audience and relevance, Eggebrecht sets out to engage the widest possible readership. The theses proposed are addressed to the music lover, the layman, as well as the academic music historian, cognitive musicologist and philosopher of music.The work’s introductory sketch goes a considerable way to communicate widely what is at stake. In essence, the purpose is to persuade that musical understanding is something that is likely to exist in embryo in most and ready to be developed, extended and deepened. The approach taken is systematic and through step by step movement forward we arrive at what is to be thought of as‘valid, true understanding’, a notion not of some absolute form but of some imagined more complete and enriching state of what it is to understand music. Eggebrech tells that:

Understanding is a process by which something that is external to us loses its externality and gains access to our inner self. Object and self, self and object are drawn together and unite through understanding, in degrees of identity which correspond to the degrees of intensity of understanding. Understanding makes the world our own. (ibid: 1)

What follows is a meticulously constructed journey that seeks to validate such a definition in the case of music.

The first step is to posit the foundational status of aesthetic understanding, a mode of understanding that is sensory and non-conceptual. From here comes the move to cognitive-conceptual understanding involving reflective behaviour transforming music from sensory experience into a language enabling cognitive engagement, a mode of cognition conceptually-driven. The argument is persistent in maintaining that there is no musical understanding without aesthetic understanding and that this is a place where erudition cannot reach (ibid: 71). It is this mode of understanding that will be endlessly enriched through a cognitive grasp of the language that is the music as it comes to be known and reflected upon. In acknowledging consciously what happens in the music listening is rendered deliberate. And in pedagogical terms, a musical education for musical understanding should proceed cautiously and remain focused on sense perception. Thus music educators are presented with a model that reaffirms much extant wisdom proposing that a musical experience free from conceptual clutter is where to proceed from and return to. Through reflection and raised awareness of what is heard, we learn to talk about the music experienced, interpret it and become analytical in orientation and, as Eggebrecht continually insists, always in the service of enriching our aesthetic understanding as an enhanced perceptual-cognitive experience.

The scope and range of this way of conceiving of musical understanding leads to thought being given to both what constitutes musical analysis and how to approach it. Amongst the recommendations made we are advised to ‘… always start from your own personal listening experience, that is to say your aesthetic understanding’ and there is the warning of the danger of paper analysis, a fixation on the score which is likely to ‘neglect aesthetic reality: the sounds, listening, the message, experience’ (ibid: 80). In broad outline, Eggebrecht has elaborated the well-worked sensing – perceiving – feeling -intuiting – cognizing – conceptualising spectrum descriptive of the human mind seeking understanding. But let’s move from this world of abstraction to concrete experience as I recall an observation made in a Cambridgeshire primary school.

In another place

It’s a story of inept and corrupt local politicians, the enchanting and beguiling power of music, the possibility of perpetual childhood happiness, child abduction and the pain of separation creating a Billy-no-mates and a community bereft of its future.

Tell the story of the Pied Piper to young children and they will be engrossed: their feeling and thinking will have been engaged. Like all folk tales there is something that is ‘close to home’, something of great personal significance. Such stories have the power to provoke wonderment, ill- ease, puzzled questioning and a good many “whys?” Now, tell the story and at the same time embed it in the music of PeterWarlock played by musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra and there will be a worthwhile music educational event in progress. London Symphony Orchestra animateur Hannah continues the story.

‘Two hundred 5-7 year old children sat entranced by the sound of a string quartet from the London Symphony Orchestra performing a movement from PeterWarlock’s Capriol Suite.They understood the subtle harmonic dissonances and slow rhythmic drive because such things had been given a context that provides for meaning and significance in their own lives.The young audience had been listening intently to the grief of hundreds of people from the town of Hamelin.They had experienced at first hand the pain the mothers felt as they witnessed the Pied Piper lead their children away into the mountain.There was no need to explain Warlock’s music.When asked about the music, one child replied:‘I feel empty in my tummy’, evidence of a depth of musical response impossible to teach.The teacher had enabled for enchantment to take hold.A context had been found for personal meaning and a space for imagination to come alive’ (Conway and Finney 2003).

‘They understood the subtle harmonic dissonances and slow rhythmic drive because such things had been given a context that provides for meaning and significance in their own lives.’This is our claim.

‘They understood the subtle harmonic dissonances and slow rhythmic drive…’ So in what sense was there understanding?

According to our speculation, young children were getting Warlock’s music, not only getting it but in a way that was deeply meaningful and significant. Tacit knowing was at work. For Michael Polanyi it is ‘tacit knowing’ that both underpins and forms the bedrock of all other ways of knowing and understanding (Polanyi 1958; 1973).

Tacit knowing and understanding

To know how to ride a bicycle is not the same as to know that the Beatles’ first chart number 1 was…, that trumpets play fanfares. We tend to assume that all knowledge and understanding has the potential to be mediated through language, that it can be identified, named, taught, accumulated. Tacit knowledge is a form of knowing that is deeply felt and known and intensely personal. It cannot be spoken of. It cannot be verbally mediated. It is destined to remain hidden and without articulation. It is untranslatable. It is not convertible into any other form. It cannot be captured or codified. It cannot be made explicit. It is not waiting to be discovered, uncovered or revealed. Any attempt to do this is doomed to failure.

And in this there is no distinction between knowledge and understanding. For Polanyi, in setting out the tacit dimension, understanding is knowing, is knowledge. It embraces our pre-conceptual powers and our ‘indwelling’ of the world and where our passions for all ways of knowing come from. It is where meaning emanates from, a profoundly personal form of meaning.

The case of musical performance

While the example of riding a bicycle is frequently given, we can present the case of musical performance, for we cannot possibly speak of all that we are knowing in the act of performance. Our knowledge of what Polanyi calls ‘particulars’, all the elements experienced and ‘known’, can never be grasped in their particularity and their totality despite the fact that we can endlessly propose explanations, devise rules, codes and produce manuals that tell us about good musical performance, how the body and its posture is and so on.There is always more within our knowing than we can say, more than we can tell.

Polanyi gives the example of hitting a nail with a hammer. Our focal awareness is on the nail but subsidiary to this is awareness of the hammer, how it feels in the hand and so on. To recognise the tacit dimension acknowledges multiple perceptions of reality and multiple interpretations of reality. However, to acknowledge what is tacit as foundational in our current educational climate is problematic; for it flies in the face of so much of the rhetoric surrounding the idea of knowledge justified by the power of codification, concept forming, the naming of rules and conventions and all that can be thought of as explicit knowledge. That knowledge is made explicit is a fundamental expectation of a curriculum that provides evidence that a discipline is being mastered and that shows the acquisition of propositional knowledge.We know ‘that’…. It is to know this and to know that and of course this kind of knowledge is important. However, tacit knowing manifest in the act of understanding is not to know this or to know that but something that is bodily felt and known (Polanyi 1958: 4; see also Bowman 1982).

In the act of musical performance, the knowing lies in the doing and the being and may be one of the most outstanding examples of tacit knowing at work. In musical performance as in all other forms of musical thinking and feeling, we can experience multiple perceptions of reality. Polanyi speaks of ‘pouring ourselves into the subsidiary awareness of particulars’, to ‘indwell’ (ibid: 4).

Some pedagogical implications

In recent times, England has adopted the term pedagogy. It has become part of the contemporary way of speaking about what teachers do. RobinAlexander (2004) encourages us to think of pedagogy as:

‘The core acts of teaching (task, activity, interaction and assessment) [are] framed by space, pupil organisation, time and curriculum, and by routines, rules and rituals. [They are] given form, and [are] bounded temporally and conceptually, by the lesson or teaching session’ (Alexander 2004: 12).

In Alexander’s view, a pedagogy embraces explicit social values, the kind of relationships desired within a democracy, for example. Pedagogy is not simply a matter of teaching and learning strategies to be employed in the name of musical engagement, but rather a matter of finding ways of teaching and learning that have their source in beliefs and values about the kind of society we envision, the kind of pupils and the kind of schools we want. A pedagogy simply for musical engagement, for example, tells very little and is entirely without meaning or ethical purpose. A pedagogy for musical understanding likewise will tell very little unless it arises from some serious consideration of values. Staying with the contention that tacit knowing is:

A critical aspect of our personhood;
- That it forms the basis for finding significance and meaning;
- is rooted in our existence in the world;
- gives integrity to other ways of musical knowing and understanding;
- enables interpretation and critique by allowing for multiple perceptions of reality and the formation of flexible and fluid conceptions of musical reality, then there is a case for developing associated pedagogic principles, we can be bold enough to propose that:

All musical educational encounters would promote feelingful bodily involvement which would be recognised as a foundational form of understanding;
Teaching would value intuitive insight, helping students to know what feels right, what makes sense and achieves coherence;
Teaching would avoid excessive focalisation (hostile to personal meaning- making);
Teaching would be open to meaning unfolding through the perceptions of our students as well as our own;
These kinds of musical encounter would connect with personal concerns and human interest;
Objectivist approaches, taxonomies of objectives would be avoided along with the declaration of predetermined outcomes, all of which are likely to negate 1-5 above;
The teacher would allow for, look for, earnestly seek out and nurture the arising and construction of other forms of knowledge, knowledge that could be declared and contested;
The gathering of such knowledge would be valued highly in the forming of fluid and flexible conceptualisations that could be applied to ongong musical experience.

Remembering Roy

Roy became a secondary school science teacher. I became a secondary school music teacher.With age, I continue to wonder what is the purpose of a general music education for all children and young people as provided through their experience of compulsory schooling? One answer comes simply and robustly as ‘musical understanding.’ But what might it mean? For myself, Roy remains a guide. Roy’s musical understanding seemed to me to be a matter of a satisfying self-sufficiency much to be admired. Beyond Roy’s solitary memory of school music, the experience of listening to Elgar’s Enigma Variations, there was to be so much more. I am pleased to be able to listen again to Little man, you’ve had a busy day and to compose a piece in memory of Roy:

File not uploading. I will work on this.

References

Alexander, R. (2004). Still no pedagogy? Principle, pragmatism and compliance in primary education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 34 (1), pp.7-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764042000183106
Biggin,T. (2007). Circular 095/2077: National Strategy Music Programme for Key Stage 3. 16 April. DfES.
Bowman, W. (1982). Polanyi and instructional method in music. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 16, No 2.
Conway, H. and Finney, J. (2003). Musical Enchantment in the Early Years. Teacher Development, 7(1), pp.121-129. https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530300200180
Eggebrecht, H. H. (2010). Musical Understanding. The nature and limits of musical cognition. Farnham: Ashgate.
Gruhn, W. (2005). ‘Understanding Musical Understanding’, in David J. Elliot (ed.) Praxial Music Education, Reflections and Dialogues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 98-122.
Kemp, A. E. (1996). The Musical Temperament. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polanyi, M. (1958). Undertanding ourselves. London:The Chicago Press.
Polanyi, M. (1973). Personal Knowledge:Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Rogers, K. (2020). Musical Understanding:The philosophy, content and interpretation of National Curriculum in England. London: Incorporated Society of Musicians.
Scruton, R. (2010). Understanding Music. London: Continuum.
Sloboda, J. (1985). The Musical Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Toyne, S. (2021). ‘Music’, in Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish (eds.) What should schools teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth. UCL Press.
Walker, R. (2008). ‘Forward’ In. H. Fiske, (Ed.) Understanding musical understanding. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Wiggins, J. (2015). Teaching for musical understanding Oakland: McGraw-Hill.

Music Education Now

Month: November 2021

Some thoughts concerning musical understanding and music education