It is quite possible that the so-called ‘creative’ activities espoused by proponents of recent approaches to music education are endangering the production of great music by the next generation of composers because as children they are not being given the necessary foundation of skills to develop the craft of composition.

Isolated examples of genuine educational conviction have only served to legitimise these questionable trends by lending a certain historical authority to a modern philosophical disaster.

The major problem with the recent approaches is that they fail to recognise that craftsmanship is a fundamental requirement for genuine artistic achievement.

This article is a revised version of a talk given by the author before an international symposium on music education in Hortos, Greece, in 1985. It considers the current state of modern music, suggesting that there have been some important changes in direction since the avant-garde styles of the 1950s and 1960s; and it reflects on some of the implications of these changes for secondary-school music teaching.

Some proposals are made for factors likely to facilitate the success of contemporary music which children hear or perform. In the original talk these points were illustrated with recorded examples, indicated here by numbers in the text. The role of children as contemporary composers themselves is also discussed in terms of the method and motivation by which creative work may be encouraged.

The educational writers on whom the author bases much of his argument are clearly acknowledged throughout the text. Otherwise, opinions derive from experience of teaching and writing music for children in England and in France.

This article describes the aims, structure, content and activities of the innovatory project in ‘Music Performance and Communication Skills’ at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It outlines the skills, attitudes and outlook needed by musicians if they are to respond to the rapidly changing needs of society. Having analysed the response of students to the Project, it shows the ways in which the conservatoire can reach out into the community. It is hoped that the article will make a positive contribution towards the thinking underlying the reform of the education and training of professional musicians.

A challenge was issued, in the first International Journal of Music Education, to find ways to achieve a principle of music education which progressive music educators and traditional African music education have in common:‘an all-round development of the child’. This paper takes up this challenge by exploring the idea that creativity is an essential part of western education. Even though this idea receives the unprecedented support of widely respected western educators of the 20th century and of the Tanglewood Symposium, ‘…those with creative potential are neglected, if not discriminated against, at all levels in American education’ (MacKinnon, 1978, p. 169.) To ascertain why this is so, socio-economic studies are presented which reveal how closely linked the issue of creativity in education is to issues which are beyond the realm of music education or of education in general. The suggestion is that these connections adversely effect the all-round development of the child.

As musicians from no less than twenty-two European states gathered at Strasbourg in September to discuss Contemporary Music, one began to realise that Europe, in 1985, had already moved beyond the familiar concept of a political and commercial federation. Historically, however, and motivated only by musical opportunity, musicians had for centuries largely regarded Europe as one patch ever since it became possible to travel. But in recent times it has become clear that the new Europe and European organisations which have emerged may, one day, have far-reaching effects upon many aspects of musical life which have hitherto evolved locally or nationally at different paces and in response to widely differing circumstances. By means of this and other conferences, therefore, Europe is beginning to give expression to corporate artistic concerns, and attempting to do so with a single voice as independent nations are gradually transformed into member states and ultimately, one might anticipate, into regions. This process and the means by which it is accompanished (e.g. the organisation of large European conferences) is also viewed cynically by some as political inevitability being transformed into desirability.

During the past several years Dr Harvey has presented seminars on ‘Music and the Brain’ throughout the United States and Canada. In the course of a weekend seminar in 1985 he was, once again, particularly impressed with the power of music to affect individuals in many different ways; musical performances (live and taped) evoked responses as diverse as excitement, tears, loneliness, increases in pulse rate, changes in breathing rate, spontaneous body movement, memory recall and imagery experiences. To understand just how the brain produces both biophysical and psychological responses to music requires a basic understanding of the human brain, the areas of the human personality affected through brain processes, and an awareness of the interactions of musical elements affecting us. In this article Dr Harvey outlines some of the directions of recent research.

Children, who otherwise would not have had music teachers, experienced music though ‘Project Experience’, a co-operative music education laboratory designed by the University of New Mexico Department of Music and the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Public School District. ‘Project Experience’ provided university music students with the opportunity to teach music to children prior to student teaching practice; raised the consciousness of parents, teachers, and students about the importance of music in the schools; and assisted in easing the pinch upon a school district forced to tighten its financial belt.

Music education at present suffers from a dilemma that few in the field seem to realise or appreciate. To put it in perhaps overly simple terms, the issue involves whether the music teacher should teach music or concepts! In this day of growing interest in cognitive psychology, few would deny any longer the involvement and relevance of concepts and conception in any form of musical functioning. But the writers of methods texts and materials, and theorists of teaching alike, often give evidence of being woefully confused about the process of conception, the nature of its ‘products’ and therefore of the precise involvement of concepts in musical functioning.

By developing techniques for describing the varieties of behaviours and experiences in a college-level Dalcroze Eurhythmics class and by using those techniques to record practices in two semesters of Eurhythmies classes, this study addressed both the need in the arts for systematic procedures for documenting the nature of arts experiences and the need to codify features in a Dalcroze Eurhythmics class.

The findings yield a description of regular practices in one particular classroom which may provide a base for future research. The findings also suggest that description of surf ace phenomena does not capture all that we need to know about the instruction process, and it may not yield an understanding of what occurs in a Eurhythmies class.