Hitting the right note? An examination of classical music in contemporary education practice.

Word Count: 16,254

Hitting the right note? An examination of classical music in contemporary education practice.

Student ID: 0724033

Department of Sociology, University of Warwick

Wednesday 2nd September 2015

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Abstract:

This dissertation wishes to examine current music education policy, and how classical music

education charities are providing ‘social justice’ in the delivery of their education. By applying a

Foucauldian discourse analysis, this dissertation will argue that the social organisation of the

orchestra reproduces entrenched social conventions that can cause detrimental effects to students.

This dissertation will suggest that greater work is needed in examining the pedagogical value of the

orchestra, and argue that the sonic output of classical music is disrupting our ability to ask why and

how classical music is taught in schools.

Acknowledgements

I am greatly thankful of the advice and support provided by my supervisor, Dr Cath Lambert, and

my course convenor, Dr Lynne Pettinger. Their thoughts and encouragement throughout the year

have been greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank the music education charities that I have

worked with; they have been nothing but positive, patient, and informative. I am especially grateful

to my loved ones and friends, who have supported me all the way in the last year.

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Contents

1: Introduction……………………………..……………………………………………………….4

2: Literature Review……………………………..…………………………………………………6

2.1: Fusing needs of the economy with education…………………… ……………………6

2.2: Cultural and political aspects of the Education Reform Act 1988……………………… 7

2.3: The Third Way and the role of Social Enterprises in Education………………………. 10

2.4: The Henley Review………………………………… ……………………………… 11

2.5: The Success and Challenges of Music Hubs………………………………………… 13

2.6: The Third Sector……………………………..………………………………………. 14

2.7: Unearthing Music Consumption and Practice: the ABRSM’s Making Music Report.. 14

2.8: Socio-economic, gendered, and ethnic determinism in music and music education… 15

2.9 Instrumental trends…………………………………………………………………… 17

2.10 Autonomy on learners preferences……………………………………………………. 17

3: Methodology……………………………..…………………………………………………….. 19

4: Documentary Analysis on ‘The Geordie Symphony Orchestra’: Hawthorn Primary

School, Newcastle………………………………………………………………………………… 23

5: Analysis……………………………..……………………………..…………………………. 27

5.1: The Nucleo Project…………………..……………………………..………………… . 28

5.2: Apollo Music Projects…………………..……………………………..…………… 33

5.2.1: Hackney Empire Performance…………………..………………………………… 35

5.3: London Music Masters…………………..……………………………..………… 37

6: Conclusion……………………………..…………………………………………………… 42

7. Bibliography……………………………..…………………………………………………… 45

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Introduction

This dissertation examines a combination of national educational policy, music education,

and the delivery of classical music education by social enterprises, operating within the education

system. By studying the work of three classical music organisations, I will analyse how classical

music is taught to children, how children interact with the form, and, with a myriad of musical

genres to choose from, why classical music is championed by these organisations in providing

social justice.

I was a student of classical music from a very young age. I first started playing the

piano, and then picked up a variety of instruments such as the violin, flute, saxophone,

church organ, and guitar. Throughout primary education I received instrumental tuition, and

was heavily encouraged by my parents to play in bands, orchestras, and church music

groups up until my late teenage years. It was not until I began my bachelor’s degree that I

departed from music education entirely. I am still a heavy consumer of music, particularly

classical music, and would regularly enjoy concerts and live performances. It would,

therefore, be an understatement to say that music has played a huge role in my life. In this

dissertation, I approach classical music as a sociologist, keen to understand the social

conventions that govern the organisation of classical music, and how its aesthetic and sonic

form impacts both performers and listeners.

I became curious about the sociology of classical music after watching a concert

involving a symphony orchestra during my masters degree. It was thanks to my tuition in

sociology that I started questioning how and why the orchestra before me was organised in

the manner that it was, and that for such a long time the orchestra’s sonic output had blinded

me from understanding its makeup and character. Once I had ‘muted’ the sonic output, I

wished to unpack the orchestra’s organisation, and understand how music education

charities apply its framework in social justice, as well as how music education policy

welcomes the involvement of classical music organisations in educational delivery.

Classical music education plays a significant role for schools in England (Kane and

Clark, 2012); this is most notably highlighted in the BBC education campaign ‘BBC Ten

Pieces’, a project aimed at primary school children. The project showcases ten notable

classical pieces of music, with a view towards both study and creative response. Classical

music has also been heralded as a tool for social justice. Organisations such as Sistema

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England and the London Music Masters believe that the delivery of classical music

education provides social, as well as educational, benefits. This operates in juxtaposition to

the view that classical music is consumed by a small minority of the population, and is

arguably an art form of the bourgeoise that excludes and stigmatises working class students

(Bull, 2014).

As will become clear in this dissertation, music education policy in England is

opaque, and experiencing an overhaul. The last ten years has seen the provision of the music

education sector open up to social enterprises, allowing third party interests to administer

and deliver the education of music, who are able to define the role and meaning of music in

young people’s lives. The national music teaching provision is currently ‘patchy’ (Henley,

2011), with no rigid, standardised curriculum to govern music education, leading to a

diverse amount of experiences and educational attainment. My dissertation aims to charter

the trajectory of the hegemonic discourse in education: how schools have transformed in the

last thirty years, and the cultural undercurrents operating during the reforms of the education

system. The professional classical music industry is experiencing disparities in access

(Scharff, 2015), and there are huge variations in who studies what instrument (ABRSM,

2014), as well as the timeframe given to students in studying these instruments.

By employing an ethnographic study at the Nucleo Project, the Apollo Music

Projects (AMP), and the London Music Masters, I will examine the sonic and literal

knowledges that are captured and reproduced by students, and assess whether classical

music does indeed aid social justice.

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2: Literature Review

Our current education system is the result of a fusion between economic, political and educational

concerns, a project that has developed and evolved since the Ruskin College speech (1976) by the

Labour Prime Minister of the time, Jim Callaghan. This speech was the manifestation of public and

political unrest resulting from a deep recession, and it tried to sooth the frustration expressed by

economic actors, who blamed the shortage of skilled and market-literate workers on an isolated and

nonchalant education system.

The composition of the education system, Callaghan argued, consisted of teachers who

lacked ‘the basic tools to do the job that is required’, and students who possessed ‘no desire to join

industry’ (Callaghan, 1976). Callaghan’s speech asserted that the elitist culture thriving in schools,

coupled with school-leavers’ preferences to seek alternative work to industry, was aggravating a

skills shortage in the British labour market. The objective of education, for Callaghan, was to ‘equip

children to the best of their ability for a lively, constructive place in society, and to fit them to do a

job of work’ (Callaghan, 1976). In failing to provide the labour market with a market-orientated

workforce, Callaghan accused the educational establishment of neglect and apathy in the times of

financial recession, and called for a curriculum that orientated itself beyond academic dogma.

Callaghan’s distrust of teachers’ ability in gearing the output of education to the requirements of the

labour market were evident in his proposals. The Prime Minister suggested core initiatives that he

believed were necessary for the transformation: firstly, Callaghan wanted the state to define the

knowledge that schools taught, and its method of delivery. This would be evaluated by

educationalists, based on an inspection model inspired by market tools of evaluation. By

entertaining industry leaders’ notions of success and skills, the curriculum would align to the needs

of the economy, and would be identical in all state schools. Secondly, Callaghan called for the

accountability of teachers, as their methodology of knowledge distribution would be graded based

on inspections and student examination. Finally, Callaghan argued for an education system based on

market forms of organisation, compared and evaluated based on market instruments such as league

tables, empowering the parent to make informed decisions as a consumer of the education of their

child (Gorard, Taylor, Fitz, 2002). The Conservative Government of 1988 embraced these

recommendations by Callaghan in its transformative Educational Reform Act 1988 (ERA). The

ERA encapsulates the purpose of the education system: the knowledge that it would deliver, the

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labour market it would serve, and the labour markets of observation and evaluation that will ensure

that the education system is a servant of government and the labour market.

2.2: Cultural and political aspects of the ERA

However, Robinson (1989) argues that the ‘furore’ created by these suggestions for the

harmonisation between the education system and labour market was only one dimension of the

reforms, one that was overshadowed their cultural dimensions: the neo-conservative, nationalist

expropriation of the educational system. The cacophony of cultural values and knowledges being

transmitted by different schools was muted by the ERA, as the Conservatives wished to seize

control and define the cultural facets in schools.

The Ruskin College speech, argues Robinson, not only surfaced the labour responsibility of

schools, but also unearthed the stressed ‘Great Debate’ between ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ styles

of education that had been present from the late 1960s. These contrasting teaching styles can

heavily influence both the knowledge that will be delivered to students and how students perceive

and apply the knowledge gained. Robinson defines the debate as ‘deeply contested questions about

standards, about discipline, values and politics’. Shepherd and Vulliamy (1994) also report on the

intervention of the state, arguing that the Government’s justification for certain subjects and

knowledges in the curriculum went beyond economic concerns. In their analysis, Vulliamy and

Shepherd argued that ‘the 1980s witnessed in Britain an attempt to renegotiate central cultural

values. The question of what went into the new National Curriculum, initiated by the Conservative

government's 1988 Education Reform Act, lurked the issue of the character and the constitution of

English culture as a whole’ (Shepherd and Vulliamy, 1994: 28). This intervention was to thwart the

cultural and ‘socialist tendencies’ of the new forms of education surfacing on the educational

landscape in Britain (Robinson, 1989: xii). Thobani (2011) echoes these cultural tensions in her

work, as she documents the neo-nationalist backlash to the liberal multiculturalist approach to

education, guiding educationalists in many schools since the 1960s in accomplishing an inclusive

society. Neo-conservative nationalism, writes Thobani, worked towards a ‘cultural restoration and

the deployment of the Christian Right ideology of national ‘religionism’ (Thobani, 2011: 537). It

was a fear, exacerbated by the Conservative Government, that the liberal-multiculturalist approach

to inclusivity was disintegrating the cultural identity and national unity of the British people,

pluralising identity and ideologies. This discourse was countered by local educational authorities,

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who believed that a homogeneous, neo-conservative nationalism was an alienating concept that

prioritised ‘Britishness’ and stigmatised other cultures. To counter this approach espoused by the

Conservative Government, MCE and ARE were deployed as methods to embrace and study

diversity, and to extinguish any forms of patriotism and homogeneity. By achieving this form of

social cohesion, these educationalists believed that the many examples of educational

underachievement, which they believed was due to ethnicity, culture, and class, would be

challenged. This is an important consideration in terms of music education, as students were pulled

away from the grounding hegemony of western classical music and exposed to other forms of world

music, as well as the cultural ideologies that brought these forms of music into existence. It would

also transform how students perceived and performed music, as musical theory and instrumentation

are drastically different in cultural traditions outside of western classical music.

The adoption of MCE and ARE in schools, however, was not entirely successful in either

driving educational attainment or nurturing a notion of ‘social inclusion’ in schools and local

communities, as Ratcliffe (2004) documents. Many of the LEAs implementing these pedagogies

were impulsive and judgmental to differences of opinion. The inclusion of MCE and ARE were

argued to be misguided in how they supplemented the existing forms of knowledge and curricula,

creating an atmosphere within the school that was artificial and idealist; a social bubble that was not

reflective of the social conditions outside the school. Ratcliffe documents numerous instances

where ‘indigenous’ populations felt isolated and demonised by the supplemented multicultural

education, and ethnic minority parents were dissuaded with the ‘celebratory’, biased approach this

form of education included, as well as the approach taken by these LEAs (Ratcliffe, 2004: 79). The

concerns regarding multi-cultural and anti-racist education soon solidified in government enquiries

such as the Rampton Report (1979) and the Swann Report (1985). Both Rampton’s and Swann’s

reports questioned the effectiveness of those schools who insisted on the necessity for multicultural

education, and, in the case of the Swann Report, rejected the institutional and curricular change that

occurred in MCE and ARE schools (Ratcliffe, 2004: 80). These reports, coupled with the growing

frustration of a ‘radical’, ‘politically correct’ equalities agenda embodied by LEAs, allowed the

Conservative Government to make a credible attack on the LEA.

The Conservative Government had a long-held view that both MCE and ARE were

examples of futile, leftist intrusions made by money-wasting educationalists, which as Ratcliffe

explains, failed to correctly identify the true causes of community fragmentation. The medicine to

these fragmentations would be social institutions such as schools that were homogeneous in values

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and curricula, broadcasting traditional values and knowledges that inhabitants must ‘buy into’ to

succeed in social cohesion. It individualised the issue of social cohesion, explaining that it was the

individual’s responsibility to learn and reproduce cultural values in institutions, such as schools, not

the institution’s responsibility to celebrate difference. Any attempts in diluting the nationalised

values would result in fragmentation and disorder, produced by MCE and ARE approaches.

Ratcliffe demonstrates this individualised, Conservative philosophy in practice, recollecting how

families of black youths were said to require ‘male parental discipline’ to improve educational

attainment and how Asian migrants were held back in school due to parents not speaking English in

the home, or spending time out of the country visiting relatives (Ratcliffe, 2004: 80).

The Education Reform Act had therefore destabilised the political and policy capital of

LEAs by devolving administrative power to schools, while the state stewarded the curricular and

cultural agenda of all schools. Thus, subjects such as English Literature, History, and Music would

take a more anglo-centric role in providing knowledge and values, concentrating on British and

English developments within subjects, and a narrower focus on arts education and Modern Foreign

Languages that would anchor in Western Europe. This assimilationist approach would be measured

and evaluated based on traditional forms of assessment, underpinned by notions of didactic learning

and reproducing knowledge. Although schools were granted in teaching students on subjects such as

multiculturalism, Ratcliffe (2004, 82) observes that a tight financial budget and a stocked, austere

curriculum meant that it was unlikely for schools to pursue it.

The performance indicators, in assessing educational attainment that were brought in by the

ERA, allowed parents to gauge which school is a ‘success’, and ‘right’ for their children, based on

market forced distinctions. Brown (1990: 11) notes ‘the introduction of formal testing and

assessment of pupils at the ages of 7, 11, 14 and 16 has forced the distribution of knowledge to be

succinct and impervious to interpretation’. This formal testing, and the imposition of a core

curriculum, fosters the notion that knowledge is to be distributed and to be recited on demand

commonly through written examination, thus shaping the contents of the curriculum in a way that

makes it observable and measurable. The necessity for strict uniformity in the curriculum, Brown

writes, sustains the state’s defined notions of knowledge and ‘traditional’ styles of provision. This

approach to education also influences the delivery and content of music education, as the arts

subjects had to find ways to quantify their teaching output, and to include didactic teaching styles in

their delivery of knowledge. Robinson (1989: xii) argues that the transformations in the delivery

and content of knowledge created epistemological concerns around arts education. The ERA fuelled

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the conception that if ‘the main role of education is to prepare young people for work, arts education

evidently seemed unnecessary except for those looking for art jobs’ (Robinson, 1989: xii). The

fusion created between education and the labour market by the ERA aligned subjects to career

choices in the labour market, and had not considered the ‘complementary factor’ that the arts had in

the social and academic lives of its students. Secondly, the return to ‘traditional’ forms of teaching

had stigmatised the creative qualities found in arts education; skills such as ‘creativity, self-

expression and personal development’, argues Robinson, have been associated with ‘non-

intellectual activities’, demoting the necessity to promote these skills in arts education.

2.3: The Third Way, and the role of Social Enterprises in Education

These cultural and political earthquakes, experienced in the late 1980s, have arguably

transformed and moulded public provision of services such as education, up until the present day.

The Conservative Government of 1988 introduced ‘neoliberal’ market reforms into public sector

organisations that has nullified the political agendas of local education authorities and

individualised schools, streamlining a traditionalist ‘British’ inspired curriculum to produce a

market-literate workforce. In his book Education Plc, Ball expands on the results of these reforms,

and the economic neoliberal limelight that education finds itself under, instead of the political and

the cultural. As the LEA became redundant in providing educational resources and services, grant

maintained schools, positioned as buyers, were to enter a surging service-based marketplace for

businesses, competitively offering educational resources and staff (Ball, 2007: 18).

This market-based framework of educational services was nurtured and enhanced under the

New Labour Government, who maintained the diminished role of LEAs and encouraged a

‘standards, rather than structures’ (Andeson, 2001: 63) approach that allowed businesses to

continue to ensure the business-friendly curriculum was being delivered within a system they were

adept in. For New Labour, their political discourse was shaped around ‘attacking educational

disadvantage, raising the standards of every school, and raising the proportion of national income

spent on education’ (West et al., 2000: 523). Building upon these reforms of third party

intervention, the New Labour Government also wished to include more actors (charity

organisations, for example) into the education system through its ‘Third Way’ approach. The Third

Way approach, pioneered by Giddens (2000) was introduced ideologically as a fusion between

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social democratic values and the New Right’s neoliberal notion of free market policies in public

provision. Giddens succinctly articulates the need for a ‘Third Way’:

‘Today, however, the ‘big institutions’ […] can no longer deliver on the social contract as

they did before. The advent of new global markets, and the knowledge economy, coupled

with the ending of the Cold War, have affected the capability of national governments to

manage economic life and provide an ever-expanding range of social benefits. We need to

introduce a different framework, one that avoids both the bureaucratic, top-down

government favoured by the old left and the aspiration of the right to dismantle government

altogether.’ (Giddens, 2000: 2)

As Somers (2013) argues, the Labour Government applied social enterprise schemes as a

product of the Third Way political philosophy, popularising and justifying its existence. The

involvement of social enterprise essentially meant that these businesses (concerned in social justice)

were encouraged to enter the educational marketplace and participate in the delivery of education,

alongside fellow teachers. As Ball notes, this inclusion of the third sector in educational delivery did

not disrupt the free market system for which educational provision was based; in fact, the Third

Way gave schools and educationalists a more ‘flexible repertoire’ in responding to the needs of

certain schools. These social enterprises, much like their commercial counterparts, would compete

for funding and demand within in the education system, supplying services and resources under the

banner of social justice. In the Cabinet Office’s review paper: Private Action, Public Benefit, the

Government’s strategy in including social enterprise, the state should empower the third sector in

revitalising communities and empowering citizens (Strategy Unit, 2002: 28). These social

enterprises were to have the heart of social justice, coupled with the skills to operate effectively

within a marketised public sector. Music education was one of the prime instruments in delivering

social justice, and as the Third Way project manifested in the education system, social enterprises

started to play a critical role throughout the UK in delivering music education.

2.4: The Henley Review

Although the Third Way had national ambitions in allowing social enterprises to

flourish nationwide, to dynamically and efficiently provide services to public institutions, it

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highlighted the diverse composition of music educationalists, un-uniformed in the delivery

of music education, who were not evenly distributed throughout the UK. The vagueness of

the national curriculum in specifying the requirements and knowledge in providing music

education further compounded the issue, thus resulting in a diverse, educational

‘labyrinth’ (Henley, 2011: 17) that required knowledge and guile in navigating through. At

the request of the Secretary of State for Education and the Minister for Culture,

Communications and Creative Industries in 2010, Darren Henley, the then Managing

Director of the commercial radio station Classic FM, was requested to review the provision

of music education and suggest recommendations for music education to move ‘up to a

universally high standard’ (Henley, 2011: 5).

Not only did Henley need to confront the mosaic mix of nonaligned music education

organisations, he had to acknowledge the pressures facing arts education, at a time where

public sector finances were contracting, and schools were unsure of how to deliver quality

music education (Henley, 2011: 4). Henley explains that headteachers (and sometimes,

Local Education Authorities) had to be musically literate and independently aware of the

funding available for music. There was also an immediate priority to establish an

administrative framework for music educators, aligning music education charities into

geographical areas that could be mentored and supervised by a local authority. Through

Henley’s ‘National Plan’ the creation of regional ‘Music Hubs’ would allow the third sector

to be stewarded by regional authorities, supervised by the Arts Council England, in

providing schools with music services that aligned with the national curriculum. The

creation of Music Hubs was further needed because of the lack of accountability in the

quality of teaching, as well as the appropriate amount of monitoring from school inspectors.

Henley (2011: 16) calls for this in his review, arguing that Ofsted must rectify the current

situation that found ‘no single definition of what constitutes best practice’ thus allowing

‘individual programmes to create their own definitions of what is acceptable’.

This review primarily finds Henley trying to standardise music education within an

educational environment that is cosmopolitan and disconnected from the mainstream

teaching profession. The recommendations to produce Music Hubs were achieved, but his

proposals for an agreement in music curriculum, more qualified music teachers (Henley,

2011: 27), a universal procurement system of music instruments (Henley, 2011: 34) the use

of technology in music education (Henley, 2011: 30), and educational provision to areas

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with a lack of music are long-term goals that are yet to come to fruition. Henley also fails to

define the type of music that should be taught in schools, or the pedagogy that should be

applied in teaching music to students, allowing both hubs and educational charities to define

their curriculum and delivery of knowledge.

2.5: The Success and Challenges of Music Hubs

As highlighted earlier in chapter 2, section 4, the National Plan for Music proposed

the creation of ‘Music Hubs’ in regions throughout England in order to address the patchy

provision of music education within the United Kingdom and to challenge and support

school leaders in bringing music education to all schools. The Office for Standards in

Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), which is the independent body for

maintaining standards and excellence in schools, recently conducted a survey report to

monitor the progress of these music education hubs, drawing on recent Ofsted inspections of

schools to examine and evaluate their roles (Ofsted, 2013: 4). In the past, Ofsted had found

that there was a persistent ‘wide variation in the quality of music education in schools, with

too much being inadequate and with meagre musical content’ (Oftsed, 2012: 6), noting that

schools expected very little from students in music theory and performance, and that pupils

who did not progress were simply left behind. Too many schools were failing to teach

musical theory in the time frame that was allotted to them, believing that students were ‘not

ready’ and ‘would not enjoy it’ (Ofsted, 2012: 7). The ABRSM also finds that children’s

disenchantment with classical music is a key reason why they choose not to play an

instrument, rather than the financial cost of learning. The consequence of this is severe for

students who wish to learn music at Key Stages 4 and 5, as classical music dominates the

curriculum, requiring students to demonstrate western classical music theory and

performance in their examinations. This results in a small minority of students in the

classroom who are able to proceed into Key Stages 4 and 5.

The report also highlights the lack of understanding or evaluation in teachers, who

graded pupils’ performance too optimistically, and were ‘unable to gauge, or disagree with

the evaluation of an Ofsted inspector, the educational attainment made by pupils in

music’ (Ofsted, 2012: 5). This highlights a diverse, subjective use of measurement tools

employed by the teaching profession, who are unable to agree on ‘progress’ in music. The

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panacea of these ills was supposed to be provided by Music Hubs, who should act as

‘champions, leaders and expert partners, who can arrange systematic, helpful and

challenging conversations with schools’ (Ofsted, 2012: 5). These leaders should be aware of

the local music resources available to schools, and have the capability and responsibility to

intervene in schools that are failing to provide an adequate music education. However,

Ofsted have found that these difficulties have remained in schools due to the failure of

Music Hubs to either act within their catchment area, or their advice being either influential

or established in their partner schools. Ofsted also found that schools were unaware of the

resources available to them through their local Music Hub, whilst Music Hubs have

provided or sold music services to schools ‘without asking about the schools’ existing music

provision’; their failure to challenge the provision of music provision has also compounded

the situation (Ofsted, 2012: 6). This is due to the composition of people located within the

music hub itself, as Ofsted surmises. Music Hubs consist of leaders and professionals from

the music sector, rather than music educationalists; this contrasts the approach taken before

Music Hubs, where services were provided and audited through Local Education Authorities

(Ofsted, 2012: 7). Many Music Hubs are lacking an educational strategy or the willingness

to suggest solutions to educationally based challenges in schools. The Ofsted survey also

highlights the inability of the Arts Council England (the financial funding body of these

Music Hubs) to gauge the quality of the hubs’ work, as these Hubs are reporting challenges

in quantifying their work with schools.

2.6: The involvement of the Third Sector:

At present, educational charities play a critical role in how music is presented to

students, how students interact with music (as performers of music or as analysts of music),

as well as the type (genre) of music considered in classes. These charities are also worthy of

further study, as reviews such as the Dame Mary Marsh Review finds that the Third Sector

is composed of organisations that are predominantly middle class in composition and in

character (Wright, 2013). By observing the Arts Council’s recent report into the composition

of music charities within England, of the 3,542 charities noted in 2010/2011, 2,060 of them

are categorised as teaching ‘concert, orchestra, opera, and symphony’ music (Arts Council,

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2012: 15). As we have already established with Bull’s (2014) research, these forms of music

are typically associated with classical music and middle class culture.

2.7: Unearthing Music Consumption and Practice: the ABRSM’s Making Music Report

In using secondary data to paint a picture of the classical music sector, I shall apply

the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music’s (ABRSM) report ‘Making

Music’ (2014), and draw relevant literature around the findings to either substantiate or

counter the claims made by the report. This report wishes to establish the state of the

conditions of teaching, learning, and playing instruments in the United Kingdom. Its

purpose is to understand how the National Plan for Music, and the economic recession, have

impacted the learning and teaching of music, and to establish the successes and challenges

for policy makers. I will use this report to establish the socio-economic factors at play when

considering music education, the gendered and class trends in instrument playing, the

composition of the teaching profession, and uptake on the assessment methods used in

music education.

2.8: Socio-economic, gendered, and ethnic determinism in music and music education

The role that music plays in displaying identity and social capital is enormous.

Martin (2006: 28) argues that sociologists must inspect the role music plays in society, as it

is an ‘important factor in the assertion or imputation of identity, both for individuals and

social groups’. For Bourdieu, social class has significant correlations to tastes in music

(Bourdieu, 1984:18). From the data gathered in the Making Music report, the ABRSM find

that there are entrenched conditions in music education that determine the likelihood of

student participation based on socio-economic background. Their research found that ‘74%

of children from AB backgrounds have had instrumental lessons compared with only 55% of

children from social grades C1 and DE’ (ABRSM, 2014: 17). Primarily, this is due to the

financial cost of the instrument and accompanying tuition for the student, who is dependent

on the financial capability of either the regional Music Hub, or their families, to provide

assistance in costs.

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Socio-economic conditions for music teachers is also a vital consideration when

examining the provision of instrument tuition. The ABRSM found that the experiences of

music teachers inside the public sector greatly contrasted with their peers in the private

sector, where the casualisation of their employment has resulted in poor employment

conditions and low pay. In researching the teaching profession, the ABRSM found a diverse,

unregulated profession that is dependent on regional capabilities to train and employ music

teachers. This results in guaranteed employment for music teachers in the private sector, and

uncertain conditions for those who can teach in the public sector. Scharff’s research also

indicates that women are over-represented in the teaching of music, noting that ’71% of

teachers declared are female, compared to the 28% declared male’ (Scharff, 2015: 14).

Scharff notes that in the classical music profession, teaching music in the public sector is

considered to be less prestigious, compared to teaching in a conservatoire, which largely

consists of men.

The form of music education that students are receiving is also dependent on socio-

economic conditions. 74% of students from AB backgrounds receive individual lessons,

compared with only 55% of children from social grades C1 and DE’ (ABRSM, 2014: 17).

This could explain why students from AB background are twice as likely to take individual

music performance examinations, compared to their CDE counterparts, as individual tuition

is arguably a key advantage to students - whose parents can already afford such tuition -

when preparing for these individual exams. The research conducted by ABRSM strongly

associates individual performance examinations to the likelihood of an individual continuing

to play an instrument. These examinations are vital for students in securing places in

orchestras and progressing in their music education, they are seen as passports into the

advanced educational institutions of classical music, such as Conservatoires. Bull (2014)

applies the research of Born, Devine and Taylor, in asserting that those who do music

degrees are drawn more from the middle class, while those who study music production or

music technology tend to be working-class boys. She finds that this is due to the ability of

reading staff notation (a prerequisite in classical music), strongly informing us that ‘there is

still today a class divide around different forms of musical literacy’ (Bull, 2014).

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2:9 Instrumental trends

The ABRSM also collected data on young people’s adoption of musical instruments,

to observe if popular music styles had an influence on the adoption of musical instruments.

Their data has indeed found that contemporary pop culture has influenced students’ choices,

noting that instruments such as electric guitars, keyboards, and bass guitars are now found

within the top ten instruments played by young people (ABRSM, 2014: 24). These

instrument choices not only demonstrate the demand for musical instrumental tuition outside

classical music, but the cultural and educational context of the instruments can be starkly

different to the pedagogy and the output of classical instruments. For example, electric

guitars do not socially organise themselves into an orchestra, and tend to encourage social

conventions that are discouraged or non-existent in classical music. The report also features

the gender and socio-economic backgrounds behind these instrument choices, a factor that

could help illuminate socio-economic ‘taste’ and experiences of music. The ABRSM found

that girls are much more likely to adopt woodwind instruments such as the recorder, violin,

and flute; whereas boys are twice as likely to play a percussion instrument than girls

(ABRSM, 2014: 26). Scharff finds that these gendered affiliations with instruments are also

found in the profession of classical music, as well as the teaching of classic instruments

(Scharff, 2015: 10). When considering social class in determining students’ choice in

instruments, the divisions are stark. For the brass family, 60% of young people represent

children from AB backgrounds; against the representation of the string family, the AB

background group represents 46% (ABRSM, 2014: 26). These interests in instruments

highlight the strong cultural, financial and gender characteristics that are associated with

individual instruments of the orchestra, that may guide teachers and students in choosing

their own instruments.

2:10 Autonomy on learners preferences

The ABRSM survey also finds that students are more likely to have an input on the

instrument they would like to learn and how they consume and produce music. The report

found that more than two thirds of students are involved in the decision making process

(ABRSM, 2015: 41), citing that their engagement with music, the sound quality of the

!17

instrument and the desire to learn as their top reasons to begin their education. With the

introduction of portable technologies such as smartphones and tablets, 20% of children

surveyed are already making music on portable computers, whilst 40% of children compose

and play music with their friends outside of school (ABRSM, 2014: 40). These findings

demonstrate the active role that students (aged from 5 to 17) have in shaping their

experience of music. As the report explains, the rise of role models found in pop culture and

the greater influence they have had on children’s perception of music could be an

explanation for why children are wishing to learn instruments such as electric guitars.

However, the artistic culture that pop culture transmits is clearly one that children are

finding more relevance to in their consumption of music, and their application of technology

in composing it. It also shows that children are consuming music through a variety of

formats that go beyond the practice and perform formula tat music education cultivates in

schools. This report highlights that breadth of choice in music education is offered only to a

few, and socio-economic factors still determine a child’s experience of music education.

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3: Methodology

In this dissertation, I want to portray the many uses of classical music in education, to

display how it is packaged and presented to different groups of students, and how cultural policy,

combined with educational policy, has set the context for who can deliver the education and how

they deliver it.

Due to unsuccessful attempts to directly study Sistema England, I broadened my scope in

understanding the work of other classical music education charities. The Nucleo Project, the

London Music Masters, and Apollo Music Projects were based in London, whilst the BBC

documentary on Sistema England ‘Geordie Symphony School’ (2015), was produced in Newcastle.

I have used documentary evidence such as newspapers, academic papers, quantitative studies

involving statistics, government publications, and other forms of literature, to compliment my

observations and conversations in my ethnography.

My observations in all sessions were non-participant, although both students and teachers of

Apollo Music Projects (AMP) and London Music Masters (LMM) were aware of my presence, and

the circumstances of my research. I may have inadvertently helped shaped the behaviours of other

students there, as many of them turned to me to gauge my response to their performances and

participation. Although I had communicated clearly with the Nucleo Project in North Kensington, to

make them aware that I would be attending their concert, I did not receive any recognition; and to

the audience and performers, I did not discuss my research or my observations.

My observations during the LMM and AMP sessions tried to encapsulate what Spindler and

Splindler (1992) define as ethnography: ‘direct, prolonged, on-the-spot observation’ (Spindler and

Spindler, 1992: 63), to ‘be there when the action takes place, and to change that action as little as

possible by his or her presence’ (Splindler and Splindler, 1992: 64). Excluding the Nucleo Project

concert, all my observations were dependent on an agreement with the charities, who specified

which days and situations that I could observe. I was unable to negotiate more time and access to

the students due to my own financial constraints, and the reluctance of charities in allowing me to

interview students. This may be due to the time frame in which my research was operating, as

schools tend to suspend everyday teaching activities near the end of June, limiting the opportunities

for observation and interviews. However, after meeting the leaders of these charities, and observing

their lessons, I do feel that I have developed a rapport with these charities that will allow me greater

access in the future.

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I tried to both engage what I could visually sense, as well as sonically interpret during my

observations at the the Nucleo Project, and AMP concerts. It was crucial to behold the organisation

of the orchestra, but the sonic output was vital to capture and consider as part of the observation. In

my analysis chapter, I will try to make sense of the sonic surroundings that have been created by the

orchestra, as well as the aesthetic formation. For Bull and Back (2003), sound empowers

individuals to transform their social environments, re-ordering or organising their world and social

lives. They argue that ‘sound manages the user's mood, feelings and sense of time and place’. The

sonic dimension in social life is capable of the same significant impact as the visual; Mellberg and

Cobussen highlight this in their work:

‘Sounds influence my thinking. They determine me as a subject; my life is at least partly

organised by what I hear and how I listen. Sounds, too, constitute me as the one who I am, as

a unique human being, here and now. They co-determine my behaviour; they influence my

concentration; they infiltrate and take possession of my ideas as they switch from

background to figure’ (Mellberg and Cobussen, 2011).

My research has therefore concentrated on the dynamics and texture of the music, the sonic

reaction of the audience in how they applauded, and its impact on the relationship between student

and classical music. From all of the observations made, I have focused on how the presentation of

the organisation of the orchestra could impact on the student’s perception of classical music, the

management of ‘space’, and how, if any, spatial and bodily knowledges are gained from the

education these children receive. These perceptions of bodily and spatial knowledges will be

analysed through Foucault’s discourse on discipline and power, to discuss the existence of social

control and how it is maximised through the organisation of the orchestra. As I was unable to

interview students, I was left to judge how students perceived both the sonic and visual experience

of classical music. I therefore gauged student perception through their attentiveness, their emotional

disposition, and their listening to and performance of music.

This dissertation was initially designed to solely focus on the work and output of Sistema

England, to conduct ethnography in two of its partner schools, and pay attention to its sister charity,

the Nucleo Project. However, after many failed attempts to establish and sustain a dialogue with

staff from the charity, including staff at its partner schools, I had to instead look to documentary

sources to establish the role that Sistema England plays in delivering classical music education.

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This lack in communication is of great contrast to the other music education charities I have spoken

to; they were friendly and open to research in their partner schools and concerts. I believe that the

primary explanation for the resistance I experienced from Sistema England was due to the recent

research carried out by Baker (2014), who is critical of work of the El Sistema organisation,

Sistema England’s sister charity, based in Caracas, Venezuela. Baker’s work has quickly leapt from

the confines of the academic sphere to a public arena, with newspapers such as The Guardian

(2014) paying attention. Thus, Baker’s research, propagated and compressed, has arguably become

a portal for many who did not know of the work being carried out by Sistema; I suggest this has

created a rift between academia and the Sistema organisations. Whether Baker’s work does indeed

depict a true portrayal of the workings of El Sistema, this publication may have created a negative

public discourse, arguing that classical music in itself has given institutions such as El Sistema the

qualities of being autocratic, rather than the methodologies and pedagogies applied in delivering

classical music education, something I wished to inspect in my work. This raises important

considerations of the effects social research can have on the people we study, and how our research

is disseminated and read. The British Sociological Association (BSA) comments this in its ethics

guidelines:

‘[researchers have] some responsibility for the use to which their data may be put and for

how the research is to be disseminated. Discharging that responsibility may on occasion be

difficult, especially in situations of social conflict, competing social interests or where there

is unanticipated misuse of the research by third parties’ (BSA, 2002: 2)

To understand how classical music was taught and used by students, I have needed to use

secondary data provided by sources such as the ABRSM (2014), and Ofsted (2013). This articulated

the reality from the government policy papers considered, such as the Henley Report (2011), the

Strategy Unit (2002), and both the Rampton (1979) and Swann (1985) reports. To understand the

linear progression of the discourses present, I have relied on the commentary provided by Ratcliffe

(2004), Thobani (2011) and Robinson (1992). The two of these combined has allowed me to exhibit

a narrative for contemporary education policy, and to demonstrate the diverse provision in music

education.

I have tried to balance the output of this form of research with the output of my multi-

sensory fieldwork. Metaphorically, I have acted as a conductor, tempering the existing literature

!21

applied in my research with the observations I have made on my visits to schools and concerts,

attempting to assert independent observations that allow social theory and observations to suggest

correlations or nuances. Following the lead of Law (2006: 2) I am ‘conducting’ an orchestra of

different research methods because as Law highlights, methods are, in nature ‘messy and

heterogeneous’, trying to study a social world that is also messy and ‘unknowable in a regular and

routinised way’.

My observations were also used to ‘thicken’ the narrative on the current diverse conditions

of classical music education. This combination of methods, as Blaxter et al., (2010: 205)

acknowledges, provides the reader with ‘a more detailed perspective on some of the issues raised’,

allowing these ‘in the moment’ annotations to be included within existing literature.

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4: Documentary Analysis on The Geordie Symphony Orchestra: Hawthorn Primary School,

Newcastle

In this section, I will analyse a recent documentary produced by the BBC (2015), who film

the work carried out by the Sistema England music charity in the Hawthorn Primary School,

Newcastle. The Sistema England charity plays a heavy, sustained role in the life of school children

at Hawthorn Primary School, and is worthy of investigation when considering the credibility of

classical music in providing social justice.

Hawthorn Primary School is situated in one of the poorest areas in England; an area with

low educational attainment, and high crime rates. This sets the scene for a school faced with

problems in student engagement and sustaining an ‘inclusive environment’ within its diverse

population. As the narrator of the documentary describes, the Sistema project has attempted to solve

these combined social issues by creating a ‘production line of classical musicians’. From the young

ages of four and five (reception class) to the concluding year of a student’s education, the whole

school population are engaged in the mass conscription of classical musicians. There is no escape; it

is a truly significant intervention that disrupts lunch breaks (reducing one-hour lunch breaks to a

mere thirty minutes), and reprioritises the learning attainment process for each student (the

documentary shows how reception class children can read music before words). The Sistema

schedule has introduced the disciplinary doctrine that Foucault argues was present in the eighteenth

century. Foucault explains that schools implemented a pedagogy that seemed to drive efficiency and

organisation in time, maximising the state’s ability to discipline individuals. The development of

discipline in schools radically transformed the ability to fragment time, allowing an education to be

structured by timetables and a hierarchy based on skill. Curricula would therefore be reformed to

produce educational ‘programmes, each of which must take place during a particular stage and

which involves exercises of increasing difficulty; qualifying individuals according to the way in

which they progress through these series’ (Foucault, 1991: 159). This application of the

Foucauldian discourse highlights the significant intervention made by the Sistema charity. It is not a

casualised operation, it is regimented and prevalent in a child’s education, cocooning the individual

within a context that was authored and maintained by the authority.

Throughout the programme, the documentary aims to highlight how students learn through

the collective teaching approach of Sistema England, exposing huge groups of students to a variety

of actors within the music industry. Throughout the academic year, students have multiple

!23

interactions with conductors, musicians, classroom teachers, arts managers, and many more

practitioners. Unlike the work of LMM, where these individuals appear to ‘collaborate’ with

students, the people depicted in this documentary are there to lead the group of students in a similar

fashion to their teachers. Therefore, it is not for the purposes of networking with these students that

these professionals work with Sistema England; rather, they are there to support the teachers in

delivering knowledge, teaching and conducting.

The conductor’s role plays a significant, long-term role with the students. Unlike their main

primary school teachers, who differ each academic year, the staff associated with the Sistema

project appear to be present in all facets of the students’ music education throughout their primary

school engagement. This could be significant in building the bond between teacher and student, and

between student and classical music. Not only do students climatise to the daily exposure of

classical music, the Sistema teachers are providing a strong sense of community and social

interaction, bonds and similarities are being created between these students. This observation has

also been commented upon by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in their

research of the Sistema England project. Its work, they mention, enhances ‘children’s social and

emotional wellbeing and improving their attitudes to learning; enhancing parents’ pride and

confidence that their children can succeed; and enhancing teachers’ expectations of their

pupils’ (Lord et al., 2013: vi).

In similar fashion to the work of the Nucleo Project, the structural context of this intense

music regime centres around the orchestra. The collective theme of this charity’s work heavily

informs individual learners that they learn to play in order to satisfy the needs of the orchestra.

Students therefore must develop their performance skills, musicianship, and display behaviour that

is coherent to the orchestra: to meld and fuse into this large social group. Once the students are

placed in symphony orchestras, they immediately engage with music notation. The approach of

‘learning to perform’ is heavily engrained into the students, as they seek to rehearse music provided

by local composers in the hope to later perform in front of their peers and parents in a professional,

commercial setting: the Sage Gateshead.

In an interview with the headteacher of the school, Ms Judy Cowgill explains how vital the

Sistema programme is in providing inclusivity and a cultural backbone to her school. It has changed

the dynamic of the school so dramatically, she argues, that it would be a grave error to sever the ties

between the charity and the school. The children, many of whom experience absolute poverty and

social deprivation, have been united and provided with hope, aspiration, and confidence in a school

!24

environment: it has empowered them. They are experiencing ‘musical highs’ in their orchestras,

whilst learning skills that are complimentary to their school education. In particular, it has provided

students with learning emotional, social, or behavioural difficulties with a communicative toolkit to

express themselves, aiding them in overcoming such difficulties. The documentary follows the

footsteps of one student, Daniel, with a stammer, who speaks of the joy and confidence the violin

has given him, as well as a purpose in life: to perform. However, I feel that the documentary painted

a small picture of a large social project taking place in the school. For example, the documentary

does not observe or question epistemological measurements for ‘performance’ and ‘talent’, and the

impact this has on the composition of the orchestra. It also omits the various journeys pupils can

take if they are not as skilled in performing as they are in theory or appreciation.

From a parental perspective, many articulated a sense of pride and affection towards the

music project, similar to that which I encountered at the Nucleo Project’s concert. This was echoed

in the BBC interviews with Daniel’s parents, both describing their troubling family situation, and

their difficulties in supporting Daniel with his speech impediment. The music tuition that Daniel has

received from his Sistema teachers, allowing him to harness skills and abilities that do not require

verbal input, has significantly soothed these issues, notably improving Daniel’s relationship with his

education and fellow students. His instrument has allowed him to demonstrate his knowledge of

music. For the Sistema charity, I would argue that it is the social structure of the orchestra that

provides social justice, rather than the aural qualities of the music.

The regular concert performances at the SAGE Gateshead, and the school trips to London

and beyond, attempt to demonstrate the wider significance of classical music outside of the school

setting. As discussed previously, the concerts allow parents and the wider community to inspect and

take pride in their child’s contribution to orchestral music. It also informs, and perhaps reassures,

other audience members that ‘high art’ is cherished by schools; these concerts symbolise the

strength and vitality of classical music in their area.

The interviews with two students, Liam and Daniel, strongly suggest their awareness of the

economic and social value of mastering classical music and how they are rewarded in the fruits of

their labour. As both of these students explain, they believe that their performative ability will later

make them millionaires, going on to play their respective instruments in a professionalised

environment, and lifting their families out of poverty. Their interviews are loaded with sentiment,

and evoke an undercurrent to the viewer that classical music is all that these students have that is

safe, inclusive, and fruitful economically in the future. This demonstrates that the Sistema project

!25

has produced a reality for these students that is idealised and accessible; however, only a few

students get to carry out this dream after their primary school education.

From this we can conclude that the Sistema charity places social integration and social

rejuvenation through the appliance of the orchestra. Their interpretation of the orchestra as one of

social harmony, as well as one of sonic harmony is worthy of further investigation. What was not

captured in these observations were the methodologies applied in creating and sustaining the

orchestra’s social organisation, and the consequences for those students who did not succeed or did

not enjoy playing in it.

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5: Analysis

In this chapter, I will explore how three music education charities carry out some of their

work, an ethnography that displays the diverse teaching practices currently taking place within

classical music education. Through the education of the orchestra, I will examine a possible

juxtaposition at play: how eighteenth and nineteenth century manifestations of discipline and

efficiency that are considered key in sustaining the orchestra, are perhaps deployed in today’s

education that sustains the rhetoric of the transformational capability an orchestra has in social

justice. I will take into consideration the three observations I was able to carry out with three

separate charities, to see how and if social conventions unique to the orchestra and classical music

are present. I was able to observe the orchestral performances of the Nucleo Project, and the Apollo

Music Projects (AMP). I was also able to observe two group lessons conducted by the London

Music Masters (LMM), who operate within in partner schools in central London.

As discussed on page 7, there is a significant number of classical music education charities

operating within the UK. Of the three charities observed in this study, the classical orchestra plays a

significant role in two of them. The first charity, the Nucleo Project, places the student within the

orchestra, whereas the AMP allows the student to observe the orchestra. The LMM do not orbit their

pedagogy around the orchestra; instead, their work looks to train individual performers. By

examining discourses surrounding efficiency, order and production in the eighteenth and nineteenth

century, which coincided with the birth of the orchestra (Schonberg, 1964), I will examine the

consequences of the practices of ‘discipline’ in pedagogical environments.

For Foucault, discipline is a ‘moral technology’ of power (Ball, 1990: 156). Discipline

allowed industrialists to organise and sustain ‘docility’ in their workforces. In Discipline and

Punish, Foucault wishes to consider the role and practices of the modern penal system; its

inception, and how the prison, the centre of discipline, influenced practice in social institutions such

as schools and hospitals. For Foucault, the seventeenth century saw a paradigm shift in how power

was maintained and perceived, in the ‘bodily’ treatment of ‘criminals’ and social deviants.

Seventeenth century forms of discipline in the prison was the resultant reform from public

executions and penalties that allowed authorities to publicly demonstrate their prowess and control

of the body, in penalising it. Discipline, however, wishes to dismantle the body, and to then

configure and manipulate it through a number of exercises, changing the individual’s perception of

space and time, driving ‘efficiency’ in the individual’s labour. In the context of the training of

!27

orchestral musicians, Foucault writes that the moral technology of discipline ‘defines each of the

relations that the body must have with the object that it manipulates. Between them, it outlines a

meticulous meshing’ (Foucault, 1991: 152). Foucault defines the training of interactions between

individual and object as the ‘instrumental coding of the body’ which thus develops ‘skill and

docility’ (Foucault, 1991:153).

Foucault highlights key examples of timetables, army drills and exercising as key

instruments of disciplinary power, and finds how monasteries and armies employed this form of

control. Foucault dismisses that this shift from retribution to discipline was due to humanist

concerns; rather, it allowed the authorities to drive greater gains and efficiencies in their use of

power. Disciplinary power allowed authorities to manipulate detailed movements of the body,

redefining and controlling the bodily behaviours of its prisoners, so that they would become

efficient, docile workers. I take the Nucleo Project’s work into consideration first, to examine how

and if the orchestra enforces docility and to unpack the series of events taking place at the concert. I

will then examine the workshops facilitated by the APM, which invites dialogue and creativity

within a classical music context. This will finally be followed by the work of the LMM, who, like

Sistema England, make long-term interventions into schools, training primary school students the

Violin.

5.1: The Nucleo Project, Sistema England

The Nucleo Project is an extracurricular social justice programme that operates outside of

the school system in North Kensington. The local demographic is socially and economically

diverse, similar to central London. The programme is designed to provide children aged 2-15 with

an intensive experience of performing a western classical music repertoire within an orchestra and

(albeit rarely), individually. Starting off with four children in a basement flat (Sistema England,

2015), and now boasting a membership of more than 200 students, the Nucleo project has proved

popular to parents and children alike in Kensington, and is looking to upscale. Children are required

to attend at least four times a week (the limit is six), for orchestral practice after school. The concert

I attended at the Kensington Aldridge Academy was to allow all participants of the Nucleo Project

to demonstrate their ability to perform to an outside audience, mostly consisting of families and

friends.

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As each performance began, I was able to observe the intense spatial organisation of the

orchestra instilled on all groups of performers. This organisational framework, in particular for the

younger, inexperienced musicians, saw a semi-circle of performers, aided to their positions thanks

to the coloured mats on the floor, facing the teacher/conductor who would face them at the centre. It

was especially interesting because the repertoire of the concert featured pieces such as ‘Pop Goes

the Weasel’, and ‘Down the Road’: music I would not associate with the western classical canon,

but it was visibly clear that these performers had embodied the physical ‘etiquette’ derived from

western classical music. Like a typically professional classical orchestra, all students were dressed

in uniform and were sensitive to the conductor’s bodily position and vocal commands. Bodily

discipline was key in uniting these performers into one group, as teachers directed students through

pre-rehearsed positions, to settle and prepare them for performance. It felt apparent that these

children had spent a significant amount of time in forming their body posture and technique in

holding an instrument, to synchronise and harmonise aesthetically with their peers. This ‘drill’ of

four, pre-performance codified movements, saw the child pick up their violin, and resulted in them

holding the violin correctly, standing straight. It was a systematic routine that transformed these

children into performers. From my perspective, it highlighted the importance of spatial and bodily

knowledges for classical musicians (Schonberg, 1967), as these children, in unison, were changing

the ‘I’ of the performer to the ‘we’. For Foucault, this would demonstrate the ‘instrumental coding

of the body’ which thus develops ‘skill and docility’ (Foucault, 1991:153). In applying the example

of a soldier being ‘trained’, Foucault argues that the micro-management of gestures, in its minutest

operations, between body and object has allowed a relationship of power and oppression to be

cultivated between master and soldier, allowing complete domination of the individual. For

Foucault (1991: 153), detailed routines between ‘the parts of the body to be used’ and ‘the parts of

the object [to be] manipulated’ created a ‘body-tool, body-machine complex’. When applied to a

group setting, Foucault depicts a mass of individuals who are coerced, and routinely observed,

performing body-machine ‘manoeuvres’ in unison. This coercion and control is pivotal in

exercising discipline in social institutions where the agenda is to provide curricula that is

standardised and efficient. I suggest that the performance of the Nucleo group heavily demonstrated

this; the physical representation of this group of performers was to highlight the compliance of

students, their bodily discipline, and skill within an art form.

The younger performers played pieces that required ‘open notes’ (no finger pressing on the

neck of the violin), thus consisting of a four-note melody. This performance was not to demonstrate

!29

melodic complexity. Rather, it was to demonstrate how the children were able to play their bows in

sync, as bows were flying up and down in unison, demonstrating a visual notion of harmony to the

audience. This is a significant consideration when teaching young classical musicians within an

orchestra; the aesthetic sense of ‘harmony’, like the sonic, plays a significant role in portraying

notions of cohesion, discipline, and collectivity within the orchestra. I had found that the performers

had strived for excellence in this regard, and had clearly spent a significant amount of time in

perfecting the visual perceptions of their performances.

As a member of the audience, I was able to gauge the reactions of parents, family members,

and teachers. The attendance of family and close others is significant in supporting these children

during the infancy of their music education. It legitimises and celebrates the work of these musical

apprentices through a sonic form of dialogue as well: the ninety minute concert was anchored in

chants of celebration, praise, and non-uniformed clapping. It quickly became clear that I was

surrounded not by passive consumers of an everyday classical concert, but by active, dedicated

supporters of this Nucleo Project. As I engaged in conversation with some of the attendees sitting

next to me, parents would inform me of the pride they felt, the real sense of purpose that these

children had in their instrumental studies, and their dedication for long-term education of the violin.

The concert hosted a positive, open environment that allowed the audience to vocally express the

euphoria they felt in seeing their child perform, and for the children to wave to respective members

of the audience. At the time, I questioned whether these emotional outpourings were intensified by

the students playing classical music, perhaps demonstrating their pride in seeing how these children

are literate and compatible in the requirements of classical musicianship. It was impressive to

observe the discipline each young musician had in operating their instruments, but it became clear

that these students had understood the performance to be a reproductive function of sonic and

aesthetic traditions, rather than a creative expression. I believe this was evident in the intense

control the conductor had over the students’ performance. There were many commands issued from

the conductor to the student for many reasons; from ensuring how the performers were placed and

how they operated their instruments, to silencing performers at certain parts of the performance and

then reintroducing them. The conductor was able to intensely micromanage the group, which drew

parallels to the depictions Attali (2014) and Schonberg (1967) drew of the conductor.

As the concert progressed, older students were performing more intermediate level pieces,

allowing parents of younger students to gauge the sense of progression made in each year of study.

This also saw a reduction of performers playing pieces, as children in the 8-12 bracket played in

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quartets, rather than string ensembles. The shrinking number of performers as the age of students

increased gave me the impression that student numbers decreased due to the higher likelihood of

students discontinuing their studies. A key condition for students to ‘progress’ in music education is

their longitudinal exposure, the fact that music plays a sustained, anchored role throughout their

childhood. This consideration, ABRSM (2014) finds, is also favoured to children born to wealthier

parents (ABRSM, 2014: 17). This is a worrying reality for music education charities, as they try to

plug the funding gap through their work in schools and communities. However, Scharff (2015: 7)

argues that it is not just the financial implications that deter working class parents and students from

continuing instrumental lessons. In her research, Scharff applies Bull’s (2014) findings that that the

culture of music education has similarities with middle-class culture, and that it stigmatises and

alienates students. This would shake their confidence in learning their respective instrument,

disassociating themselves with the classical music world. This middle class culture which envelops

music education, argues Scharff, helps to stimulate and welcome those higher up in the social class

scale, whilst abandoning those who struggle to ‘assimilate’ into the apparent stifling culture of

music education. Due to the lack of evidence, I cannot assert this reason in explaining why there

appeared to be fewer students representing older age groups, the research carried out by Bull (2014)

could help explain the lack of commitment to classical music from older students.

The technical proficiency of these individuals was impressive. Seeing and hearing

these performances inspires and galvanises young students and parents alike to study harder,

further invest time and labour into this endeavour, so that they too could be part of a string

quartet, commanding the attention of the audience. I believed this became apparent when the

teenage string quartet performed Mozart’s Serenade No.13 for Strings in G Major. As stated

before, only these four individuals represented their age group in this performance, but I

believe it intensified the gaze of the spectators, allowing the audience to ‘tune-in’ to each

individual performance. It also raised questions for me, in how educational attainment was

being symbolised by this quartet: why was the size of this cohort dramatically smaller than

their younger colleague’s performance? Were they part of a larger cohort when they were

younger?

The finale of this concert showed ‘The Nucleo Project Children’s Symphony Orchestra’

perform ‘Les Toreadors’ from Bizet’s Opera Carmen. This Symphony orchestra, unlike previous

groups, consisted of a bigger group, and a far more diverse selection of instruments. This orchestra,

no different from professional orchestras, contained a ‘concertmaster’, who followed the

!31

conventional stereotype: a violinist. In tuning the orchestra with an open string ‘A’ note, the

concertmaster allowed his unique position of deputy to organise the orchestra, ensuring they are

aesthetically and sonically ‘in tune’. On this occasion, the concertmaster wore a distinctive purple

and gold ribbon, entertained his own applause, and shook the conductor’s hand publicly to

symbolise the conductor’s sentiment towards the concertmaster. The concertmaster is typically a 1st

Violinist performer, who as we have noted from the ABRSM (2014) survey, has certain gender and

class conventions. The special attention given to the concertmaster was unnerving, as it

demonstrated some of the executive functions it had of the orchestra, excluding players of different

instruments. Woodwind, Brass, and Percussive performers do not possess any administrative

function when it comes to the performance, they sit behind the strings players and wait to be

summoned by the concertmaster and the conductor. When the orchestra concluded its performance,

both the concertmaster and conductor were rewarded with flowers and handshakes for the efforts of

the entire orchestra, who simply bowed to the applause. This unequal distribution of gratitude and

celebration has effects on both performer and audience; the response of the audience is channelled

through to the conductor, who bows to the audience of his own free will, and then commands the

rest of the orchestra to stand and bow when he feels he has absorbed enough of the praise for

himself. Schonberg (1967) argues that the conductor plays a significant role in conveying the social

messages that are being transmitted from the orchestra. For Schonberg, the conductor is the master,

highlighting their cohesive and disciplinary responsibility. He writes: ’the players tend to look on

the conductor as a disciplinarian (and sometimes a heartless or even sadistic one); the conductor

tends to look on the players as a group of undisciplined children who are threatening to develop into

juvenile delinquents’ (Schonberg, 1967: 18). Attali creates a similar caricature of the conductor in,

depicting him as ‘the creator of the order needed to avoid chaos in production’ (Attali, 2014: 67).

Again, like previous performances, I found the performance by this symphony to be an exercise that

visually engaged the audience. The conductor’s baton, at the eye of the storm, mediated the tempo

of the group, whilst violin bows were lifting and dropping in unison, and woodwind and brass

instruments were held and played at relative positions to the performers.

The organisation of the orchestra during this concert drew parallels with industrial forms of

organisation that can clearly provide educationalists with a mode of production, a comprehensive

curriculum; as Attali articulates, it allows a leader to observe all, and presents the image of a

‘programmed labour in our society’ (Attali, 2014: 66). Attali argues that the constitution of the

orchestra and its organisation are ‘figures of power in the industrial economy’ (Attali, 2014: 66).

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Bull (2014) echoes this line of argument, aligning the organisation of classical to be a ‘distinctive

practice with the methods of rehearsal, performance, and education which we know today emerged

in parallel with the bourgeoisie, and often through their efforts at institution-building.' The young

symphony orchestra that sat before me was resemblant of a form of organisation that has been

trained and disciplined, following Foucault’s earlier formations of a docile, productive, and efficient

workforce. An important consideration for us, however, is that this charity operates outside of the

school. It does not enforce this teaching regime on its students; rather, families and schools

encourage the students to attend these workshops. Further study would be recommended at this

point to understand the motivations of students and families in participating in the Nucleo Project,

and to understand the relationship these families have with classical music. My surmise would be

that there is a fetishisation present in the visual organisation of an orchestra, for families and

educationalists, it provides safety and order for students. Concerts like the one observed here

informs families and loved ones that the students are observed and controlled by the conductor, who

symbolises a culture that is admired by social justice enterprises such as the Nucleo Project. This is

not the case though; certain instrumental groups are treated differently to others, whilst commitment

to these programmes seems to waver after the first initial couple of years of education.

5.2: Apollo Music Projects

The first music education charity that I was successful in contacting was the Apollo Music

Projects (AMP) charity, based in Hackney, London. The pedagogy of this music education charity is

starkly different to Sistema England, yet its remit orbits around western classical music. Instead of

changing perceptions of space and teaching bodily knowledges (the codified behaviours in

instrumental manipulation), David (the managing director of AMP) and his team at Apollo Music

wish to create a ‘conversation’ around music. Each session is based on a string quartet entering

nearby schools in East London, and conducting performance workshops that allows students to

listen to live classical music. Students are then encouraged to respond to the music through a variety

of media, articulating an affective response to the music. In my conversation with David, I had

learned that this dialogue is not limited to verbal communication - students are encouraged to be

‘creative’ in their replies. Creating a visual representation of the music is a very popular choice:

students are able to draw lines or zig-zags onto a piece of paper, to depict and evaluate the melody.

David also mentioned that children would clap along, as well as dance and sway to the music. For

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David, these live performance sessions ignite the students’ attention, and benefits both amateurs and

experienced listeners of classical music. In particular, David wanted to highlight how students with

special educational requirements benefited from these workshops, as the ways of communicating

went beyond verbal conventions. David wanted to emphasis, similar to Daniel from Sistema

England, how these students were able to converse and articulate a response that was welcomed and

celebrated. David also believed that these sessions created student reactions named ‘positive

silences’ found within the classroom, as even commonly ‘disruptive’ pupils relaxed and listened to

the performances. David believed this was because classical music can command focus and

discipline for these students, something he believed was significantly lacking within areas of social

deprivation. However, the new experience of listening to a live performance of music within a class

could explain the focus, as these workshops are designed to provide a brief exposure to classical

music, rather than a sustained intervention, that is adopted by Sistema England and the London

Music Masters. What is noteworthy is the creative response empowered to students when listening

to classical music; it would be interesting to observe the impact of this intervention if it was

longitudinal and applied to other creative art subjects.

This form of pedagogy is starkly different to the work employed by the Nucleo Project and

LMM. There is no musical literacy instilled within the class, and students are not required to be a

classical musician in order to listen and respond to the music presented to them. There are no

codified behaviours, or segments of knowledge that are instilled in students. Instead, David and his

performers presents music in an open forum to students. It is a critical pedagogy, as it does not

prescribe knowledge, and invites individual responses from students in a variety of modes. It

encourages students to share subjective experiences that are validated and developed by David and

his colleagues. The impact that these workshops has is considerably less than the work of Sistema

England and LMM, and could perhaps provide more time and room for students to explore other

genres of music. It is also a reflection of how diverse teaching practices can enter the music

education of schools, as knowledge is disseminated in a starkly different manner to conventional

teaching methods typically found within the school. I am unsure of how an Ofsted inspectorate

would evaluate the work of this organisation, compared to the work of Sistema England or LMM.

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5.2.1: Hackney Empire Performance

The AMP also perform these workshops on a macro scale, to a variety of schools in one

(often yearly) session. In these yearly sessions, the children are introduced to something grander in

scale to a string quartet: a Chamber Orchestra. After an initial discussion with David and the staff at

AMP, I was able attend one of these workshops at the Hackney Empire in London.

This large workshop invited eight local schools for a free concert, conducted and narrated by

David. The purpose of these concerts is to introduce young children to cultural institutions such as

the Hackney Empire, as well as live performances of classical music. Students play a different role

from that of ‘performer’, as noted in the Nucleo and Sistema projects, to one of ‘spectator’. As I

entered the auditorium to find my allotted seat, I saw excited, restless young children finding their

places and being quietened by school staff. However, this brief interlude finally comes to close

when David enters the stage and greets the audience. Following the tradition of a typical orchestral

concert, it is the conductor who transforms the room from a mosaic sonic space to silence. In his

introductory speech to the audience, David wishes to establish himself as a guide to the audience, as

well as a conductor to the orchestra. He wishes the audience to actively survey the orchestra with

him, directing eyes and ears to various sections of the orchestra under his supervision.

In these numerous monologues to the audience, David explains how, over 100 years, the

orchestra has evolved to accommodate the diversity of classical music, and the evolution of its

instruments. David explains the historical context surrounding each piece performed by the

chamber orchestra, the ‘purpose’ of each piece of music, and how each instrument group

contributes to the narrative of the piece. David routinely stops the performance to highlight

significant features of the piece to the audience, disrupting the piece to allow the students to phase

in and out of the music as observers, rather than consumers. Certain points of this performance

made me question whether we, the audience, were ‘consuming’ the sonic and the aesthetic

phenomena around us, or we were indeed internally reacting to the performance. The spectator

activity of music, according to Levitin (2006), is one that has only existed for the last five hundred

years, and critically, ‘has only been in the last hundred or so years that the ties between musical

sound and human movement have been minimised’ (Levitin, 2006: 257). Nineteenth century music

concerts wished to display an aesthetic dimension of harmony, and were considered critical in

understanding the power relations and social conventions of society. The synthetic construction of

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the social conventions at play in a classical music concert, Levitin argues, are to radiate preferred

forms of behaviour and organisation:

The polite listening response, in which music has become an entirely cerebral experience

(even music’s emotions are meant, in the classical tradition, to be felt internally and not to

cause a physical outburst) is counter to our evolutionary history. Children often show the

reaction that is true to our nature: Even at classical music concerts they sway and shout and

generally participate when they feel like it. We have to train them to behave

“civilised” (Levitin, 2006: 257).

This demonstrates the social conventions at play, specific to classical music, which could

highlight the key ingredients towards a successful society. This view may be countered from the

standpoint of Ranciere’s (2009: 2) who argues against the perceived passivity and naivety of the

audience. Instead, Ranciere argues that a dynamic dialogue is taking place between performer and

listener. Contrary to what I surmised before: that the role of the audience, like the role of the

student, is to assimilate ‘knowledges’ that are being enacted before us, I was presented with a

situation that I believe went beyond visual and sonic dissemination, something of pedagogic value

where students were being provoked by the music. A live performance, enacted for the benefit of a

student, is starkly different to being trained as a performer. The spectator and live performance

relationship with classical music is casualised and malleable, whereas the student as a performer of

classical music creates more rigid conventions and dependencies. The student is dependent on their

own individual success in performance for their relationship with classical music to blossom. This

pedagogy was unique compared to my observations with the Nucleo and LMM projects, as it

wished to inform students of classical music, rather than train them.

Another consideration is the repertoire selected for this performance. The purpose of this

concert is to introduce and guide children through the world of classical music, to establish the

context and purpose. The three pieces performed were Britten’s Storm Interlude from Peter Grimes,

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (1st Movement), and Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (Finale). These

three pieces articulated individual narratives, which David translated for the audience at certain

periods. These three pieces of music were to demonstrate the voluminous and dexterous capacity of

classical music. Its performers were able to sonically depict a melody full of strong colours and

thick textures that conveyed a variety of emotions and messages. The ‘weight’ of these pieces was

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considerable; the bass parts of each piece reverberated in the auditorium and the melody was crisp

and authoritative. It was worth noting that Stravinsky’s performance featured huge waves of

overwhelming crescendos that attempted to focus the audience’s attention.

Unlike the classroom workshops that the AMP conducted, the performance at the Hackney

Empire wanted to subjectively demonstrate the apogee of classical music. It was to present the

existence of classical music at cultural institutions such as the Hackney Empire to students, rather

than enrol them into the orchestra.

5.3: London Music Masters School observation: Ashmole Primary School, London

A second music education charity that I was successful in contacting and establishing a

beneficial dialogue with was the London Music Masters (LMM). LMM is a social justice

organisation, centred on delivering classical music education to young students in areas of social

and economic deprivation in central London. Through its education programme named ‘The Bridge

Project’, LMM’s goal is to provide students access and ability in the world of classical music.

Unlike Sistema England, who, from my observations teach individuals collectively in young

orchestras, LMM appeared more micro and individualised, wishing to create individual performers:

a meritocratic form of social justice.

After reviewing its literature and observing two of its classes at a South London school, I

came to realise how classical music was being delivered in a variety of forms, creating diverse

student relationships with music and perhaps different educational outcomes. As noted with Sistema

England, who organise their students around the orchestra and fixate on collective performance and

the visual caricature of musicianship, the LMM takes small groups of students and provides them

with two hours of instrumental lessons every week. In its partner schools, LMM teaches all children

from the age of 5 to 7 years old an instrument, primarily the violin, and then select students who

‘show most promise’ to continue their studies until they venture into secondary school education.

After a long period of email correspondence, I was invited to observe two one-hour lessons at the

Ashmole Primary School, in Lambeth, London.

The school is situated within a multicultural, central London setting; nestled within high-rise

accommodation, yet overlooked by the Surrey Country Cricket Club’s huge ‘Oval’ Cricket grounds.

I was invited to watch a Year 2 class of ten students and a Year 5 class of eight students in their

weekly violin lessons. Each class I observed had two teachers, one stationed at a piano to provide

!37

accompaniment whilst the other was walking around the open classroom, co-ordinating the lesson

and playing the violin alongside their students. The Year 2 lesson presented me with parallels from

my earlier observation at the Nucleo Concert. This is due to the way the students interacted with the

instruments, it was through systemised interactions that saw students recite a number of manoeuvres

in order to pick up the instrument and play. The ten pupils were organised in the classroom

according to physical shapes on the floor, a base marker for each student. The lesson was packed

with individual and group activities, ranging from individual performances, group performances,

and a discussion on musical theory. Unlike Sistema England’s approach, children at the early stage

of their journey into classical music appeared to learn musical notes through letters and numbers,

rather than music notation; however, musical terms such as ‘legato’ and ‘staccato’ played a

considerable role in the lesson, introducing them to the descriptive language of classical music.

These activities appeared to be enjoyed by the students; there did not appear to be a strict or

authoritative regime in the classroom, and the inclusion of toys such as giant foam hand proved

popular with the students. However, it was an intense hour of activities, that required students to

keep up with the number of activities planned in the lesson. Similar to the BBC documentary of

Sistema England, there was a high teacher to student ratio in the class. I believe this is the key in

allowing students to develop the sense of community, as they are constantly engaged with class

activities with their peers and teachers.

Parents are encouraged to attend these lessons as often as possible, and to my surprise, the

parents were fairly well represented in the classroom. On occasion, the teachers would look to

teachers to ensure that instructions had been understood and home practice exercises were verified

with parents. The inclusion of the parent plays an interesting dynamic during the class; I believe it

has given students a stronger incentive to learn the instrument, and the collaboration between

teacher and parent could create trust and confidence in the delivery of classical music education. In

my discussions with representatives of LMM, I was told that parental presence was also to educate

parents about classical music, to strengthen the teacher’s authority, and to ensure children were

regularly practicing at home. This could support the research of De Fraja et al. (2005), who finds

that active parental involvement in the child’s education is significant in improving the educational

attainment of the child. De Fraja et al. find this as a common trait in middle class parents, and this

study could have benefited in understanding the socio-economic class of the LMM students, to

ascertain which parents attend these classes with pupils.

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My observation of the Year 5 class also included two teachers, and a handful of parents who

observed the eight students. As noted before, only a limited number of children are selected to

continue their education with LMM after their Key Stage 1 education, leaving the rest excluded

from the entire Bridge Project. On their website, LMM explains that it is the students who continue

their education are ‘those showing most promise’ (London Music Masters, 2015a). This is a vague

form of measurement, and it is unclear of the impact this has on children and parents who have been

told that they do not possess this ‘promise’. It also raises questions whether this approach

stigmatises students in the classical music world, whether they feel resentment and disaffection, as

they watch their peers ‘with promise’ continue their journey into the classical music world. It could

link with the work of Boaler et al. (2000), who study how students perceive Mathematics once they

have been graded on ‘ability’. They find that students who are graded in the lower ability sets

possess emotions of resentment towards the subject, and consequently perform considerably worse

than their peers in the higher ability classes. They write ‘the traditional British concern with

ensuring that some of the ablest students reach the highest possible standards appears to have

resulted in a situation in which the majority of students achieve well below their potential (Boaler et

al., 2000: 646). My discussions with LMM staff did briefly talk about the transition process, and

they explained that due to limited financial and teaching resources, they must be selective after Key

Stage 1. However, I do believe there is internal pressure inside the charity to provide examples of

‘success’ to their stakeholders and partner-schools; this form of success, is in the performance of

classical music, and its ability to improve literacy and numeracy attainment in schools. The Year 5

lesson validated the prioritisation of performance in the music education of these eight students, as I

was astonished by the playing polyphonic pieces of violin music, implementing musical ornaments

such as ‘trills’ which greatly added to the complexity and textural density of the piece. It is the sonic

output of these rehearsals that I believe justify the presence of this music charity; the melody of the

piece was emotional and complex, and the ability of these students to articulate this piece was what

I believed to be paramount to the parents and teachers in this class. The wall of sound produced by

these students can distract a researcher from observing the visual interactions taken place in the

classroom, as I was still in awe of the technical ability of these students.

I was curious to understand the musical tuition and practice required to make such a leap

from the Year 2 class I observed to the Year 5. It is reflective of the ability students are expected to

have by Year 5, as the charity appears to intensify a strict learning regime, accelerating the

performative capabilities of these students. These complex student performances, celebrated and

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approved of by teachers and parents, were demonstrating the ‘promise of success’ that the LMM

indicates on its website. Similar to the Year 2 class, there were a variety of activities for the students

to partake in, such as sight-reading exercises, group performances, and individual performances.

The group of eight were split into two groups of four for the duration the lesson, named as ‘1st

Violins’ and ‘2nd Violins’. In classical music, it is common for the 1st Violins to play the melody

whilst the 2nd Violins add depth to the piece by adding another layer of harmony. The group of

students were also joined by an ‘alumni’ student, a student who had progressed through primary

education and wanted to assist and play alongside the students. This is an indicator of the bonds

made between students and teacher, bonds that I believe are made by the performance of music,

rather than mere conversation. Music is known to trigger emotions on a wide spectrum (Levitin,

2006), and I believe that the educational journey this particular student went on fused with the

emotional capacity of music. It is also an example of the rich social interactions that have developed

a community, developing bonds between students and teachers.

Once again, the students were accompanied by their parents, who by this point were

conversing with the two teachers, agreeing with their feedback, and watching with pride at their

respective children. The lead teacher, employed a calm, collaborative approach with the class,

suggesting tweaks to performance, rather than ordering, and appeared on good terms with the

students. It was a great contrast of the Sistema England approach at Hawthorn Primary School,

where teachers appeared to occupy the role of conductor, leading a mass groups of students, unable

to focus on individual performers.

Although only one specific classical piece of music was played in this class, the LMM

(comparable to Sistema England) collaborated with local classical music composers in producing

pieces inspired from the classical tradition, for students to learn and to perform. Collaboration with

other music composers and institutions appeared significant for LMM, as the class were practicing a

piece of music that they would perform with a London based Jazz Club. The charity also invites

professional conductors and performers to talk to students about their day-to-day experiences,

putting their classroom experiences into wider context. These links with other actors within the

music sector does highlight the access students and parents are expected to exploit with music

practitioners outside of the school, and further research would be useful to deem who and how takes

advantage of these contacts. Once these students look to move from primary education into

secondary education, the LMM’s founder, Itzak Rashkovsky, handpicks students to partake in the

LMM’s ‘Pathways’ programme. This programme is designed to allow students, handpicked by

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Rashkovsky, to transition from LMM to secondary education. These students are ‘personally

tutored’ (London Music Masters, 2015b) and guided to secure music scholarships at independent

schools. This programme clearly demonstrates the significant hold that classical music has on

obtaining access in schooling, its high currency in navigating the education system, and the

narrowing journey students take from Year 2 onwards.

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6: Conclusion

In this dissertation, I have endeavoured to articulate the multiple ways classical music is

being taught in and out of schools by education charities, who justify some of the intense teaching

regimes in the name of social justice. I have also tried to capture the visual organisation and sonic

output of the teaching sessions in my observations, and how they might affect students and nurture

a child’s education. The teaching methods observed were diverse and multi-sensory, and a variety of

knowledges are being delivered by different organisations. The delivery of classical music

education by LMM, Sistema England, and the Nucleo Project has not inspired ‘creativity’ in the

sense that children are free to apply the knowledges gained from their tuition in creating individual

perceptions of music. Instead, these students are required to reproduce musical exercises given to

them and then, by judging on the reproducible ability of these students, so opportunities arise such

as continued tuition and the opportunity to make connections with professional musicians and

tutors. It is a narrow form of prescriptive training that involves intense group work and

performances. By observing concerts like this through a Foucauldian discourse analysis, I can

identify behaviours of discipline and order, behaviours that should be further examined in modern

pedagogical practice.

It is through the ability to succeed within these conditions that ‘social justice’ occurs for the

handful of individuals who participate in such programmes. In paying particular attention to

Sistema England, it seems that an educational methodology and an aesthetic value system (body

and instrument discipline) is being preserved, rather than the sonic outputs of classical music itself.

In educating children in pieces of music that are not found within the western classical canon, I

therefore offer the perspective that the charity places a great emphasis on the visual harmony

produced by an orchestra. Small (1996) would greatly detest the manner in which the aesthetic

process is prioritised and consecrated in classical music education. Small argues that the aim of all

art is to enable individuals to live and perceive the social world in which they live in. Art allows

individuals to explore their environments and conceptualise them, therefore, as Small argues, an

artist is ‘no less than a scientist in his laboratory’ (Small 1996:4). The importance of the art-process,

therefore, is extremely important, as the ‘ingredients’ found within that art-process heavily

influence a student’s formulation and output of music. The practice of organising and reproducing

found in Sistema England and London Music Masters is one that is attempting to be preserved, and

risks the alienation of a group of people from classical music if they are unable to perform it.

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A strong mandate towards social justice that I have observed from my research into Sistema

England and the London Music Masters is the sense of community produced in schools and local

communities. It is through the orchestra, or through group learning, that these students have

developed a shared identity and intersubjectivity in their education. This has been verified by other

studies into Sistema England. The NFER in particular notes that the Sistema project has enhanced

‘children’s social and emotional wellbeing and improving their attitudes to learning; enhancing

parents’ pride and confidence that their children can succeed; and enhancing teachers’ expectations

of their pupils’ (Lord et al., 2013: vi). Through my observations of AMP, the sonic capability of

music is immense as well, and worthy of consideration in how it frames and affects social

behaviours. Sleight (2015) presented evidence to the British Cardiovascular Conference that by

listening to Verdi, a renowned classical music composer, the music ‘has a noticeable calming effect

on listeners because it matches the body’s natural 10-second waves of blood-pressure

control’ (Sleight, 2015). If this is indeed verifiable on a macro-scale, then the sonic qualities of

classical music must be considered in further research in shaping the social conditions of schools

and community projects. The sensory affect of music was evident in observing the reactions of

students listening to professional performers play at the Apollo Music Projects workshop. The sonic

dimension in music education is intense, and can perhaps blind us, as researchers and

educationalists, from inspecting the mechanics, the purpose, and history of classical music. It is not

that this form of music should not be studied, but that the output of it could create a fetishisation of

classical music and its social and ideological implications, as well as an ignorance of other musical

genres and cultures.

However, the premise that the intense classical music performer training aids social justice

or educational attainment in the long-term is unclear. At present, there is no published research

confirming how this sense of community is maintained after these students progress from primary

school, and how students can progress with their classical musical tuition. As discussed earlier,

students are dependent on the interventional behaviour of their local Music Hubs, who we have

established are not yet fulfilling their role in knowing or ensuring ‘excellent’ music education in

their partner schools. It is also questionable how much classical music education, or any form of

music education, has an impact on the consumption and application of music in young people’s

lives. As the ABRSM report shows (discussed on page 15), many children are formulating their own

interactions with music. The work of AMP, on the other hand, wishes to create an individual

connection between spectator and music, where the sonic output of classical music is examined

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through a variety of dimensions, encouraging a various amount of creative responses. This

intervention should be considered further in relation to how students interact with classical music,

and to perhaps consider how other genres of music can be introduced to students through this mode

of education. There is still a lot of work to be done within this area. There is a wide variety of music

education charities at work in the United Kingdom, and the approach they are taking towards music

education is worthy of attention. For example, ‘The Grand Union Orchestra’ is a music education

charity that wishes to educate students and teachers through a variety of musical genres, which

could prove interesting pedagogic differentials to the work of charities such as Sistema England and

the LMM.

The involvement of all social enterprises in music education must raise questions into how

Ofsted can ensure teaching excellence. Both the curriculum and teaching methods are diverse and -

after my conversations with practitioners at these charities – it appears that measurement of musical

excellence has not reached a consensus. There are also issues in how the current setup of music

education creates correlations between music attainment, literacy and numeracy for individuals.

Research carried about from the Pro Bro Economics (Allas and Monahan, 2014) and NatCen

(Haywood et al., 2015) currently demonstrates this, indicating a rethink needed for both music

charities and educationalists in identifying the role and nature of music in our lives, and how it

should be taught and measured by schools. This, I argue, is unhelpful, as it tries to quantify sonic

and visual evidence, and then to correlate it into another form of knowledge.

Small (1996) argues that the relationship between music and individual is complicated, and

the framing of music education in these schools is too focused on the performative capacity of

students. I echo this critique offered by Small, and would welcome the examination of what it is to

be a musician in the twenty first century. Is it one that can solely perform? Or is it also an individual

that consumes music on a regular basis, is aware of the context of certain genres of music, and may

perhaps engage in musical collaboration with peers. As I have examined in this dissertation, the

intense regimes of collaboration provide positive social outcomes in the schools of Sistema England

and the LMM. This consideration needs to be taken up by educationalists and music education

charities, who should progress from the need to train classical music performers, towards the aim to

train musicians instead. Music education should generate multiple, fluid outcomes that are creative

and relevant to as many individuals as possible.

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