Upon receiving this book I wondered if I had received it some six years too late! However, by the publication date this proves not to be the case. In many ways the weakest aspect of this book is its title. Its first incarnation was as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory, and it is in the domain of music education philosophy that the book really lies. Although ‘practice’ features in the title, the strength of the book is in being thought-provoking and challenging, not to mention difficult in places. Looking to it for solutions to daily classroom problems will, however, prove fruitless! The look and feel of the book remains that of an academic journal, and there is a clever editorial choice of ordering for the individual section: indeed a logical and crypto-linear narrative is a strength of this book, and a sign of a thoughtful editor.

In Regelski's chapter there is a discussion of the context for music education from the perspective of the USA, but there seems to be applicability to other locations too. Regelski writes of music teachers being practitioners, and that this makes them different from other subject areas. This seems to over-specialise the argument for music, as surely art teachers and PE teachers are also practitioners? However, the case he makes for classroom music teachers coming from a primarily Western Classical tradition, although breaking down somewhat on this side of the Atlantic at least, does have resonances, and is one which appears later in this book. His argument for the praxial nature of music education is quite compelling, with a logical questioning of music education as ‘music-appreciation-as-connoisseurship’, where learning about music takes the place of musical experience. There is a concern here for what Swanwick (Reference Swanwick1999) calls ‘teaching music musically’, and Regelski observes that ‘general musicianship [what might be called classroom music lessons in the UK] should be developed via the “doing” of selected musical practices . . .’ (p. 21). A lengthy discussion of theoretical concerns provides a basis for placing music(k)ing at the heart of what teachers do, and ‘making a difference’ involves students being ‘better able to “do” music . . .’ (p. 21) as a result.

Bowman's article which follows takes a different stance, and explores the nature of music education and values in Western society today. His discussion of ‘the technical rationalism that has come to predominate music education’ (p. 29) resonates with the way in which the National Curriculum is delivered in the UK, where ‘mechanistic enactment rather than creative exploration’ (p. 29) designed to satisfy external criteria seem all too often to be found. This, and other ills, he argues, are due to a collapse in values. The notion of initial teacher training being an area where ‘training has long since replaced genuine education’ (p. 30) also rings true. Fortunately we have been spared thus far what Finney calls ‘the prevalence of advocacy over rationale’ (Finney, Reference Finney2006), but the idea that ‘there is a rush to improve music education by ever more efficient centralized and efficiently managed systems’ is one which many academics and classroom practitioners will recognise. So what can be done to restore meaning and values? Drawing on Dewey, Bowman suggests that ‘the insight that values are malleable and constructed rather than fixed and unalterable is among the most important things a musical education should deliver’ (p. 41). This is hard to place into an ontological commitment, though, and the exhortation to help students ‘learn to cherish the risk-and-responsibility-laden world of creative action’ (p. 43) is left unoperationalised. However, suggesting that music education should occupy a middle ground, a ‘space-between, praxis guided by phronesis’ (p. 41) is a compelling one for our times. Maybe Bowman is wise to leave the implementation of such a programme for others to define!

The chapter by Davis investigates music education and cultural identity. The foundations of contemporary attitudes being laid in the 19th century, particularly from a European perspective, is logical and compelling. The role of music education in forming feelings of ‘local and national cultural allegiance’ (p. 49) hints at an unvoiced argument as to whether programmes devised in central Europe in the 19th century can still have direct applicability today (cf. Mills, Reference Mills2005). Davis notes that the ‘role of world music . . . becomes crucial in unsettling the presuppositions of music knowledge’ (p. 58). Indeed ‘it is the responsibility of the music teacher to trace out the multiple and complexly contested identities that make up the culture in which music is implanted’ (p. 59). This seems a tall order for classroom practitioners, particularly as Davis later notes that ‘music education is itself a move within cultural identity’ (p. 60). Compare this with Lucy Green's observation that ‘the inclusion of popular, as well as jazz and other world musics in both instrumental tuition and school curricula represents the addition of a new educational content, but has not necessarily been accompanied by any corresponding change in teaching strategy’ (Green, Reference Green2001: 184): how to teach and challenge identities in the secondary school context still seems problematic.

This chapter segues neatly into the next, where Lines (who is also the editor) investigates improvisation and culture. Lines treads a well-worn path describing how non-Western musics do not ‘detach improvisation from other conceptions of music production and dissemination’ (p. 66). Highly relevant to those who devise classroom schemes of work, and harking back to earlier chapters is the notion that ‘in many Western music education programmes, the pre-composed work has become “exulted” or superior to the act of musicking itself’ (p. 66). The dialogic nature of improvisation is highly commended as a way of understanding culture, and links to an interesting discussion of the ‘text and context’ (p. 70) debate, where popular music studies stand in favour of the contextual nature of music, and in opposition to academicians’ views of music as text. From the classroom perspective this argument is redolent of Green's (Reference Green1988) notion of intrinsic and delineated meaning.

This takes us logically to the next chapter, in which Lucy Green develops the argument for intrinsic and delineated meanings being integral, not only to our understandings of music, but also to the ways in which it is taught and learned in classrooms. This, in itself, becomes an amplification of the text-context debate, but with specific reference to the views and experiences of adolescents, both in and out of the classroom. Inherent meanings, she argues, are ‘contained within the musical object’ (p. 77), whereas delineated meanings are ‘loosely suggested or metaphorically sketched by the music in relation to its social context’ (p. 78). This has implications for students in classrooms, since if they ‘are perfectly sure that Western classical music is intended only for “boffins” and very boring adults . . . they are likely to dismiss its inherent meanings as being equally boring” (p. 83). Quite. This issue was compounded during the 20th century by two factors, Green argues. One factor was that music teachers tended to ‘operate within an aesthetic of classical musical autonomy’ (p. 86), and assumed jazz, pop, rock, and world musics to operate within a similar aesthetic. The other problem, pace Bowman above, ‘was, and continues to be, that teachers tend to be largely trained in classical music themselves’ (p. 86). Although ‘there is new content in the music classroom, the teaching strategies mitigate against its authenticity’ (p. 86). Or, to use a different metaphor, you cannot speak one language with the grammar and syntax of another.

However, Green's is not a chapter of doom, gloom, and hand-wringing; and hope for the future lies in the fact that when students make and play their own music, they are in control, and have ownership, of meanings, since in ‘making music, students have a direct effect upon inherent meanings, indeed bring them into being, and are thus able to imbue the music with a delineated content of their own’ (p. 89). Music education, therefore, ‘continues to be worthwhile’ as it ‘offers us the potential to challenge our understandings and awareness at a deep, symbolic level’ (p. 89). This chapter offers a strong challenge to the sorts of centrally imposed outcomes-driven curricula that proliferate in a number of contexts around the world.

The editorial construction of a narrative thread is again evidenced in the next article where Elliott discusses ‘Musical Works, and Emotional Expression: Implications for education’. This is, to some extent, an exegesis of his philosophy of music education (Elliott, Reference Elliott1995), focusing on what might be termed affective matters. The central thrust of his thesis is that ‘a strictly formal approach to musical analysis is insufficient to capture all the dimensions of a musical work, especially the expressional dimension’ (p. 100). His point is that teachers ‘seldom teach students how to hear, interpret, and create musical works in relation to . . . “expressional” musical meanings’ (p. 92), and he recommends that students should be presented ‘with interpretive problems to solve in performance projects, composition projects, arranging projects, and so on’ (p. 100) – although how this might work for, say secondary age pupils, is inferred, rather than articulated. He observes that ‘school music programs today tend to privilege the design dimensions of musical works to the exclusion of all others . . . Thus music teachers . . . teach students to listen to, “analyze” (and thereby ‘understand’) music by breaking pieces down into sections and “elements” . . .’ (p. 93, author's parentheses). This chimes with UK National Curriculum lessons where 11-year-old students are asked to make up pieces focusing on timbre, but excluding rhythm and pitch.

Elliott goes on to argue that emotional responses occur in a figure-ground relationship between audiated music (as figure) and cultural ground, such as the Western tonal system. This means that enculturated listeners ‘have come to know musical sadness when they hear it’ (p. 97). This seems a complex background for the classroom teacher working in multi-ethnic inner-city context, and it is no wonder that when faced with a simultaneous multiplicity of potential ‘grounds’ teachers try to steer a safe middle-course. However, using Elliott's argument, emotional content, surely a key attractor for adolescents from many backgrounds, should be addressed, the problem being that ‘sounds do not feel; sounds do not “have emotions”‘ (p. 91), but people do.

Having had a number of instances where the background and training of music teachers has been criticised, the next chapter, by McPhee, Stollery, and McMillan looks at the development of student music teachers’ talents in Scotland and Australia. This chapter sits slightly uneasily between a discussion of musical giftedness, and research into student teacher attitudes, but nonetheless contains some useful nuggets of information, including the finding that the Australians rated the ‘feel-good’ factor of music participation higher than their Scots counterparts (anyone who has read Ian Rankin will not be surprised by this!). What does come across strongly here is the notion that musical giftedness ‘is not simply the preserve of an elite few . . . it is possible to for it to be developed in many more, through teaching’ (p. 104).

Inter-chapter thematic congruity continues into the next, by Koopman, investigating issues associated with the non-related topics of performativity – in the Lyotard-ian sense (Lyotard, Reference Lyotard1984) – and aestheticisation – ‘the process in which the aesthetic . . . permeates all kinds of domains’ (p. 120). Kow-towing to paradigms of performativity, Koopman suggests is a lost cause; better to concentrate on the rich experiences it provides. Aestheticisation, although superficially linked to music education, has led to music being ‘profoundly infected by the trivialising influence of commercialism’ (p. 127). Here Koopman sounds like a voice from the 19th century preaching the virtues of music as a social panacea. I take issue with his attitude that pupils can gain worthwhile experiences ‘even in listening to some commercially produced CDs’ (p. 127), as for many secondary school pupils, this activity will in fact lie at the heart of their own musical identities, and will be the starting point or their own musical journeys.

In the final chapter Mansfield considers the use of technology in music education, using Heidegger's questioning concerning technology, and finds its applicability to human music-making somewhat lacking, or, as she puts it: ‘the presence of absence is everywhere’ (p. 141). The argument for the use of technology as a cultural tool is complex, and Mansfield is concerned with overemphasis in technology resulting in ‘less use of musical instruments, a reduction in the physicality of music-making’ (p. 140). This is not a Luddite argument, her concern is with the human condition: ‘“being musical” and the protection of musicality become critical issues for music education’ (p. 143).

So, what results from these diverse offerings? The book will be of interest to cultural philosophers, music education academics and curriculum theorists. Classroom practitioners at home reading academic journal articles may well have their preconceptions challenged, and are likely to feel, in the UK at least, that behaviourist-driven notions of QTS (qualified teacher status) standards and classroom competencies leave them ill-equipped to tackle ‘big picture’ issues such as those presented here. For a disquieting view of the vacuous rhetoric all too readily found in the corners of the globe represented by the contributors, this book provides intellectual stimulation. A lot of it had me shouting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (equally loudly) at it – but it provoked a response. Hopefully that was its purpose!