The ‘Conquest of Abundance’ of (forms of) musical knowledge

There is a clear parallel between Feyerabend's account of the conquest of abundance in terms of general knowledge and music education's conquest of abundance in its quest for what many members of our profession believe to be scientific legitimacy. If there are no grounds for placing scientific understanding above other ways of understanding the world, then music education methods supposedly grounded in scientific research should not necessarily garner any special place over less systematic methods of understanding music and transmitting musical knowledge, particularly informal means of teaching and learning and any means of educating musically that elude or challenge theoretically established methods. But more importantly, a logical extension of the previous argument shows that such modes of teaching, learning, and knowing constitute the ad hoc propositions and counterinductive ideas that are necessary for the advancement of musical knowledge. In referring to ‘theoretically established methods’, I am drawing a distinction between theoretical work (the world of ideas) and established theory. ‘Theory’ in the sense that I am using it here refers to that which is well established, and all theories, once established, have a tendency to present themselves as reified which is the underlying problem being discussed here in relation to Feyerabend's line of thought. In this sense, there is an important difference between those who work within the established parameters of existing theory and those (such as critical pedagogues) who do theoretical work that challenges existing notions.

A major shortcoming of pursuing knowledge by working exclusively within, as opposed to against, established theory is that theories naturally indicate a set of tools with which to pursue solutions to problems that fall only within their purview. Feyerabend writes that ‘those problems that yield to the attack are pursued most vigorously, precisely because the method works there. Other problems and other phenomena are left behind, walled off from understanding by the commitment to Cartesianism’ (Reference FEYERABEND1999, p. 142). Estelle Jorgensen (Reference JORGENSEN2009), commenting on how a majority of empirical music education research tends to focus on seemingly ‘superficial and self-evident problems’ at the expense of problems that deal with the complex nature of music education, basically comes to the same conclusion – that the pre-established tools of inquiry are forged in such a way as to attack problems that may not be all that important and, at any rate, will certainly not bring about a paradigm shift if one is needed (p. 407). I argue that this concern should also extend to music education practice, where a commitment to the traditional, mistaken notion of scientific method succeeds in walling off tacit musical knowledge, all those elements of connoisseurship that are immeasurable, and all aspects of musicianship that are (as yet?) too subtle to be measured.

The reason I am claiming a special place for informal music learning and connoisseurship is that these phenomena, although they encompass much that can be specified, also contain much that cannot, and what cannot are forms of musical knowledge that are unacknowledged in the realm of logic and theory, which obviously holds considerable sway in formal educational contexts. This line of thought was first explored by Wayne Bowman (Reference BOWMAN1980), who built his arguments on those of the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi. Polanyi agrees with Feyerabend that subjectivity cannot be purged from the pursuit of scientific theories. His principal thesis is that the human act of asserting any statement as fact is necessarily accompanied by a personal commitment, which derives from a framework of belief. Since facts can only be asserted within a framework, he concludes that the ultimate bases of our scientific beliefs cannot be asserted, but must simply be acknowledged as part of this (subjective) framework. In this sense, all knowledge is personal, as even the most ‘objective’ facts involve appraisal and commitment on the part of the knower (1958, p. 60).

Polanyi's central argument differs from Feyerabend's insofar as the former focuses on the notion of personal knowledge as a key component of reason. The argument is predicated on a distinction between two types of awareness: focal awareness and subsidiary awareness. These mental states are mutually exclusive in the sense that one cannot be aware of the specific content that comprises subsidiary awareness while concentrating on focal content. Using music as an example, Polanyi asserts the ‘well known fact that the aim of a skillful performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them’ (1958, p. 49, author's italics). A pianist, for example, is not aware while performing of the particular actions required by her fingers in order to execute a piece of music. Her focal awareness is directed at the whole process of performing. When focal attention shifts to the subsidiary elements of an action such as playing the piano, the result is self-consciousness or ‘stage fright’. In this case, the subsidiary elements of playing the piano are considered to be ‘logically unspecifiable’, because for the performer to specify them would ‘logically contradict what is implied in the performance or context in question.’ (p. 56). Thus the particular ‘rules’ of skilful performance must remain tacit or hidden by dissolving themselves into subsidiary awareness, so that, collectively, they can serve as a tool, or framework, for connoisseurship. Therefore ‘connoisseurship, like skill, can be communicated only by example, not by precept’ (p. 54).

Bowman (Reference BOWMAN1980) has articulated implications of Polanyi's argument for the field of music education, referring to connoisseurship as ‘the ultimate goal of any truly musical endeavor’, and insisting that this state of knowledge, in which ‘discriminative ability extends far beyond the domain of that which [the connoisseur] is able to articulate’, is arrived at by ‘forgetting’ or ‘obliterating’ specific content (i.e. propositional knowledge) and allowing it to dissolve into the context of subsidiary knowledge (pp. 236–237). Bowman concludes that one of the primary objectives of music education is the building of contexts, since what is specifiable in music becomes truly meaningful only once it has dissolved into a context of subsidiary awareness, or as Polanyi put it, once it has been ‘integrated into the practical knowledge of an art’ (p. 50). The notion of a lack of logical specifiability marks the point at which Feyerabend's and Polanyi's lines of thought come into contact with one another. Lack of specifiability also places informal music learning practices and connoisseurship at risk of a ‘flattening’, or abstracting process whereby the richness of their knowledge content may be drained in formal educational settings if educators succumb to the idea that only theoretically justifiable or methodically generated musical knowledge ‘counts’.

Preoccupation with ‘Method’ in North American music education

Two interrelated principles of Feyerabend's anarchistic theory are particularly suitable for gaining insights into the problem of obsessive scientism in North American music education practice. These are: (1) the notion that uniformity is mistakenly considered a sign of epistemological health and (2) the idea that observational language masks the ideological components embedded in natural interpretations, thus leading one to believe that scientific observation is a neutral endeavour and reinforcing (1). I will now offer examples of how these principles apply to music education practice with respect to the Kodály method and Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory, as these two methods,Footnote ² which are both influential in North American contexts, stake the greatest claims for scientific legitimacy. In the discussion that follows and for the remainder of the essay, the term ‘method’ should be understood to refer to instructional methods; however, because method in the general sense has been highly influenced by notions of strict adherence to logic and sequence that are associated with the (mis)conception of scientific method, the two concepts are somewhat difficult to disentangle. These examples are intended to demonstrate that Feyerabend's concept of madness as a crucial ingredient in method is often overlooked when the concept is applied too strictly.

The Kodály method, which uses indigenous folk music to teach sight-singing skills in a systematic manner in order to achieve its primary objectives of music literacy and an appreciation for the masterworks of Western art music, has been ‘accused of’ scientism already (for example, Woodford, Reference WOODFORD2000). But I am interested in assessing the degree to which North American adaptations of this popular system (which was gradually internationalised) exhibit these two particular principles. The well known Kodály specialist Lois Choksy gives some indication in her numerous publications. In prefacing the second (1988) edition of The Kodály Method, she explains her primary reason for revising the 1974 text, which was that the first edition was not sufficiently prescriptive. There was never any consideration given to revisiting any of the underlying principles of the method, which were thought to ‘remain immutable’ (p. xiv).

Although the musical content of sequences can (and should, according to Kodály specialists) vary, strict adherence to sequence based on a progressive introduction of less common intervals and rhythms is emphasised in the method because this organisational structure is believed to reflect ‘normal child abilities at various stages of growth’ (Choksy, Reference CHOKSY1988, p. 10). Kodály's belief that children's music learning invariably occurs in fixed stages, following a Piaget-like model, has been challenged on the grounds that it does not accurately reflect postmodern views of knowledge and it reduces complex learning processes to simplistic, generic formulae (Woodford, Reference WOODFORD2000). Yet, if Choksy's texts are any indication, faith in the scientific claims of a universal sequence of learning continues to provide the bedrock of legitimacy for this methodical approach, which may well explain the method's popularity. Implying that it would be unhealthy to expose students to epistemological conflict, one of the more popular books on Kodály states that educators must reach a consensus on ‘a core of basic ideas about music’ before they can ‘possibly hope to teach music to children’ (Choksy, Reference CHOKSY1981, p. 150, italics added).

Of additional concern is the use of what we (following Feyerabend) can call observational language to gloss over natural interpretations when making scientific claims. For example, the claim that ‘the major second, minor third, and perfect fourth appear to be part of a universal musical vocabulary for young children’ (Choksy, Reference CHOKSY1999, p. 11) casually maps western tonal constructs onto children's chants the world over, as if such constructs as interval names were parts of musical phenomena themselves and not simply one way among many to conceive of music. Note the use of observational language to describe what is in fact a natural interpretation. The ‘natural’ use of the labels describing western tonal constructs masks the fact that they are constructs and implies instead that they are part of the ‘scientific observation’. The same can be said for tonic solfa when it is employed to describe the results of observations about children's singing. Indeed, the limited tools with which the Kodály teacher must work (tonic solfa, hand signs, and a specific set of rhythm syllables) reinforces the idea that they are the only correct tools possible for teaching and learning music, and therefore the only correct way to conceive of music. As social constructs, musical concepts should be even less prone to claims of universality than facts about our physical reality that are grounded in scientific theories. Yet Choksy has claimed that ‘there are a finite number of basic musical concepts’ and that these transcend cultural differences (1981, p. 153).

Another parallel to the mistaken, unified view of science is the Kodály method's built-in mechanism for reinforcing assumptions about what constitutes good music. In the most recent (1999) edition of The Kodály Method (Vol. I), we see reiterated the principal claim inherited from Kodály that music education of the highest quality must utilise as its materials only ‘authentic’ children's games and songs, ‘authentic folk music’, and ‘good composed music, that is, music written by recognised composers’ (p. 15). Leaving aside the tautology underlying the third item, both ‘authentic’ folk songs and European masterworks can be viewed as the artistic equivalents of popular scientific theories that hold sway for extended periods of time. The only difference is that their legitimacy is supported not by existing evidence that is consistent with current facts but by musical evidence that is consistent with a set of (unspoken) criteria for good composition. For evidence of these tacit assumptions one need look no further than Kodály himself, who refers, in his writings, to ‘botched’ attempts at musical composition, ‘pale’ imitations of original melodies, and ‘distorted’ folksongs. And in terms of non-Hungarian music ‘only masterpieces’ are to be allowed into the curriculum (Kodály, Reference KODÁLY, Halápy, Macnicol and Bónis1974, pp. 145, 125). The point is that widely accepted criteria for good music are, like scientific ‘facts’, laden with ideological assumptions.

The American music educator and researcher Edwin Gordon, as anyone who is familiar with his writing knows, claims to have developed the only music learning theory that is based on scientific evidence. Of interest to the present discussion is the extent to which Gordon's theory is permeated by absolute statements supported by appeals to scientific knowledge when in reality absolutism and science are historically incompatible. The theory is predicated on the belief that all children possess objectively measurable amounts of music aptitude, with which all are born, and which fluctuate somewhat in response to environmental conditions up to about age nine and never thereafter (Gordon, Reference GORDON2007, p. 1–2). Standardised aptitude tests play an important role in the theory, since they are to be used by teachers to best decide how to adapt the learning sequences to individual student needs. There is a hard distinction drawn between the objective measures of such tests (as shown by their validity and reliability) and the subjective evaluations of teachers who interpret their results. When there is disagreement between the two, valid test results are perceived as a valuable corrective to teacher perceptions (p. 5).

Gordon's specific music learning method, which derives from the theory, consists of a series of skill and content learning sequences, which are far more important in Gordon's value system than techniques or materials (such as sheet music), since the latter two elements may or may not be used in a way that services the method (Reference GORDON1989, pp. 30–31, 241). Early on in his influential book, Learning Sequences in Music (1988), Gordon makes what he considers a crucial distinction between the terms ‘technique’ and ‘method’. While technique is simply defined as a pedagogical aid that works to accomplish one or more objectives, method is ‘the order in which sequential objectives are introduced in a course of study to accomplish a comprehensive objective, a goal’ (p. 28). Gordon defines ‘appropriate method’ in terms of correct sequence (i.e. a logical sequence of activities that has been scientifically proven to obtain learning outcomes; in fact, the terms ‘music learning theory’ and ‘music learning sequences’ are synonymous in Gordon's view). The measurable outcome of greatest interest, according to Gordon, is the ability to audiate musical patterns, and this outcome provides the basis of his theory. Audiation is defined as ‘hearing and comprehending music silently’ (Reference GORDON1989, p. 7). There are various types and stages of audiation in Gordon's theory, which posits a rigid hierarchy of learning skills, which underlines strong structuralist assumptions about musical knowledge.

The published claims of Gordon's theory are stated in absolutist terms and stake their legitimacy on scientific method as it is popularly conceived.Footnote ³ There is arguably a causal relationship between the forcefulness of these claims and the theory's popularity among some music educators. Its propagation is an excellent example of the power of the idea of uniformity as demonstrated by its widespread appeal in certain quarters of the United States, where it has arguably attained paradigm status. Evidence includes: well over 40 educational publications and/or electronic resources currently available through GIA Publishing; the establishment of the Gordon Institute for Music Learning (GIML), a non-profit organisation with its own bi-annual journal devoted to disseminating Gordon's theory and offering an accreditation programme that certifies teachers to become fluent in the method; a proliferation of articles whose aim is to instruct music teachers in how to apply the method in various contexts while seldom if ever questioning the underlying assumptions of the theory;Footnote ⁴ and in certain universities, a learning culture that – owing to a strong presence of Gordon's proponents – can best be described as orthodox with regard to prevailing attitudes toward the theory. Eric Bluestine, author of a relatively recent textbook intended for practical use by teachers, goes so far as to refer to the principles of the theory as ‘irrefutable truths about music and music education’ (Reference BLUESTINE2000, pp. 60–61). This phrase, along with the phrase ‘universal truths’, is actually used repeatedly throughout the text. All of these factors contribute to a messianic zeal among music educators who gravitate toward ideas that are ostensibly grounded in science (Jorgensen, Reference JORGENSEN2005, p. 32). Indeed, the quasi-religious following that Gordon's body of work has engendered clearly appeals to educators who believe, as does Gordon, that refusing to confine oneself to one method is the equivalent of teaching without purpose (Gordon, Reference GORDON2007, p. 31).

For evidence of observational language that obscures the socially constructed nature of musical listening we need look no further than the terms ‘aptitude’ and ‘audiation’. In Gordon's theory a student's musical aptitude is indeed precisely measurable and can arguably be shown to develop only up until about age nine; however we must ask ourselves what, exactly, is being measured. The answer is the student's ability to audiate, as defined by Gordon and measured by his tests. The use of the word ‘audiation’ to describe the process of assigning (appropriate?) meaning to musical patterns is a form of observational language that collapses the difference between what is socially constructed and valued pre-eminently as music and what is ‘naturally’ heard. There are hidden ideological assumptions within this concept that value a communicative view of music over, say, an emotional or any other number of views, and this is made clear when Gordon claims that music, performance and audiation ‘have parallel meanings’ to language, speech and thought (Gordon, Reference GORDON2007, p. 5). Further, and much more significantly, what Gordon means by communication is not the musical equivalent of a constructive model of language use but rather something like a transmission model. Woodford (Reference WOODFORD1996) notes that Gordon's theory is ‘neither constructive nor generative in nature’ owing to the fact that it leaves no room for students to construct ‘their own original musical patterns and ideas’ (p. 88). This is a crucial point, as it underscores how Gordon's hierarchical system does not question but rather reinforces music's traditional categories while associating the terms ‘aptitude’ and ‘audiation’ with scientific method, which serves to hide the socially constructed nature of those categories.

In each of these cases both the method through which the theory came about and the method of music learning prescribed for children are projected as having legitimacy based on the assumption that scientific knowledge is: (a) more legitimate than other forms of knowledge, and (b) advances according to principles that we traditionally, yet mistakenly, associate with scientific method. To reiterate, those principles are: that uniformity is preferable to epistemological conflict; that it is possible to make observational statements about the world that are immune from natural interpretations and the ideological assumptions that underpin them; and that, as a consequence of proving itself consistent with known facts, theoretical knowledge may claim a superior status to any alternatives.

Concluding thoughts

It is worth reiterating that Feyerabend does not wish to do away with scientific method; rather, he wants to emphasise the integral role that conflict and non-methodical thought play in the advancement of knowledge, to show that ‘pure’ rationalism cannot advance knowledge without recourse to at least some ‘bullying’ tactics. Further, he is acutely aware of the pedagogical implications of his position, as he facetiously remarks that his ‘pluralistic methodology’ does not conform to the traditional, reproductive role of schools, a point with which critical pedagogues agree:

In a related vein, Donald Schön (Reference SCHÖN1987) writes that

There is indeed enhanced status and respect associated with any profession that appears to possess a unified body of theoretical knowledge embossed with the magical stamp of so-called scientific method. If educators as a group have an inferiority complex about their professional status, then music educators, who work in a field of ‘soft’ knowledge, seem to have even more to prove. Interestingly, despite all the rhetoric about rigour and standards, the two most quantifiable criteria for entry into music teacher education programmes in the United States, tests of musical skills and Grade Point Average, were not found to be reliable indicators of teaching success at the pre-service level (Pembrook & Craig, Reference PEMBROOK, CRAIG, Colwell and Richardson2002, p. 801). Unfortunately, however, professional aspirations that manifest themselves as obsessive scientism continue to push our profession toward a mistaken view of musical knowledge as unified and discoverable in its entirety.

The tendency to associate conflict with unhealthiness can be traced back to the relatively recent (although in some ways continuing) prevalence of positivism and, in particular, overly structural accounts of knowledge. Cherryholmes (Reference CHERRYHOLMES1988) notes that in the field of curriculum studies ‘an array of metaphors related to death and illness have been used to describe the field’ in light of its lack of consensus on crucial issues, definitions and approaches. The idea that conflict signifies illness or death of a field of knowledge is a gross misconception, however, because ‘internal conflicts and turmoil are not anomalous but characterise all fields of study’ (p. 131). Nevertheless, she feels that scholars in curriculum studies may be more likely to perceive conflict as a sign of moribundity when comparing their situation to that of other fields of study because ‘the absence of foundations is simply more noticeable in curriculum’ (p. 149). One wonders if a parallel situation exists in music education. Perhaps the lack of obvious foundational principles in a relatively young field of study (certainly compared with the ‘hard’ sciences), in which competing philosophies and theories are still (thankfully) fighting it out, is misperceived by music educators, who are prejudiced by long-standing positivist and structuralist assumptions, as a sign of the supposedly inferior state of knowledge in our field.

According to the thinking that derives from this misperception, the situation must be addressed by striving to ‘unearth’ a set of foundational principles that can be agreed upon more or less unanimously and permanently, thus restoring a sense of health and legitimacy to the field. As Jorgensen (Reference JORGENSEN2003) notes, the (US) National Standards movement of the 1990s is a perfect example of this type of reaction because it was ‘predicated on the notion that there is a universal structure [of knowledge] against which standards may be measured’ (p. 36). Along these lines, Cathy Benedict (Reference BENEDICT2004) observes that campaigns for music to be accorded ‘high status knowledge’ automatically translate into a search for basic ‘truths’ (p. 8). But as critical pedagogues Purpel and Shapiro (Reference PURPEL and SHAPIRO1993) point out, the mistaken notion that a basic set of truths in any field can be uncovered through methodical means ‘eliminates the process of struggle and conflict through which human beings have constantly sought to challenge and remake their worlds’ (p. 103).

Surely a major reason this sense of struggle remains hidden is the widespread acceptance of the myth that Feyerabend tried to dispel: that the strictly applied scientific method – as opposed to randomly generated creative insights or counterinductive propositions – is the progenitor of all our significant knowledge including musical knowledge. The mistaken notion that important revolutions in thought are attributed in all cases to the methodical and consistent process of abandoning old hypotheses in favour of newer, successfully tested ones has led to a view of knowledge as a monolithic structure that is constantly being repaired and added to but is otherwise more or less stable. Major paradigm shifts, as Kuhn (Reference KUHN1970) argues, are not portrayed as the results of counterinduction because textbooks are rewritten after every revolution to mask this fact. According to Kuhn, textbooks ‘disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them’ (p. 137).

If, as Feyerabend insists, we have been conditioned by our respect for method (in the strict sense of the term) to overlook the importance of mutually inconsistent theories to the empirical process itself, then it follows that music educators will probably not consider it important to discuss alternatives that are inconsistent with whatever they believe to be the leading theory or method. Equally important is the fact that they will perceive conflict as a source of embarrassment, an indication of disciplinary immaturity. One way of interpreting Feyerabend's argument is as an acknowledgement that conflict and counterinduction have always existed as crucial components of scientific method and that perhaps we should therefore repackage the phrase to include this notion of conflict. In any event, the term method has arguably taken on these connotations in the more general sense in which it is used in education. In Teaching Music in the Twenty-First Century (2001), Choksy et al. (Reference CHOKSY, ABRAMSON, GILLESPIE, WOODS and YORK2001) define music education method as necessarily having ‘a unified body of pedagogy unique to it’ (p. 2). This belief appears to maintain widespread acceptance, at least in North American contexts. Perhaps it is time that we make room for the notion of a music teaching method that not only includes but actively engages with overlapping, mutually inconsistent theories (as opposed to falling back on the notion of ‘eclecticism’, which implies a friendly but disengaged coexistence of incompatible theories). Whether we choose to embrace conflict as part of method or reject method as overprivileged may in the end amount to the same thing, however. More importantly, if we accept Feyerabend's idea of epistemological conflict as healthy and ‘scientifically-generated’ knowledge as non-privileged, then it follows that systematically acquired and theoretically grounded musical knowledge has no more claim to universal permanence than does untested musical knowledge arising from non-Western musical values, informal musical practices, or any forms of musical knowledge that lie outside the domain of clearly articulable musical concepts.

How can pluralism and contradiction be used in positive ways to offset the ideological effects of particular, reified views, and therefore to advance musical knowledge? The most obvious answer is that music educators should avoid limiting their consciousness by deriving their knowledge of music education entirely from within the confines of one prevailing theory. No one theory can offer a truly objective view of any aspect of reality. Yet as theories solidify and gain adherents over time, the concretisation of their partial views ironically results in ‘the gradual transformation of revolutionary ideas into obstacles to thought’ (Feyerabend, Reference FEYERABEND1988, p. 30). Feyerabend quotes John Stuart Mill to explain how as theories become popularised, they become less well understood because their nuances, their ‘problematic aspects’, dissolve into slogans (p. 30). If one subscribes to a theory wholeheartedly, and particularly in the absence of historical knowledge pertaining to the theory's origin, there is less likelihood of perceiving areas of overlap or dialectical tension between that theory and any rival. Accordingly, there is increased likelihood that the theory in question will become reified or, as Feyerabend prefers to say, fossilised. It is clear that Feyerabend is not advocating what Zavarzadeh and Morton (Reference ZAVARZADEH and MORTON1994) call ‘eclectic pluralism’, whereby the equal weighting of each person's opinion renders the results politically impotent (p. 17). Rather, his insistence that anarchy plays a key role in the advancement of knowledge derives from his understanding that counterinductive ideas, rather than methodical reasoning, can lead to proven truths. Consequently, the implication is that music educators should introduce students to counterinductive ideas about music not as a precursor to laissez-faire relativism but so as to actively engage them in a healthy pluralism out of which new musical knowledge will eventually emerge.