Between 1922 and 1941 Walford Davies linked music in schools with the relatively new media of the gramophone and the radio. His work with the BBC and the Gramophone Company had immense potential. He believed strongly that teachers using the radio and gramophone could contribute to a significant improvement in the musical life of the nation. At the heart ofDavies's educational mission was a belief in the ability of children to compose their own melodies, Davies achieved a high public profile for his work, but was less successful in developing its detail. His teaching method became predictable, and style triumphed over substance. However, it may be more productive to view his work within the context of his notion of fellowship, recovering a sense of community in the arts through the mass media, an attempt to connect different musical worlds.

We have become used over the years to a growing literature addressing the question ‘What's wrong with school music?’ Recently there has been a well-publicised addition to the debate in the form of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's Royal Philharmonic Society lecture, given on 24 April, 2005, and entitled ‘Will serious music become extinct?’

Music as a whole is richer for the coming of jazz. Although its natural performing habitat is the night-club rather than the concert-hall, the fact that many recordings have endured in the public consciousness over several decades, and that jazz-lovers return to these recordings again and again to find new and life-enhancing things expressed in their sounds, would seem to indicate that jazz is more than just ‘entertainment’, although, like the music of Haydn, agreat deal of it is very entertaining. Jazz has openedup new realms of expression, and is capable of conveying deep feeling in the subtlest shades. It has also made a major contribution to the language of music, in giving us new approaches to melody, harmony and rhythm, and extending the range of tonal colours for both instruments and the voice. Its extensions of instrumental virtuosity have formed one of its most impressive achievements. Some instruments, the saxophone for example, had to wait for the emergence of jazz before their full potential could be realised. But the repertoires of established instruments such as the trumpet and the piano have also been greatly stimulated by their encounter with jazz. The theoretical side of jazz is rich in new concepts, or new ways of looking at traditional things such as harmony and scale-patterns. These techniques, together with the individualistic ethos of the jazz performing tradition, have had a profound influence on the popular music enjoyed by huge numbers of young people. The musical language of pop music, of rock, reggae, soul, and other styles, is steeped in the grammar and structures originally developed by jazz musicians.

Teaching traditional art forms in schools and the community has proven an effective way of ensuring the transmission of traditional culture. But due to the lack of valid and normative assessment guidance, the assessments of Cantonese operatic singing are still developing, impairing the instructiveness in its teaching and learning and restraining the education and development of this traditional genre within contemporary society. Accordingly, to guide the design of a holistic assessment, the revised Bloom’s taxonomy was adopted to form a theoretical framework from which a criterion- and standard-based assessment framework with four domains has been proposed. Four teachers and 24 students of Cantonese opera institutions in Guangdong, China, were invited to pilot the assessment framework. Afterwards, semi-structured interviews were conducted from which two research questions were answered satisfactorily: 1) proposing a criteria- and standard-based assessment framework is necessary, for the traditional assessment practice is weak in guiding teaching and learning and 2) positive feedback supported the proposed assessment framework facilitates the teaching and learning of Cantonese operatic singing.

This qualitative research examines the influence of learning Javanese gamelan on aspects of musicianship, attitudes and approaches relating to the learning and performance of Western instruments experienced by a sample of UK university music students. In addition to benefits to musicianship, students delineated positive developments in attitudes and approaches to learning and performance. While bi-musicality may be the prerogative of only those who can maintain expertise concurrently in more than one musical style, the concept of dialogical-musicality is proposed as a construct emphasising productive inter-relationships arising from practical engagement with different musical styles at any level.

This article aims to capture how the Swanwick and Tillman (1986) spiral model of musical development influenced my work as an Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) music coordinator (advisory teacher). It discusses my professional position in a period of teaching prior to the implementation of the National Curriculum for Music, to illustrate dichotomous pedagogical approaches in a developing re-positioning of aesthetic knowledge in music education. Using the example of two Key Stage 2 (KS2) music projects, a brief reflection concludes how the model of musical development and an adapted pedagogic approach facilitated my work in supporting music teachers to embrace music teaching with confidence and to consider what meaningful musical activity for musical learning is and how this might be planned.

Under current legislation, the history of music forms a specific strand of listening and appraising at Key Stages 1 to 3. This article discusses some philosophical and practical aspects of these current requirements, together with their implications for further and higher education, as well as attempting an anticipation of future developments in the light of the recent review of the National Curriculum as a whole.

The writers highlights the difficulties relating to the provision of music education in schools for the emotionally and behaviourally disturbed – formerly labelled maladjusted. Often considered un-teachable within junior and secondary schools, such children are assigned to EBD schools or units where, musically speaking, they seem to fall between the two stools of mainstream and special education, unable to reap the benefits of either. The case is argued for the inclusion of music within a programme of therapeutic education based on the writers research within these schools, and recommendations are made as to how music may be made more accessible within this context.

The development of the guitar in the twentieth century has been sufficiently significant to warrant inclusion at all levels of music education. This article considers the extent and manner of its educational involvement and questions whether the response to the instrument has reflected its true potential.

The position of music history, traditionally regarded as a central element of the music curriculum in higher education as well as in secondary schools, has seemed to be challenged both by recent changes in the curriculum content and by reappraisals of the philosophy and practice of advanced musical study. This article, an expanded version of a paper given in the session on Curriculum Developments in Higher Education at the first British Music Educators' Conference in Huddersfield in July 1989, assesses the impact of these changes and relates them to changing attitudes within the discipline of musicology as well as within other historically based areas of enquiry.

This article seeks to create further professional debate on the practical, political and historical significance of girls' experience in music education, and to suggest possible ways for change.

A secondary schools research project on Music and Gender is outlined and work in one project school where language (especially the words in songs) was the focus is discussed in detail.

Amongst the most fascinating discoveries made in recent years was the identification of the Egyptian songstress Iti (2450 BC) as the first woman composer to have been mentioned by name in musical history. This paper examines the status of professional women musicians in Ancient Egypt, their role in society and their contribution to various aspects of life and death. Reviewing the range of styles, practices and variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles in which women took part as composers, performers and instructors, the author traces the development of a musical tradition which would appear to throw light upon some long standing prejudices, and to have important implications for music education in multi-cultural schools today.

Music making in Africa has been, and is, an essential aspect of living. The philosophy and process of music making in South African schools bares no relevance to this idea. The present situation is that South African music educators are propagating western music education methods, while so-called ‘western’ music educators are turning to Africa to find answers to their perplexing problems. This paradoxical situation highlights the importance of evolving a philosophy and process of intercultural education through music for South Africa which draws upon research into music making in Africa.

Music is a subject enjoyed by many students with a profound hearing loss. The mainstream music curriculum should be made accessible to profoundly deaf students – to the benefit of all. Careful planning is essential.

What would an ideal music education look like? All too often in education research and practice, our vision of how music education might be is constrained by how it is; by the practicalities of funding, teacher expertise, student motivation and curriculum status. Several of the authors in this issue ask us to forget those concerns momentarily, and consider what Dawn Bennett calls a ‘musotopia’ – the ideal that music education might aim for in engaging students with music and preparing them for lifelong involvement. Bennett's interest lies with students in higher education, whose ‘musotopia’ involves adequate preparation for a musical career, rather than the sole focus on instrumental excellence which has characterised past conservatoire models of teaching. Whilst this might be thought of as idealistic, it contains a strong element of realism, with Bennett asking conservatoire tutors to address the diverse skills needed by the next generation of musicians, rather than focusing solely on instrumental excellence.