Increasingly, it is becoming evident that those involved in socio-musical studies must focus their investigative lens on musical practice and articulation of the self, on music and community involvement and on music as a social medium for social relationships. What motivates people to be involved in musical performance, and how do they articulate these needs and drives? What do performers gain from their involvement in musical activities? How do audience members perceive their relationship to the performer, the music and the event? These questions and many more are addressed here with the benefit of detailed empirical work, including case studies of a chamber music festival and a contemporary music summer school. Pitts investigates the value of musical participation for performers and audience members in a range of contexts, using a multi-disciplinary approach to place new empirical data in the framework of existing theory and literature. Themes examined include: the shared musical experience; the social structures of performing societies; how people identify with music; the values implicit in musical preferences; the social responsibilities of the performer; the audience view of concerts and festivals; the social power of music and educational implications and responsibilities. Pitts draws upon literature from musicology, sociology and psychology of music, ethnomusicology, music education and community music to demonstrate the diversity of enquiry about musical behaviours. The conclusions of the book are based upon empirical evidence gleaned through case studies, with the data integrated thematically throughout, to enable a greater depth of discussion than individual studies usually permit.

The Musical Salvationist frames the Salvation Army's contribution to British musical life through the life story of composer, arranger and musical editor Richard Slater (1854-1939), popularly known as the 'Father of SalvationArmy Music', drawing on his detailed hand-written diaries. The Musical Salvationist frames the musical history of the Salvation Army through the life story of Richard Slater, popularly known as the 'Father of Salvation Army Music'. This book focuses upon the significant contribution of the Salvation Army to British musical life from the late Victorian era until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. It demonstrates links between the Army's music-making and working class popular culture, education and religion. Richard Slater [1854-1939] worked in the Army's Musical Department from 1883 until his retirement in 1913. His detailed hand-written diaries reveal new information about his background before he became a Salvationist at the age of 28. He then worked as the principal Salvationist composer, arranger and musical editor of the period and had contact with William Booth, the Army's Founder, who rejoiced in 'robbing the devil of his choicetunes'; George Bernard Shaw who wrote a penetrating critique of a band festival in 1905; and Eric Ball who was to become one of the Army's finest composers. The book illuminates rarely explored aspects of a vibrant Britishmusical tradition, and its adaptation to international contexts. GORDON COX is a former Senior Lecturer in Music Education, University of Reading. Foreword by Dr Ray Steadman-Allen.

The undergraduate years are a special time of life for many students. They are a time for study, yes, but also a time for making independent decisions over what to do beyond formal education. This book is based on a nine-year study of collegiate a cappella - a socio-musical practice that has exploded on college campuses since the 1990s. A defining feature of collegiate a cappella is that it is a student-run leisure activity undertaken by undergraduate students at institutions both large and small, prestigious and lower-status. With rare exceptions, participants are not music majors yet many participants interviewed had previous musical experience both in and out of school settings. Motivations for staying musically involved varied considerably - from those who felt they could not imagine life without a musical outlet to those who joined on a whim. Collegiate a cappella is about much more than singing cover songs. It sustains multiple forms of inequality through its audition practices and its performative enactment of gender and heteronormativity. This book sheds light on how undergraduates conceptualize vocation and avocation within the context of formal education, holding implications for educators at all levels.

Based on topics that frame the debate about the future of professional music education, this book explores the issues that music teachers must confront in a rapidly shifting educational landscape. The book aims to challenge thought and change minds. It presents a star cast of internationally prominent thinkers in and beyond music education. These thinkers deliberately challenge many time-worn traditions in music education with regard to musicianship, culture and society, leadership, institutions, interdisciplinarity, research and theory, and curriculum. This is the first book to confront these issues in this way. This unique book has emerged from fifteen years of international dialog by The MayDay Group, an organization of more than 250 music educators from over 20 countries who meet yearly to confront issues in music teaching and learning.

Musical identity raises complex, multifarious, and fascinating questions. Discussions in this new study consider how individuals construct their musical identities in relation to their experiences of formal and informal music teaching and learning. Each chapter features a different case study situated in a specific national or local socio-musical context, spanning 20 regions across the world. Subjects range from Ghanaian or Balinese villagers, festival-goers in Lapland, and children in a South African township to North American and British students, adults and children in a Cretan brass band, and Gujerati barbers in the Indian diaspora.

The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure presents myriad ways for reconsidering and refocusing attention back on the rich, exciting, and emotionally charged ways in which people of all ages make time for making music. Looking beyond the obvious, this handbook asks readers to consider anew, "What might we see when we think of music making as leisure?"

Music's role in animating democracy--whether through protests and demonstrations, as a vehicle for political identity, or as a means of overcoming social divides--is well understood. Yet musicians have also been drawn to the potential of embodying democracy itself through musical processes and relationships. In this book, author Robert Adlington uses modern democratic theory to explore what he terms the 'musical modelling of democracy' as manifested in modern and experimental music of the global North. Throughout the book, Adlington demonstrates how composers and musicians have taken strikingly different approaches to this kind of musical modelling. For some, democratic principles inform the textural relationships inscribed into musical scores, as in the case of Elliott Carter's 'polyvocal' compositions. Pioneers of musical indeterminacy sought to democratise the relationship between composer and performers by leaving open key decisions about the realisation of a work. Musicians have involved audiences in active participation to liberate them from the passivity of spectatorship. Free improvisation groups have experimented with new kinds of egalitarian relationships between performers to reject old hierarchies. In examining these different approaches, Adlington illuminates the achievements and ambiguities of musical models of democracy. As a result, this book not only offers an important new perspective on modern musicians' engagement with a central political idea of the past century, but it also encourages a deeper and more critical engagement with the idea of democracy within present-day musical life.