Repertoire: Cultural Keyboard Warriors versus Music Teachers Professor Martin Fautley
One of the issues that always seems to raise its head in music is that of the materials employed in teaching and learning. This subject has become so contentious that in some quarters it creates arguments all of its own. As one of the academics who authored the report for Youth Music that engendered the “Stormzy versus Mozart” debacle when it came out (Kinsella et al., 2019), I still bear the scars of that encounter! But what was, or is, all the fuss about? In this article I will try and unpick some of these issues, and offer some very personal thoughts as to what is going on. Let us start by revisiting the National Curriculum for music, in particular the things which used to be called the ‘elements of music’, but are now known as the ‘inter-related dimensions’, namely pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure, and appropriate musical notations. These are all conceptual building blocks upon which music is based, and whilst there are debates about whether they can be separated one from another (which I don’t want to get into here), nonetheless these can be recognised as just about essential in many musical cultures, and important concepts to teach and learn. And it is with this matter that issues begin. Here, for example, is a quick back-of-an-envelope list of the inter-related dimensions, and then two lists of music which might be used to teach them:
