Sound Musicianship: Understanding the Crafts of Music
Sound Musicianship is a book for music educators and musicians about musicianship—about musical skills, abilities, habits, sensibilities and understandings. Musicianship is explored as a form of craftsmanship. Like most crafts, music requires a balance of theoretical knowledge and practical skills that contribute to a highly tuned ability to appreciate and express music. In particular, the book explores general trends that influence musicianship in the twenty-first century, such as an increased reliance on digital media, greater awareness of the neurological basis for musical behaviour, a renewed interest in connections between bodily movements and musical expression, and increased cultural plurality resulting from more frequent travel, increased levels of migration and ubiquitous telecommunications.
The book has a deliberate focus on the developmental aspects of musicianship, which will benefit those hoping to advance their own music learning or that of others. It includes a diverse range of views and perspectives on musicianship and is organised into five sections. The first four sections explore the implications of music understood as sound, experience, motion and culture, respectively. In these sections, leading researchers and thinkers outline important issues and debates that are relevant to developing the crafts of music making and they share insights into recent trends and understandings. The final section of the book looks at educational considerations and provides a series of case studies that document innovative approaches to developing musicianship.
Readers will encounter some new, interesting and thought-provoking ideas within these pages. As we move further into the twenty-first century—with all the opportunities and challenges for music making it brings—the requirement to review our concepts of musicianship training will intensify, and the definition of a “sound basis” for a contemporary musicianship will evolve. This book is intended to help stimulate and inform that evolutionary process.
This book is part of a series. View the full series, "Meaningful Music Making for Life", here.
Andrew R. Brown is an educator, researcher, musician and author. He is Professor of Digital Arts at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, in Brisbane, Australia. His academic expertise is in technologies that support creativity and learning, computational music and art, and the philosophy of technology. Andrew’s creative activities focus on real-time audio-visual works using generative processes and live-coding performances. He is the author of the book Computers in Music Education: Amplifying Musicality, published by Routledge in New York.
“This book is a magnificent exploration and meditation on sound musicianship. It is an invitation and challenge to educators to consider what sound musicianship could be and should be in the 21st century.”
—Pam Burnard, Reader, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
“Sound Musicianship provides a cutting-edge dissection on the nature and application of musicianship within contemporary musical practice. The line up of expert authors from many varied backgrounds is simply amazing, as is the rainbow of topics addressed. Each of the contributions challenges readers to update and redefine their conception of musicianship through explanations that are both intellectually enlightening and practically viable. Few publications are able to transform thinking in ways that enhance and impact on future practice. This is definitely one of them!”
—Gary McPherson, Ormond Professor and Director, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music
“This is an outstanding book that boldly reviews contemporary musicianship from the technical, psychological, physical, cultural and education perspectives. It is not for the faint-hearted . . .”
—Samuel Leong, Professor and Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Head of the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts, Hong Kong Institute of Education
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