Abstract
This volume presents a knowledgeable, largely first-hand panoramic view of the developmental aspects of music psychology. The authors’ main goal is to present their “view of the current [2017] state of the study of musical development” (p. 1) by answering two basic questions: 1) how and to what extent [do] people engage with music in different ways across the lifespan, from infancy to old age, and what effects these engagements have on different aspects of their behavior and experience? (p. 11); 2) what are the best conditions and teaching approaches for helping children (and adults) to learn different musical skills most effectively? (p. 12). My overall impression is that the book succeeds in providing serious and well-thought-through answers to these questions, even if those answers remain inevitably partial.
The book comprises nine chapters, including an introduction, seven chapters organized around one topic each, and a brief afterword. In the following paragraphs I review each of the book’s nine chapters in turn, and then finish with what I believe are the book’s highlights and less accomplished aspects.
The first chapter introduces us to the field of developmental music psychology. It lists the main theoretical paradigms and emerging topics during the last 30 years, as well as their application to music education. Special attention is given to the impact of technology, an emphasis well justified throughout the book. As a corollary to this chapter, two claims are put forward by the authors: developmental music psychology is at present “flourishing as never before” (p. 11), which evokes the status of psycholinguistics in the 1960s in its methodological and conceptual breakthroughs. After reading the book and following my own impressions, I would agree with the first claim. On the other hand, I find the second claim much more complex and harder to assess.
The second chapter is held as a “snapshot” of the 10 main contemporary theoretical approaches to musical development, an important part of which stem from the main schools of psychological development such as, for instance, those of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bronfenbrenner. While these schools and their principles should be familiar to anyone with a psychology degree, their application to the musical domain will not. The book thus introduces a number of models—Swansick and Tillman’s ‘Spiral’ Model, Hargreaves and Galton’s ‘Phase’ Model, Serafine’s Model of ‘Music as Cognition’, Gordon’s Music Learning Theory, the Gardner/Harvard Project Zero, Ockelford’s ‘Sound of Intent’ Model—as well as work stemming from transactional, social cognitive, and neuroscientific approaches. Finally, a survey of the extent to which these approaches effectively deal with a number of theoretical issues is presented. I found this chapter to be particularly effective and useful, as the authors succeed in their explicit effort to map and untangle the different approaches under review.
Chapter 3 focuses on the development of music perception and cognition by first approaching particular musical building blocks such as pitch and rhythm (an atomistic approach), and then discussing how the latter are integrated in the perception of musical structure and form, as well as creativity. The chapter starts by examining fetal and infant responses to music, and warns about the standing challenges of interpreting such kinds of data. Regarding pitch and related phenomena, the authors signal a somewhat unwarranted lack of attention to their development after 11 years of age. The evolution of rhythm throughout the lifespan is described, and the importance of active involvement in it highlighted. After reviewing the combination of these elements, sections are dedicated to two key elements of music-making: composing and improvising. As a summary, the authors make a distinction between early and fast broad perceptual dispositions—particularly when it comes to pitch—and enculturation from a later, slower process of expressive appropriation of the dispositions referred to. No less importantly, adulthood is shown to generally represent the peak of musical creativity.
The first half of Chapter 4 concerns sociological and socio-cultural theory, from Adorno and Bourdieu’s idea of music reflecting social structure, towards more recent nuances such as the “individualization” and “omnivore” arguments, as well as Parzer’s idea of “cultural variety.” This section left me wondering why the words “politics” and “political”—inherent to Adorno and Bourdieu’s thinking—were not once mentioned. The previously highlighted, game-changing role of technology and individual listening are next dealt with, in an eloquent first hint at the “democratization” of music to be portrayed in Chapter 6. The chapter’s second half delves into the social aspects of musical development both in childhood and the rest of the lifespan. Several pages are dedicated to largely re-explaining Vygotsky’s psychology, which felt somewhat repetitive and made me wonder why this was not done before, all at once, in Chapter 2. The next section, on early childhood, largely revolves around three research programs, namely Trevarthen and Malloch’s communicative musicality, Tafuri’s longitudinal study on the development of musical behavior, and Marsh and Young’s work on musical play. Although it is my understanding that a book should be judged by its own intentions rather than the reviewer’s, I admit I was disappointed after reading this particular section. First, the rather exclusive showcase of the three programs seems unwarrantedly narrow, leaving out a vast body of research. Second, Trevarthen and Malloch’s theories, although undeniably popular and no less inspiring, mostly remain a collection of unproblematized assumptions and speculation with few efforts on their behalf to test their own ideas, an omission tacitly endorsed by the authors. The chapter then basically skips four years of development into the school years, this time eloquently highlighting an important gap in the literature. A further section on creativity and another on its assessment constitute another example of the book’s second goal of connecting theory with education. Finally, as an approach to adolescence, the chapter fosters the notion of identity—a notion around which the book largely revolves.
The next chapter examines the role of environmental influences (motivation, musicality, musical ability, and talent) and individual differences (gender, age, musical training, etc.) on musical achievement. In other words, the chapter approaches music as something that is done with and in relation to significant others. Initial sections introduce and problematizes these ideas—as a telling example, the notion of talent is interestingly distinguished from “giftedness.” In a similar vein, the authors then review and nuance Sloboda, Davidson, and Howe’s strong case against “folk psychology” ideas, such as talent being innate and effortless. The book then features two large-scale studies: the Keele–Exeter study on the biological determinants of musical excellence, and a longitudinal study that focuses on the skills involved in successful learning and performance of music. The chapter finishes by considering the relationship between musical development and education, taking the case of the UK as reference for some comparison and discussion, and bringing forward a number of relevant pedagogic distinctions (e.g., institutional/communitarian, informal/formal, etc.). In that context, the authors make one of their biggest efforts in addressing their second research question concerning education.
Shifting back to the individual and idiographic, Chapter 6 revolves around the notion of identity in general and musical identity in particular. After introducing the basic understanding of the term in psychology along with other “self-related” concepts, the authors address the question of musical identities and their development. Special attention is given to the ongoing “democratization” of music that technology enables, as well as to the corresponding expansion of our understanding of what the word “musician” stands for. Musical identities are characterized as social and performative (again, the idea of something done with and in relation to significant others), as well as moral and well-intended. The developmental approach to musical identities has been largely an implementation of Erikson and Marcia’s work, from infants learning to trust through their incipient communicative musicality, to adolescents using music as a “badge of identity” and older adults aiming to integrate their musical lives. Coming back to the more nomothetic approach of individual differences from the previous chapter, the role of personality and lifestyle choices are discussed. Finally—and once again addressing the book’s second goal—the case of musical identities in musical educational contexts is examined. Throughout the book, the authors claim that musical identity is a key factor that mediates musical development as a whole, going as far as using it as this chapter’s gravitational center. We find in the chapter’s conclusion—as expected—overt justification for such a claim in a citation from Hargreaves, Miell, and MacDonald (2002): the concept of musical identities “enables us to understand individuals’ musical development from the inside”, providing “a way of conceptualising the interaction between biological and social influences” as well as “continuity between our explanations of infant, adult, and child behaviour” (p. 209).
Chapter 7 addresses the classic topic of emotion in music, using Juslin’s BRECCVEMA (Brainstem response, Rhythmic entrainment, Evaluative conditioning, emotional Contagion, Visual imagery, musical Expectancy, episodic Memory, and Aesthetic response) framework of underlying mechanisms for music as organizing principle. I found particularly interesting the inclusion of Juslin’s suggestions on the emergence of these mechanisms from before birth (brain stem response) to age 5–11 years (musical expectancy). The chapter spans emotional reactions to music from communicative musicality in infancy to adult uses of music such as mood regulation. As a corollary, the authors conclude that the function of emotional discharge remains just as prevalent throughout adulthood.
Chapter 8 revolves around the ways in which music “makes a difference” for people across the lifespan. The chapter mainly addresses, on the one hand, the positive effects of music listening (i.e., concentration, learning, social bonding) as well as musical performance (cognitive, social), while also considering potentially difficult aspects of the latter such as performance anxiety. This chapter has already been discussed thoroughly in another review (Brodsky, 2020), in particular regarding a lack of empirical findings that could validate the applicability of many of these matters to children, and the chapter’s slightly outdated contents and scope when it comes to contemporary scientific standards in music therapy. I feel there is little insight I could add to this chapter’s appraisal and recommend a reading of that review.
The concluding Afterword presents a short reflection where the authors restate their choices in organizing their selected contents. The authors then present what they see as five emerging themes, sometimes highlighting one author in particular: the social nature of musical development (Trevarthen), the influence of technology, the importance of the lifespan approach, the importance of self- concept and identity, and further applications of music psychology (Ockelford). Finally, a few paragraphs hint at prospective future developments in the field, namely, an ever-stronger impact of technology and further interdisciplinary applications.
In terms of strengths, the book weighs in with significant elements. The volume is well written and accessible to both experts and newcomers. It was conceived and executed by researchers who are not just recognized members of the scholarly community but also leading actors in the history of the field—David Hargreaves had already written a now classic first volume on the subject (1986). Readers need not worry about ad autoritatem fallacy, for they stand highly to benefit from the authors’ capacity to digest and organize such a vast and often heterogenous body of research. Regarding this heterogeneity, I much appreciated the authors’ consideration and embracing of a variety of traditions and schools in psychology and related disciplines, as well as their different methodological/scientific standards, which I see as a defining quality of the volume. Finally, in their introduction (p. 9), the authors signal and warn the reader about the existing sample unrepresentativeness when it comes to research in the field. In this regard, and after critically keeping in mind the issue throughout my reading, I believe the authors justified the book’s evident focus on the Anglo-Saxon circuit in general and the UK in particular (e.g., pp. 135 and 169) quite thoughtfully and with awareness, thus avoiding a potential contradiction.
In terms of weaknesses, alongside the aforementioned heterogeneity I was expecting a corresponding critical approach, especially when it came to dissimilar methodological standards. However, the book offers only occasional (e.g., in Chapter 3), non-systematic methodological considerations of the presented research, which can be misleading to non-experts who may not be able to discriminate the levels of robustness or applicability of conclusions derived from, say, a case study versus a large-scale one, or between empirical data and speculation. One can of course always trust the authors’ reasons behind their choice of including a given piece of research, and be reminded that this is not a challenge exclusive to the volume but something currently inherent to social sciences in general—but the point remains. Another break of expectation came with the “conclusion” sections found at the end of each chapter. Following the choice of title, I was expecting these to bring new, higher-order thoughts distilling the totality of a chapter’s contents, only to find—in most cases—yet another summary of key points. The same can be said about the final Afterword, where new ideas (not previously mentioned in the book) are hinted at without further development—development that I am sure would have been greatly appreciated by the scientific community. Finally, perhaps a downside of the authors’ choice of a topical organization is that it was at times harder to bring forward or keep in mind each topic’s developmental progression. This can be a problem given the book is precisely about development.
Judging the book by its own intentions—and not mine—it is my impression that the book’s strengths are far more significant than its weaknesses, and it thus stands as a major reference in the subject. It also seemed to me that this will be particularly true if the reader is interested in ideographic aspects of development, and an approach encompassing the entire lifespan—as opposed to a focus on childhood. Students, educators, and researchers alike, coming from disciplines such as psychology and other social sciences, music, and even philosophy will find in it an accessible and useful window into musical development.
