Abstract
Introduction
Forty-five years ago, the inspector of the Dutch Ministry of Education wrote a letter to the Rotterdam conservatory, expressing his deep worries about other genres than classical music entering the university: “Recent press publications about the attention for popular entertainment music within your university gives me serious concerns” (Zweers, 1978, p. 1). Historically, conservatories were often founded by societal elites for the preservation of specific types of western classical music (Gies, 2019), for example sacred or military band music. In the United States, higher popular music education has been around since the 1950s with the opening of Berklee College of Music (Smith, 2016). During the last 30 years many Higher Music Education Institutions (HMEIs) have—sometimes reluctantly—embraced popular music education (Parkinson, 2017). Within Europe, the number of popular music programs at HMEIs has risen sharply around the turn of the millenium (Posthuma, 2001). 1 The UK became the champion in popular music higher education with no less than 77 higher education institutions offering a popular music program in 2014/2015 (Weston, 2022). Clearly, the number of students interested in studying popular music has grown steadily (BAMPI Market Research, 2019).
Yet, there seems little consensus among European HMEIs with regards to what students actually (need to) learn at a popular music bachelor or master program. Impressionistic evidence shows substantive differences between popular music curricula. For instance, the popular music program at Conservatory of Music Luisa D’Annunzio (Italy) focuses on folk music with traditional popular music instruments, whereas the InHolland Conservatory of Haarlem (Netherlands) teaches dance music in which acoustic instruments play only a marginal role. This lack of a common terminology and standards seems to go against the first principle of the Bologna declaration, possibly complicating inter-European collaboration between HMEIs. Moreover, such a lack of comparable information about the content of such programs likely hinders European students of making an informed enrollment choice. Despite the urgency of this challenge, few studies have empirically examined the differences and similarities between popular music programs (Parkinson, 2014).
We identify four possible reasons why popular music programs are very different from each other. First, there is little (cross-national) consensus about the meaning of the term popular music (Denisoff, 1975; Green, 2006; Jones, 2017). This may result in genre fuzziness within programs. Second, constructing a popular music program means program leaders have to make decisions about what is worthy of study (Kurkela & Väkevä, 2009), that is, which genres, artists and songs to include—and leave out—in a curriculum (Dyndahl et al., 2017). This process of—often unintended—canon formation seems highly idiosyncratic and context-dependent (Parkinson, 2014). Third, musicians have, unlike lawyers or dentists, an unprotected and unregulated profession. Everyone can be a musician when they decide to be one (Parker et al., 2021). Fourth, organizations with similar goals in comparable environments tend to slowly become more alike as they monitor each other, despite being embedded in a local/national cultural context. Yet, some studies show that education programs are sometimes less affected by such institutional isomorphism “because of a simultaneous increase in competitive pressure to differentiate student programs” (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2017, p. 15).
Disclosing explicit and tacit knowledge of popular music program leaders, this paper focuses on three interrelated questions: (1) how is popular music defined and canonized at HMEIs, (2) what is the position of popular music programs within HMEIs, and (3) how is the content of popular music programs constructed? This article contributes to ongoing research debates about popular music education at HMEIs, which until recently has remained an understudied field of research (Smith, Moir et al., 2017). More specifically, this paper adds to existing research on the construction of a coherent music program where there is little consensus over what such a program should look like. Indeed, a recent study (Hall, 2019, p. 337) recommends “to regularly review curriculum content to meaningfully reflect the changing landscape of professional careers in the new music industries (. . .).” This paper will show how leaders in higher popular music education connect to the rapidly changing popular music sector for which they prepare students.
Popular music at HMEIs
On the one hand, the rise of popular music programs at HMEIs seems unsurprising. First, popular music—rock music in particular—has become more accepted in many different strata of society. Many people who were children in the sixties, seventies and eighties enjoyed a form of popular music in their youth (Peterson, 1990). They took popular music along with them in their upward mobility (Weinstein, 1991). While popular music used to be mainly associated with youth culture, some forms are now accepted as art (Van Venrooij & Schmutz, 2010). This has led to political legitimation, paving the way for popular music to be granted access to higher education institutions (Nuchelmans, 2002). Second, the rise of popular music programs is also a result of the declining societal position of western art music vis-à-vis popular music (Johnson, 2002). Third, educational entrepreneurs have seized the moment to create higher music education institutions that are “for profit” (White, 2017).
On the other hand, this increase in popular music programs at HMEIs seems remarkable. First, popular music is a notoriously “slippery concept” that is difficult to define (Frith, 2001). According to Denisoff (1975): “Popular music is like a unicorn; everyone knows what it is supposed to look like, but no one has ever seen it” (p. 1). Popular music covers many different styles, genres and values that definitions stay vague and often lead to endless discussions. The lack of consensus about the meaning of the term “pop” or “popular music” 2 has clearly not stopped HMEIs in developing popular music programs across Europe. Yet, it is very difficult to specify a core content of curricula, because the term popular music has conflicting definitions (Jones, 2017). Unsurprisingly, canon formation—albeit an inevitable consequence of institutionalization—is a highly contested topic, particularly among popular music educators (Parkinson, 2014). “This can be attributed in part to the fact that historically popular music has not been academically or institutionally mediated, in contrast to the Western classical tradition, and to the destabilization of foundational values brought about by postmodernism” (Parkinson, 2014, p. 51). Yet, making a curriculum means making choices of what to include (and exclude) as one cannot teach everything, automatically leading to a form of (loose) canon formation. This raises questions about how programs in higher popular music define popular music and how they deal with canonization.
Second, in order to understand popular music programs, we need to comprehend the larger institutional context in which these programs are embedded. HMEIs were originally founded on a strong belief in classical western art music (Gies, 2019). Popular music departments have cautiously claimed a position within the HMEIs (Till, 2017), but classical music still plays a dominant role in most HMEIs. Jazz has arguably followed a similar artistic legitimation trajectory (Lopes, 2002). Currently, jazz is an integral part of highbrow western art music and included in HMEIs (Ake, 2002). Yet, jazz was in some ways the popular music of 1920s and 1930s. Jazz teaching has adapted itself to the learning and teaching framework of classical music, arguably losing key characteristics of its tradition. Jazz, for instance, used to be an oral tradition but has embraced the classical written tradition (Prouty, 2006). This institutionalization of jazz in western art music has been a process of many years and popular music may follow a similar path. This raises the understudied question what the current position of popular music is within HMEIs.
Third, there is little consensus over how to approach popular music on the art versus commerce axis. The position of western classical music is firmly embedded in a highbrow arts discourse, often rejecting commerce. As contemporary composer Harrison Birtwistle put it: “I can’t be responsible for the audience: I’m not running a restaurant” (Cook, 2021, p. 75). Popular music has a different relationship with art and commerce. Some forms of popular music have received praise for its independent, artistic quality (Fornäs, 1995) but popular music can also be closely related to commerciality—the rise of free markets and therefore with neoliberal values (León, 2014). As Negus (1995) put it eloquently: “the production of popular music does not so much involve a conflict
Data and methods
This study is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with leaders in higher popular music education. These interviews are partly standardized with the aim of gaining explicit knowledge and making implicit knowledge more explicit. Participants were chosen on the basis of three specific criteria (Table 1). First, we included respondents to represent different European countries, with the help of network organization Association Européenne des Conservatoires (AEC). 3 Second, we selected participants based on seniority, having significant experience within higher music education to reflect on, and leading position within the institution they represent, including Deans, Heads, Senior Advisors etc.. Third, participants were chosen on the basis of (impressionistic) differences between programs and universities they represent, that is curricula, tuition fees, student numbers and different available music programs.
Participants and institutions.
All interviewees were contacted via email and interviewed between October 2019 and May 2020. Six participants were interviewed at their physical institution and six were interviewed via a video call due to COVID-19 restrictions. Interviews lasted around 1 hour. The topic list was designed to extract personal and institutional opinions of the interviewees. Open questions about the meaning of popular music, their HMEI and the content of their music program were followed up by theory driven questions on these subjects and then followed by questions about their personal ideas. All interviewees provided recorded consent and agreed to have their name and affiliation disclosed.
Definitions and canons of popular music at HMEIs
Defining popular music, naming the program
Our interviewees found it hard to explain what popular music is and what it is not. According to Angelo Valori of Conservatory of Music Luisa D’Annunzio: “It’s very difficult to say what the borders are.” Milena Shushulova, chair of the music department at the New Bulgarian University, stated: “All music is or can be popular music.” The difficulties of defining popular music also pose a challenge in terms of communicating to prospective students what a popular music program is exactly about. Andy Stott, head of popular music at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, explained: It [popular music] encompasses such a breadth from jazz, to folk, to blues, to hip-hop, to rock to you name it, it’s so big and it’s constantly evolving and changing and reinventing itself that I think it’s outgrown the word ‘popular.’ I think, for us, that presents a problem potentially when you’re trying to label a program or trying to say to the world: ‘Yes, come and study popular music,’ because it doesn’t really do justice to the breadth and depth of repertoire in new music that students are creating.
Although all participants used the term popular music when discussing their curriculum, there were some local differences in its use. Our British respondents use the term popular music, while Dutch interviewees use pop music to describe similar music or
Despite the lack of a clear definition, interviewees tacitly drew on three ingredients of what popular music is. First, they defined it as music of the here-and-now, music that people want to hear at this moment in time. Second, participants viewed popular music as accessible and inclusive music in the sense that it is enjoyed by all strata of society. Patrice Rushen, head of popular music at USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, expressed what popular music means for her: It’s the pulse of what is going on right now. It’s inclusive, it involves people from various economic points of view, it’s diverse in terms of its origins with the people from different ethnicities and races, it puts everybody on one even playing field as far as their enjoyment of the music.
Third, our participants point out the importance of the location for their programs. Stott stated: That we are in Manchester is an important factor in our success in the fact that we have a music scene and have a musical heritage and history here that’s produced some major musical movements and acts. There is a story and people are drawn to that.
Terminology is important as it gives context and communicates to outsiders (including prospective students) what the program focuses on. We found three ways of naming a program that focusses on popular music (Supplemental Appendix A). First, some programs are explicitly named popular music programs, often for reasons of being open to all genres. “I’m very keen to call it popular music, not pop music. They were calling it pop before. Popular music encompasses jazz as well. It’s really all music to me, to be honest,” Sara McGuinness, course leader at University of West London, explained. In Leeds, students do officially study popular music but pop and popular are used interchangeably by students and staff. Godley stated: “I think we’re deliberately ambiguous and ambivalent about nailing it down so that we can be very inclusive in our approach.”
Second, pop music programs often have an ambivalent – sometimes disinterested - attitude toward different terms. “I do not think it is a relevant discussion, but I would call it pop music,” argued Richard Zijlma, artistic head of Pop and Electronic Music at the InHolland Conservatory in Haarlem. For him and some other continental European HMEIs, there is actually no difference between pop and popular: “I think it [pop music] is simply popular music.” The Popakademie in Mannheim labels itself as a university focused on pop (hence: their name) but they are actually focused on popular music, according to David-Emil Wickström: It’s about popular music. The reason why we call it the Popakademie, to quote Udo,
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is because we needed a brand that really works, and popular music cannot really work but Popakademie, that sticks.
Wickström, unlike Zijlma, makes a clear distinction between pop and popular: “Pop is a subgenre of popular music, for me, or a subgrouping.” At the conservatory in Katowice, they use the term pop when translating the name of their program to English. Pawel Tomaszewski explained: Actually, in Poland it’s called Muzyka Rozrywkowa, which is entertainment music, but it has different meaning than – if you translate it to English and you say entertainment music, it just lacks this artistic definition, so when we translate it to English, we call it pop music.
Third, some schools abandon the terms popular and pop music completely and choose a name that doesn’t suggest any genre. Stott sometimes struggles with the name of the program but decided to stay with popular music. “I know some programs have gone down the road badging themselves as a contemporary music program but that got connotations that perhaps pose challenges to peoples’ perception.” The Berklee Valencia Campus has educated many popular music artists but named their program as focusing on contemporary music. Yet, director María Martínez Iturriaga struggles with similar challenges as Stott. “The master program here is called contemporary performance, it had to have a name. I think it’s difficult to define what we do here.”
Canonizing popular music, teaching a repertoire
Moreover, there is little consensus between programs about a canon of popular music. According to Stott: “That really does present a challenge. We have to make some decisions as to how we approach it and which artists we want to look at, and which repertoire or genres we want to look at.” Yet, the choices of repertoire seem less idiosyncratic as they may seem (Supplemental Appendix B).
First, most institutions focus on British-American popular music, which resembles the “accepted canon of popular music” that included the Beatles, “punk” and Bob Dylan at the very least (Moore, 2001, p. 7). Valori from Conservatory of Music Luisa D’Annunzio stated: Our curriculum is most based on American pop music, English pop music and Italian pop music. A lot of songs are influenced by blues, by American pop, folk, revival of the 60s, singer-songwriters, but of course also Beatles, Rolling Stones. So all our pop music in Italy is influenced by these genres and styles.
However, its sheer broadness often leads to a need to make additional choices about what specific repertoire popular music students need to study and how much repertoire they have to learn. Second, clearly Conservatory of Music Luisa D’Annunzio focusses on British-American popular music, but they also include traditional 16th and 19th century Neapolitan songs. Valori continued: “These Neapolitan songs are really the roots of our original pop music.” Adding local flavor happens at other HMEIs as well. In Mannheim, they focus on Neue Musik, in Manchester and Leeds they put an extra emphasis on British pop music, and in Sofia they include traditional Bulgarian music in their program. Third, half of our interviewees argued that jazz is the foundation for teaching of popular music. It provides the musical language from where students can go toward popular music. According to Tomaszewski: “The education of jazz is on such a high level and there’s so much information in jazz music to provide for the students.” Finally, two participating HMEIs do not work with a canon. At the Rhythmic Music Conservatory (Copenhagen), they teach no specific repertoire. Morten Büchert explained: I am not trying to make them play certain styles or certain genres but I’m trying to learn them to get closer to who they are, to their values and to the choices and in turn make them better doing what they do, not do what I do. That wouldn’t make sense.
At the Popakademie, they have a different reason for not teaching “repertoire in the broad sense.
Positions of popular music at HMEIs
Many interviewees have an ambivalent relationship with classical music departments, because they have a dominant position in many HMEIs. For example, McGuinness stated: “It was like they decided the pop course was the course for people who weren’t very good and weren’t very clever, and it wasn’t at the same kind of standard as another qualification.” She pointed out that there is a certain feeling of superiority from the classical music departments toward popular music. “There’s this weird elitism in classical music education which I have never really understood.” Stott agrees with McGuinness on the matter of pecking-order: I think there’s a definite hierarchy in some people’s perception of music with classical at the top, jazz in the middle and pop at the bottom, and I think that largely comes around because maybe the technical sophistication of certain music.
Our interviewees were more ambiguous toward jazz departments. Popular music programs incorporate the jazz language in their education because many teachers in popular music at universities have a background in jazz. Yet, some feel that jazz department staff have an elite attitude toward colleagues of popular music programs because jazz is much more accepted in a university environment than popular music.
Their position in the university hierarchy meant that popular music programs have often modeled themselves after the leading departments. Like most western classical music departments, they have initially been craft-centered, that is, top-down learning to play one instrument as an individual, virtuoso musician. However, Büchert signaled a recent shift away from teaching crafts to creating art, from difficult music to music that is focused on emotional impact: Now (we are) moving into a more arts-based idea of what music is, anything goes basically. You don’t need to know chords or scales, you can get apps and programs that can tell you what chord you should use next. What you actually use as your instrument is your emotional reaction to what you hear.
Godley described this change as follows: “Our courses evolved from a kind of classical conservatoire model where we changed primary focus from technical instrument skill and interpretation of existing repertoire toward artist development.” Arts-centered education encompasses a broad knowledge of music in general, education that is centered around students’ own ideas, and a focus on composition/creation. This shift away from craft-centered music education toward arts-centered (and perhaps also market-centered) is arguably not only a voluntary decision but also necessitated by changes in the labor market. Certain jobs have become obsolete through technical innovations (Hall, 2019, p. 335), while new positions have emerged. As Wickström pointed out: “Do they [musicians] still need to be very well at reading music or is that not very important? Nobody trains to become a studio musician today, that job has become extinct.”
Yet, craft-centered education seems to be still very much in the center of popular music programs that are embedded within HMEIs that also have a classical music program. Arts-driven popular music education seems to be most notable at relatively new HMEIs and HMEIs without a classical music department such as the electronic music program at InHolland Conservatory, the popular music program at the Popakademie, and the music creation program at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Below we will show how these educational approaches also impact the content construction.
Content construction of popular music programs
The content of popular music curricula is generally less strictly imposed by government accreditations and regulations than, for instance, in the case of medical studies. Stott described the design of the programs as a precise but organic process: “A lot of the new design for the upcoming program is going to be influenced by what’s going on organically within the program, the kinds of things the students are already doing that we’re perhaps not capturing in a module yet.” The content of programs is arguably less based on a clearly defined professional field for which students are prepared. “It’s not like Unilever. What you tend to have is a handful of huge companies and then thousands and thousands of really tiny companies or sole traders. So, I think as an industry it is quite an elusive one,” Godley argued. He continued: “I think young people come to places like this on a journey of self-actualization, which is a sort of posh way to say they are following their dream.” Yet, the lack of a clearly circumscribed profession did not seem to hinder the content construction of programs.
Based on our interviews, we have identified three approaches for creating content. First, the craft-centered approach is the most traditional approach toward content creation and has borrowed ideas from the classical programs as discussed in the previous section. It is top down organized. Staff members bring their own material and knowledge to the table. They decide what students need to learn and how students have to study. By including guest lecturers in their courses, they aim to keep their content relevant, as Wickström explained: If I hire you as a 25-year-old successful songwriter and I have to keep you until you are 65, and when you are 50 you will probably be producing boring schlager
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which nobody wants to hear, but you are still hired and I can’t fire you.
Second, within the arts-centered approach, the student instead of teacher takes center stage. Staff support and advise students in their search for content but do not force them in any direction. All interviewees pointed out they involve students in their search for new content. At the Rhythmic Music Conservatory students have a large impact on the curriculum and therefore enjoy their education in a predominantly bottom-up environment. Büchert explained the freedom their students have: “Anything but fine French cooking or any yoga classes. We give a really a big amount of trust to students to be able to dig out who would be the best teacher for them.”
Third, within the market-centered approach, the staff and teachers work side-by-side with professionals from the music industry when it comes to content creation. The quality of the content is measured by its possible connection to the music industry. Wickström is constantly searching for content to keep the curriculum connected to the music industry.
Looking what’s going on in Germany, looking what’s going on abroad. Song-writing camps are good examples of what other institutions do. Looking who is in the charts, what kind of elements are there. Is the bass disappearing? I mean, what are the effects, auto-tune?. . . It’s up to that!
The Popakademie and the InHolland Conservatory have a clear market-driven focus, that is, including the music industry early on in the program, focusing on commerce and monetization.
Most interviewees stress their interest in comparable programs at other institutions. Stott stated: “I’m researching all the time to see what my peer institutions are doing.” This openness toward other HMEIs obviously leads to certain similarities between programs. This process of isomorphism, in which organizations more and more act and look alike, is most discernible at the level of the approaches, and less so at the level of content. Hence, data hints toward a shift from craft-centered to more arts- and market-centered education.
Conclusion and discussion
This study examined (1) how popular music is defined and possibly canonized, (2) what the position of popular music programs is, and (3) how the content of popular music programs is constructed at HMEIs. First, the results show that describing popular music education is an equally “slippery” business as describing popular music (Denisoff, 1975; Frith, 2001; Green, 2006; Jones, 2017). All interviewees were open in explaining what popular music education actually is and how they were struggling concerning terminology and content. While we did detect some shared ingredients of what popular music is—here-and-now, inclusive and clearly located, a precise definition was lacking. We distinguished three ways in naming programs that focus on popular music: popular music program, pop music program or something very open that does not suggest any genre like contemporary music. While we cannot generalize our findings based on a limited number of interviews, the results suggest that HMEIs in Anglo-Saxon countries generally call their programs popular music programs. HMEIs in countries such as Italy, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands use pop and popular interchangeably. Possibly, “pop” is the abbreviation of “popular” in continental Europe, while the Anglo-Saxon countries seem to consciously make the distinction between pop and popular. Future research might delve more deeply in the precise role of language in the naming of such programs. Moreover, there is clearly a huge body of popular music to draw from but there was no consensus about a canon. Therefore, popular music programs draw from a mini-canon of British/American popular music, add local music to the curriculum, use jazz as a basis and/or work without a canon. An interesting avenue for future research would be to examine further what local music is deemed “worthy/unworthy” to include. For example, why does the Popakademie include Neue Musik but not schlager?
Secondly, according to our respondents, popular music is clearly still in the midst of an institutionalization process and is trying to obtain its place within HMEIs, echoing previous research (Brennan, 2013). Most interviewees, who lead a popular music program in a HMEI that also offers a classical music program, describe a somewhat troubled relationship with western classical music departments. Classical music seems to stand on a higher pedestal than popular music within HMEIs because, unlike most popular music, classical western music is praised for its artistic relevance and is recognized as a highbrow artform. This suggests that popular music might not (yet) have gained substantial artistic legitimacy within the walls of HMEIs, where it may enjoy commercial legitimacy among HMEI leadership as it draws a significant number of students. Future research should include leaders of classical music programs to further examine their position vis-à-vis popular music programs.
Thirdly, content creation is a constant challenge for our interviewees. The main reasons for these difficulties are a lack of clear definitions of what students (need to) study as well as a clearly defined labor market for which students are prepared. Popular music programs at HMEIs cope with this situation by monitoring related programs and colleagues and by focusing on a specific educational approach. We identified three approaches toward content creation of popular music programs. A craft-centered approach is top-down, teacher-driven and skill-oriented (
Finally, the construction of popular music programs has been influenced, according to our respondents, by existing institutional frameworks that channel them toward a certain educational approach. We found preliminary evidence of such a path dependency as popular music programs differ in their educational approach depending on whether they are embedded in a HMEI with or without a strong classical music tradition. In case of the former, popular music programs have often adopted a craft-centered approach. They seem to be, perhaps partly unknowingly, influenced by the longstanding tradition of the institution itself. Popular music programs primarily adopting an arts- and/or market-centered approach are mainly found at relatively new HMEIs and HMEIs without a classical music department (Haarlem, Mannheim, Copenhagen). More qualitative research is needed to establish whether the future of higher popular music education is moving away from crafts toward arts and the market.
Supplemental Material
sj-xlsx-1-ijm-10.1177_02557614221124321 – Supplemental material for Constructing popular music programs at Higher Music Education Institutions across Europe
Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-1-ijm-10.1177_02557614221124321 for Constructing popular music programs at Higher Music Education Institutions across Europe by Wessel Coppes and Pauwke Berkers in International Journal of Music Education
Supplemental Material
sj-xlsx-2-ijm-10.1177_02557614221124321 – Supplemental material for Constructing popular music programs at Higher Music Education Institutions across Europe
Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-2-ijm-10.1177_02557614221124321 for Constructing popular music programs at Higher Music Education Institutions across Europe by Wessel Coppes and Pauwke Berkers in International Journal of Music Education
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