The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Education [research group]
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RESEARCH PREMISE
The New Lexicon proceeds from the premise that music education is never philosophically neutral. Decisions concerning repertoire, who may learn, how learning is organised, and what counts as participation or achievement carry assumptions about music, knowledge, personhood, society, and the good. These assumptions may appear in curricula and institutional missions or remain tacit within routines, technologies, assessments, and inherited models of teaching.
An educational practice may understand music as autonomous art, cultural practice, embodied activity, social relation, language, professional discipline, means of expression, or resource for collective life. It may regard learning as acquisition, imitation, apprenticeship, discovery, participation, transformation, or care. It may position the teacher as expert, guide, collaborator, facilitator, authority, witness, or co-learner. Each orientation shapes what becomes teachable, whose experience is recognised, how progress is interpreted, and which musical futures can be imagined.
The residency therefore approaches music education as an intellectual, artistic, ethical, and political practice in which concepts of music, learning, teaching, ability, talent, creativity, discipline, participation, community, and value are not merely applied, but produced and negotiated. Philosophy is neither an external framework imposed upon teaching nor commentary added afterward. It is immanent to practice: a means of making assumptions legible, clarifying concepts enacted through educational decisions, and examining the conditions through which those decisions acquire meaning and consequence.
This does not imply that every educational project must illustrate a philosophical thesis, or that practical knowledge must become academic argument before it counts as thought. The programme asks what understanding arises within educational encounters themselves. A rehearsal may disclose collective responsibility; improvisation may test freedom and constraint; a listening exercise may reorganise attention; a curriculum may establish a history of value; a learner’s refusal may reveal the limits of authority. Such events can produce philosophical insight before it is named.
The programme accordingly investigates a reciprocal relation. It asks not only how philosophy may interpret teaching and learning, but how educational practice may operate as conceptual, speculative, and critical inquiry. Music education is both an object of philosophical examination and a practice capable of generating philosophical knowledge. The central question is not simply, “Which method works?” It is also: “What understanding of music, learning, and human possibility does this practice make real, for whom, and at what cost?”
Such inquiry requires attention to projects and to the conditions enabling them. A curriculum’s repertoire, sequence, exercises, technologies, spaces, temporal structures, and evaluations cannot be separated from its infrastructures. Possibilities are shaped by schools, conservatoires, universities, community organisations, private tuition, cultural policy, funding, teacher education, examination boards, digital platforms, employment conditions, and unequal access to time, space, instruments, and support.
To examine philosophy of music education is therefore to ask how these conditions authorise certain knowledge, normalise musical identities, and marginalise others. Canon formation, concepts of talent, standards of literacy, expectations of discipline, and ideals of excellence may appear self-evident while carrying histories of class, race, gender, disability, colonialism, professionalisation, and institutional authority. Philosophy can make these histories available for examination without reducing every educational relation to one explanatory structure.
This expanded field does not dissolve the specificity of music education; it describes it more adequately. Music education remains a situated practice of organising attention, cultivating capacities, transforming traditions, forming relationships, and opening possible musical worlds. Yet its identity cannot be secured by one institution, repertoire, method, age group, or definition of achievement. It must address formal and informal learning, conservatoire and community practice, childhood and adult education, notation and oral transmission, individual tuition and collective creation, professional preparation and music within everyday life.
This plurality raises questions of purpose. Is music education justified because it preserves inheritance, develops excellence, supports expression, strengthens belonging, cultivates attention, prepares professionals, contributes to general development, or enables valuable forms of life? These purposes may overlap or conflict. Measurable attainment can narrow experimentation; inclusion can remain symbolic if standards do not change; emphasis on individual creativity can obscure the communities making creativity possible.
Philosophy of music education becomes necessary where such purposes can no longer remain implicit. It asks not only whether practices succeed by established criteria, but whether those criteria are defensible, whom they serve, and what alternatives they exclude. It also asks how purposes can be negotiated with learners rather than decided only for them, and how responsibility can be exercised without presuming complete knowledge of another person’s needs or future.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC EDUCATION
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io