PhD-presentation by Peter Bruun

"The world comes into being through sound - a study in phenomenology of music making, being, and paedagogical education processes"

In my PhD-study, I have researched what significances production processes in music have in a teaching situation. The study has given insight of empiric, theoretic, and philosophical nature, in terms of children's and adults' relationship with music, and in particular music in an educational setting: education through music and education to music. I will in this occation present some of the findings from my PhD-thesis. 

Musical processes and musical recognition are 'silent', meaning that it is impossible to word the deep and meaningful aspects. At the same time, my PhD-study shows that music - just like language - is defining for how we are as people and how we unfold our common life in dialog and across generations. Musical education is just as important and basic as education in and with ones mother tongue.

I argue that the creation must be understood as the starting point of all musical education. Children come into the world as musically acting and musically creating creatures. To be musically creating is not something you learn, it is something we all are. It is in the creation that we understand ourselves as musical beings, when you feel that the music is "for me" because it comes "from me" and because I share it with others. Then you feel that music isn't just sound - it means something as it is created. In a world, where music greatly has become consumer goods which stream through electric and digital media, this is what one has to consider the starting point in a educational interaction: that music is something becoming. The consequence is, that it is necessary to develop paedagogical techniques that are primarily experimental in order to advance musical education.

A musical education, focusing on the creation and production, can be expressed in the consciousness that we, as humans, all have a right to and an opportunity for participating actively in music, and that we all have the opportunity of expressing ourselves through music and of reflection through and about music.