The author describes an investigation into the use of West African folklore in the school curriculum by means of an African folktale which became the basis for a project in the class music lessons. Starting with research into West African folklore, particularly children's stories and songs, in Ghana and Nigeria between 1979 and 1983, music was composed in a basically African style to go with an adaptation of one of the stories.

The practical work in a London primary school investigated ways of minimising the apparent dichotomy between African and Western musics in the curriculum.

This article arises from a project carried out at Hall Green School over the last few years. The author describes a form of profile assessment which he feels gives a more accurate picture of student activity and achievement in music than is possible with other methods. At the same time, the assessment process itself is linked with the classroom work and becomes a stimulating feature of the course, integral with the overall aim of encouraging individual development to the highest level.

Pestalozzi and Froebel were innovatory educators whose influence has spread widely and stood the test of time. They believed education to be a process of drawing out and exercising a child's own powers in order to achieve the fullest possible development of the whole person. Physical, intellectual, emotional and aesthetic capacities would only be developed effectively in interdependence rather than isolation, the child being essentially an active participant in his/her own education. In this article the principles and values which Pestalozzi and Froebel believed to befundamental to sound education are related to the task of teaching in general, to the teaching of music in particular, and to music as a unique medium of education through which those principles may be demonstrated.

The author questions conventional attitudes to harmony teaching and describes his own approach based upon a careful observation of harmonic usage in masterworks. In particular he seeks to establish a view of chords as musical entities in their own right, not ‘group-related’ by principles such as ‘inversion’ but possessing a variety of possible functions arising from musical context rather than from established and immutable harmonic theory.

It is quite possible that the so-called ‘creative’ activities espoused by proponents of recent approaches to music education are endangering the production of great music by the next generation of composers because as children they are not being given the necessary foundation of skills to develop the craft of composition.

Isolated examples of genuine educational conviction have only served to legitimise these questionable trends by lending a certain historical authority to a modern philosophical disaster.

The major problem with the recent approaches is that they fail to recognise that craftsmanship is a fundamental requirement for genuine artistic achievement.

This article describes the aims, structure, content and activities of the innovatory project in ‘Music Performance and Communication Skills’ at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It outlines the skills, attitudes and outlook needed by musicians if they are to respond to the rapidly changing needs of society. Having analysed the response of students to the Project, it shows the ways in which the conservatoire can reach out into the community. It is hoped that the article will make a positive contribution towards the thinking underlying the reform of the education and training of professional musicians.

As musicians from no less than twenty-two European states gathered at Strasbourg in September to discuss Contemporary Music, one began to realise that Europe, in 1985, had already moved beyond the familiar concept of a political and commercial federation. Historically, however, and motivated only by musical opportunity, musicians had for centuries largely regarded Europe as one patch ever since it became possible to travel. But in recent times it has become clear that the new Europe and European organisations which have emerged may, one day, have far-reaching effects upon many aspects of musical life which have hitherto evolved locally or nationally at different paces and in response to widely differing circumstances. By means of this and other conferences, therefore, Europe is beginning to give expression to corporate artistic concerns, and attempting to do so with a single voice as independent nations are gradually transformed into member states and ultimately, one might anticipate, into regions. This process and the means by which it is accompanished (e.g. the organisation of large European conferences) is also viewed cynically by some as political inevitability being transformed into desirability.