ABSTRACT
A student teacher is completing her final year on teaching practice in a Scottish school. A view of music as a form of discourse impregnated with metaphor has important consequences for music education. One aim of the music teacher is to bring music from the background into the foreground of awareness. Expressive character is implicit in several kinds of performance decisions, in choosing a tempo, in levels of accentuation, in dynamic changes and in articulation, how the motion from tone to tone is organised. Implicit in teaching music musically is a strong sense of life holding its shape or even finding its shape. Musicians from outside western classical traditions are well aware of the principle, that musical fluency takes precedence over musical literacy. Literature studies, giving information about music, such as definitions of musical terms and signs and notational devices such as key, clef, stave and dynamics, always occurred in the context of a practical activity.
