ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine some developments in the English music curriculum from a sociological perspective at three ‘moments’ in recent history. The first moment introduces the sociological critique as applied to music education in the 1970s and 1980s. While the critique was successful in problematizing educational knowledge in the music classroom, common curriculum interpretations failed to realize the radical implications for pedagogy and thus had little impact on the distribution of musical success in the classroom. The second moment explores the influence of the sociological critique on developments in the statutory music curriculum of the early 1990s, and suggests that subtle additional forces were at play to minimize the impact on a radical pedagogy for the music classroom. The third moment, seen in light of the first two, will speculate on the chances of the most recent initiatives in music education maximizing their impact on the distribution of, and access to, musical achievement in the classroom.
