ABSTRACT
The 1960s witnessed the emergence of ‘creative music’. There were new sounds in classrooms, and new spaces opened up for new kinds of relationships between teacher, pupil and the music made. It was a revolution of a kind, and it was Sound and Silence that was to establish a position of authority at its heart. This chapter examines three previously unexplored currents running through the work: 1. The construction of the child as so-called primitive; 2. The natural correspondence of the primitive child with the primitive-inspired techniques of twentieth-century music: the claim that the child possesses a natural receptivity to the art music of their own time; 3. An embryonic expressivist theory of art supporting the construction of the child as artist and creative. These ideas are placed within the child-centred tradition of educational thought and brought into dialogue with more recent scholarship. The enquiry concludes with questions for the present time.
