ABSTRACT
In setting forth the teaching of music in a global context as a topic worthy of discussion, one necessarily proceeds from a keen concern with the particular dynamics of transcultural exchange, involving stark tensions among competing value systems and worldviews. The present chapter aims to illustrate the foregoing points by drawing upon the teaching of Western musics in Taiwan as a case study. A crucial task in promoting internationalized teaching, then, is to avoid a globalism built upon a notion of “the West and the rest,” a discursive phenomenon afflicting, for instance, the concept of world music, according to which all musics except that of the Euro-American classical tradition belong to an indiscriminate category termed “world.” The goal of internationalization presents the unceasing challenge of adopting a relational stance, that is, of contextualizing oneself within the multivocal environment of global society.
