ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to use Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to examine the practices of classical music instruction pedagogy in the work of conservatory music teachers. In Israel, the conservatory’s educational primary function is focused on providing individual instrumental lessons for children and teens. The teachers, who are themselves usually a product of traditional western classical music education, tend to embrace a strict pedagogical approach and conservative teaching methods, in order not only to instil technical skills of the instrument, but to educate their students to a canonical behavioural and cultural coded habitus as expected of a classical player. Based on an ethnographic study of instrumental lessons, we show how practices of teaching and learning in instrumental music lessons produce in students a specific coded embodied habitus; how teachers use the body to convey to their students the principles of classical music’s cultural sacredness; and how the status of music teachers and whether they are engaged in the professional field as performers or non-performers articulate their pedagogical approach.
