ABSTRACT
Music literacy is the ability to negotiate and create music texts in ways that music experts would recognize as "correct," or "viable." This chapter examines the nature of common music texts and literacies, the situatedness of texts, and instructional implications of these conceptions. Word-oriented texts and sheet music are fairly straightforward in terms of the types of decoding that must be learned in order to negotiate them at a basic level. In many music texts, appropriate negotiation and creation take the form of complex actions. Complex action-based literacies are necessary for ensemble, musical model, and conducting texts as well. Other prevalent music texts that are fluid include the music performance and the conductor. Viewing a person as a text easily conjures images of body language in social situations or actions of an actor on stage. This type of person/text is also prevalent in ensembles, musical performances, and conductor texts.
