Music in our Lives: Rethinking Musical Ability, Development and Identity by Gary E. McPherson, Jane W. Davidson, Robert Faulkner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 249 pp. paperback. PS 39.99. ISBN: 978 0 19 957929 7.
Venue: British Journal of Music Education
Year: 2015

The authors' aim for Music in our Lives is to investigate the range of achievements of Western musical learners, particularly the gap between the ways in which learners engage with performance skills and the role of music in their everyday lives. The authors explore different ways of thinking about musical engagement, development, ability and identity. This text is based on data collected during a 14 year longitudinal study, which took place in two phases. The first involved 157 students aged seven to nine, who were about to embark upon learning an instrument in Sydney, Australia. A wide range of data were gathered at intervals from students and parents to provide information on their beliefs, attitudes and motivations for the child's instrumental learning as well as measures to assess the ways in which the children progressed and developed musically. The second phase of this research followed up many of the original participants as they entered adulthood. Music in our Lives provides an overview of these research projects and uses the findings to develop a theory around musical ability, development and identity. The volume is divided into 12 chapters which address very different aspects of the projects. Chapter 1 provides frames of reference for, and details of, the studies upon which the book is based. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 review some of the findings from the first phase of the study looking at aspects such as practice, progress, and gradual fall out of participation in formal musical learning. Chapter 5 presents data from the second phase of the study and provides a descriptive profile of participants' musical lives as young adults. Chapters 6 to 10 use case studies of participants to reconsider preconceptions of musical development and experience and develop theory in these areas. Chapters 11 and 12 provide frameworks and interim theory for further investigation and discussion. One of the main strengths of Music in our Lives is the scale of the work undertaken and the breadth and depth of the data collected. A wide range of research methods were used, such as regular interviews with parents and students, practice diaries, videotaping of practice sessions, and students' musical aptitude scores. The results from across these measures, combined with a large sample size accessed over a long period of time, provide significant opportunities for the authors to triangulate their data and provide a sound basis for the development of theory that runs throughout this volume. The writing style of the text is accessible and the book is a pleasure to read. The authors bring alive their participants' stories through the use of directly relevant quotations from qualitative data and perspicuous analysis of their contributors' meanings. Quantitative data are described clearly and the use of graphs and tables to illustrate these data helps the reader to gain a broad understanding of trends in participants' behaviour. One of the challenges for this book, which the authors themselves touch upon (p. 12) is achieving a balance between providing a holistic view of the studies on