Oxford Seminar in Music Theory and Analysis: Scenes from Childhood: Music Theory and Analysis, Education and Play
Curated and chaired by Dr Giles Masters (Magdalen College, Oxford)
Respondent: Esther Cavett
Timothy Coombes 'Childing at the Piano’
Abstract
This short talk introduces some obvious and less obvious ways in which the mainstream disciplinary practice of music theory/analysis assists the musicological study of childhood. For example, I consider how Adeline Mueller’s adaptation of theoretical approaches to eighteenth-century music (such as the rubric of ‘sociability’, and performer-oriented analyses) treats children’s keyboard music as something approaching a ‘scriptive thing’—Robin Bernstein’s term for the archival objects with which historians of childhood often grapple. What the score scripts, in this understanding, is a performance of childhood. I also consider whether recent conceptions of childhood in historical childhood studies—as a marginalized identity, as well as a performance—might slot into music-theoretical approaches developed in the context of other identity categories.
Biography
Tim Coombes is a Lecturer in Music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford University. His articles on the musical construction of childhood in early twentieth-century French culture are published or forthcoming in JAMS, JRMA, Music & Letters, Cambridge Opera Journal and Dix-Neuf.
Marinu Leccia ‘Playful Aesthetics in the Music of Benjamin Britten’
Abstract
There is a great contrast between musicological studies of the works of Benjamin Britten which focus on unquestionably serious themes of pacifism, innocence corrupted, and sexuality, and the playful aspect of Britten’s character which emerges from biographical studies. This paper argues that the playful aspect of Britten’s music is crucial to understanding the composer and his aesthetics. Initially, I demonstrate how play and games drive his writing and style, using concepts of ‘motivic toying’, overcoming self-imposed obstacles, child art, or didactic music exercises. Consequently, I explore the semiotic implications of that play, especially in relation to the double-sided and paradoxical aspect of play (fun and serious, meaningless and meaningful, unstable and ruled, etc.). Focusing on excerpts from The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice, I argue for a resituating of Britten’s modernism in the context of twentieth-century engagement with childhood and play.
Biography
Marinu Leccia completed his PhD at the University of Oxford (St Catherine’s College), exploring the playful aesthetics of Benjamin Britten’s music. His research focuses on the presence of ludic trends in musical modernism, especially in British, French, and Russian art; and considers the aesthetic interactions between modernism, playfulness, childlikeness, and sport, as much as the philosophical and theoretical relation between play, art, and pragmatism. In September 2025, he will begin a lectureship at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon.
Elizabeth MacGregor ‘Heterotopias of Juxtaposition: Spaces for Creative Play within a “Knowledge-Rich” Music Theory Curriculum’
Abstract
Over the past decade, increasing numbers of schools in England have been following the lead of the acclaimed Michaela Community School in advocating ‘knowledge-rich’, theory-driven curricula. Yet within such settings, the music classroom is conspicuously distinctive—a place in which pupil-centred creative play often takes precedence over teacher-led direct instruction. The music classroom therefore challenges utopian, knowledge-rich ideologies and has the potential to act as a counter-site—or, in Foucauldian terms, a ‘heterotopia’—in which wider institutional values are re-presented and inverted. In this paper I draw on Foucault’s ‘heterotopias of juxtaposition’ to frame the music classroom at Sycamore Close Academy (pseudonym), a secondary school styled after the Michaela Community School. Using accounts from my recent ethnographic fieldwork at the school, I explore how juxtapositions of continuity and change and imitation and imagination emerge within the theory-driven music curriculum, fashioning new possibilities for creative play to contest utopian, knowledge-rich constructs.
Biography
Elizabeth MacGregor is currently the Joanna Randall-MacIver Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and the recipient of a Career Development Fellowship from the British Educational Research Association. Her research into vulnerability and care in secondary music education has been published widely, including in her recent monograph entitled Musical Vulnerability.
Javier Rivas ‘Some Notes on Literacy, Aurality, and Social Justice in Community Music and Outreach’
Abstract
In recent years, there have been numerous attempts to broaden understandings of music ‘literacy’—traditionally defined as the ability to read and write Western Classical music. These efforts have led to a ‘clash of allegiances’ between different articulations of social justice in music education (McQueen 2020, Spruce 2024). Music theory is often at the centre of this clash, seen as either a potential barrier to inclusion and access that needs to be collectively reframed or a specialist knowledge worth preserving.
This paper will consider these discussions through the case of the King’s Music Academy, a community music school and outreach project aimed at widening access to music education for primary school pupils in Southwark, London. The Academy offers a unique perspective to examine the conjuncture of different positions on social justice in music outreach: it embraces an informal, collaborative, and ‘rhizomatic’ educational ethos (Rivas and Cavett 2025), while simultaneously striving to raise pupils’ aspirations to pursue GCSE, BTEC, A level, and higher education. Through this forum, I will explore the purpose and meaning of ‘music theory’ and ‘literacy’ in the Academy, examining how traditional literacy intersects with other forms of musical knowledge, including aural and somatic knowledge.
Biography
Javier Rivas (he/him/él) is a writer, teacher, musician, cultural organiser, and PhD researcher in the Music Department at King’s College London. His research, teaching, and outreach work focus on processes of academic reform and culture change in music education. Javier has researched and taught music, anthropology, and social theory at King’s College London, University College London, and ESMUC (Catalonia College of Music).
