What would an ideal music education look like? All too often in education research and practice, our vision of how music education might be is constrained by how it is; by the practicalities of funding, teacher expertise, student motivation and curriculum status. Several of the authors in this issue ask us to forget those concerns momentarily, and consider what Dawn Bennett calls a ‘musotopia’ – the ideal that music education might aim for in engaging students with music and preparing them for lifelong involvement. Bennett's interest lies with students in higher education, whose ‘musotopia’ involves adequate preparation for a musical career, rather than the sole focus on instrumental excellence which has characterised past conservatoire models of teaching. Whilst this might be thought of as idealistic, it contains a strong element of realism, with Bennett asking conservatoire tutors to address the diverse skills needed by the next generation of musicians, rather than focusing solely on instrumental excellence.

This article looks at the way music education policy is realised in three curriculum contexts: the formation of the official music curriculum, its implementation by music teachers and its reception by students. Working from within the field of education policy studies, I have collected data on music education in Cyprus in order to explore what music teachers and students might expect from a music curriculum and have compared this with what the official music curriculum actually prescribes. The findings constitute distinct sets of educational ideologies and indicate areas of fragmentation between the three contexts. I discuss some implications and make suggestions for conceptualising music education policy. I conclude that music education policy needs to be construed as a polydynamic process which is polyglot, polycentric and polymorphic in its nature.

School students' immersion in a rich entertainment media environment has implications for classroom listening. Increasing interaction among media, design, games, communications and arts fields has led to a growing trend in the creative alignment of music and moving image. Video sharing sites such as YouTube are assisting in the proliferation and dissemination of such material, and are a source for the stimulation of creative and artistic activity from which music education can benefit. In this article I explore some of the possibilities of cross-media listening, which considers music from (variously) aural, visual, spatial and kinaesthetic orientations. Cross-media listening centres on visual musical works, pieces from moving image genres that are structured according to the codes, materials, devices and processes of music. Grounded in sound pedagogical principles and expounded through a series of analyses, cross-media listening advocates a reintegrated, multi-domain approach to encountering music in educational settings.

This paper reports an action research study of teacher and pupil talk about composing. Data were collected through video and audio recordings of composition lessons in a secondary school. Qualitative analysis of the data led to the development of a ‘typology of pupil talk about composing’ which distinguishes between six main types: exploration, description, opinion, affective response, evaluation and problem solving. The results of the study suggest that as children engage and empathise affectively and acquire ownership of their work, they appear to be able to talk more confidently about it. As children make sense of their work, they may well be able to understand more than their talk reveals. The role of teachers in nurturing talk about composing work in the classroom is considered in relation to the findings. By designing appropriate composing tasks, they may be able to promote the development of more mature forms of evaluative talk in younger children, and of their critical listening and appraising skills. The development of more mature, ‘higher’ forms of evaluative talk in younger children might be promoted by teachers in designing composing tasks.

For the majority of undergraduate classical music performance students, ‘musotopia’ is a place where performance ambitions are realised with an international performance career. However, given that so few musicians achieve this ambition, should this ideal be redefined? This paper investigates instrumental musicians' careers by exploring the realities of professional practice. A detailed study which incorporated interviews, focus groups and a lengthy survey, revealed the multiplicity of roles in which most musicians engage in order to sustain their careers. The findings call into question the concept of a musician as a performer, positing that a musician is rather someone who practises within the profession of music in one or more specialist fields. The diversity of roles pursued by practising musicians is not reflected in the majority of conservatorium curricula, thus the enormous potential for the transfer of music graduate skills into the broad cultural industries setting remains largely unrealised. Acceptance of, and preparation for, a more holistic career will enable many more graduates to find their own musotopia.

This study aims to explore and investigate the factors that contribute to effective instrumental teaching and to understand the interdependence and interactions between these factors. The study obtained data using qualitative research tools from a series of individual and group instrumental teaching observations and a semi-structured interview with an instrumental teacher operating in a variety of teaching contexts. Findings from the study suggest that a great number of factors are required for instrumental teaching and learning to be effective. These factors interweave with each other and form a creative teaching style for the subject. The research indicated that it is helpful for the teachers to focus on pupils' learning processes rather than only on their learning outcomes. When real learning occurs, it is a positive experience for both teachers and pupils with long-term benefits in other areas of learning.

This paper presents findings from action research in a conservatoire (the Guildhall School of Music & Drama) which focused on teaching and learning effective breathing in playing the oboe. A range of approaches and techniques emerged from a literature review. These were implemented in practice with oboe students at the Guildhall School, and changes in their practice and perceptions of breathing were analysed. Participants' responses to the approaches used were diverse, emphasising individual learning styles. Considerable changes in their breathing practice as oboists were observed, and in addition it was noted that in several cases their approach to learning became more reflective and self-directed.