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April 2010 XXXI:2 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
132
Christopher Small:
ABiographical Profile
of His Life
Mary Cohen
The University of Iowa
Christopher Small (1927–) has been described as “one of those rare people
who go directly to the heart of a matter and . . . think the unthinkable.”1Small,
anative New Zealander who spent his career in London and now lives in Sitges,
Spain, did not expect his first book, Music, Society, Education (1977) to make
an impact on academic circles. However, this book provoked debate and its ideas
have remained relevant to contemporary educators. Small wrote two other books,
Music of the Common Tongue (1987) and Musicking (1998), and has published
eighteen articles, ten book reviews, eight papers, and four book chapters so far
in his lifetime.
Throughout his career, rather than ask “what is music?” Small has posed
another question: “What does it mean when this performance takes place at
this time, in this place, with these participants?” Small defines music as a verb:
“to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance.”2He has
coined the term “musicking” to incorporate the concepts of sonic and social
relationships that are part of the very nature of any music-making experience.
He states, “The act of musicking establishes among those present a set of
relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act of
musicking lies.”3For Small, then, a primary, intrinsic meaning of music resides
in its social dimensions. Such dimensions continually interact with those purely
sonic or acoustic relationships typically emphasized by philosophers of music
aesthetics. Small turns conventional wisdom on its head, arguing that the
symphony orchestra concert, one of the most iconic representations of the Western
fine arts tradition, could itself illustrate that the “musical” could not exist
without those phenomena typically referred to as “extra musical,” such as
social, affective, and cognitive aspects of musical performances.
1. John Paynter, review of Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening, by Christopher
Small, Music Education Research 1, February 1999, 237–41.
2. Christopher Small, “Musicking: A Ritual in Social Space,” in Oklahoma Symposium on
Music Education. On the Sociology of Music Education, ed. Roger Rideout (Norman, Okla.: School
of Music, University of Oklahoma, 1997), 2.
3. Ibid., 3.
Mary Cohen 133
Musicking and Musicing
Music educator David J. Elliott coined the term “musicing” that literally
sounds the same as Small’s term, “musicking.” Elliott explains that his term is
acontraction of the words music-making and that it includes performing,
arranging, composing, conducting, listening, and improvising.4Small’s term
also encompasses these activities. Upon closer investigation, however, Elliott’s
and Small’s thinking and their respective terms differ in important ways.
Elliott’s intention is to “modify the aesthetic idea of works to achieve a more
reasonable concept of musical products.”5He, nonetheless, appears to function
in several respects with a concept of works similar to that employed by many
aesthetic thinkers.
When analyzing a philosophy of music education, it is helpful to examine
whether the construct “music” or “education” serves as a primary focus. This
focus clarifies the philosophy’s foundational starting point. In Music Matters,
Elliott’s first premise is: “the nature of music education depends on the nature
of music.”6He states, “A philosophical concept of music is the logical prerequisite
to any philosophy of music education.”7Elliott argues that a “fatal flaw” exists
when approaching music education philosophy from the nature and value of
education.8Clearly,for Elliott, his concept of music serves as a primary focus
for his philosophy of music education.
Small, conversely,approaches music and education on equal terms. He
describes music as “a mode of exploration by which we explore ourselves, our
experience and our environment.”9For Small, direct experience is a key to musical
learning. Small’s concept of musicking blends sound and social relationships
into an inseparable process. With this approach, neither music nor education
is deemed more important than the other. Rather, the two constructs constantly
interrelate in complex ways.
The two writers use the term, music, as different parts of speech. Small
uses and defines music as a verb. Elliott repeatedly uses music as a noun. He
asks, “What is music?”10 and states, “We must explain what we mean when
4. David J. Elliott, Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995): 40–41.
5. Ibid., 35.
6. Ibid., 12.
7. Ibid., 18.
8. Ibid., 13.
9. Small, “Towards a Philosophy of Music Education: Part 2: Metaphors and Madness,” Music
in Education, 39, no. 373 (1975): 163.
10. Elliott, Music Matters, 3, 18.
134 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
we call something [emphasis added] music.”11When Elliott discusses musical
performance, he emphasizes its sonic structures: “A performance projects
amusician’s understanding of the several dimensions of a given composition
into a definite context.”12Although Elliott later argues against the notion of
music-as-object, he nonetheless emphasizes the sonic structures of musical
performance.
Small cautions against making abstracted ideas prominent, particularly
when considering music and education. He prefers to focus on the actions that
give rise to ideas. He does not wish for musical performances or musical
compositions to be thought of merely as objects. For example, Small suggests
that both Western classical musicians and those who listen to classical music
in traditional venues are celebrating music primarily as a sonic object created
by a composer. Performers of classical compositions, Small states, simply render
“service to those objects.”13 Small suggests that rather than understanding
music as an autonomous object and focusing solely on its form, music should
be understood as process, experience, and action.
Elliott and Small also perceive the role of sung words differently. Elliott
describes the two functions of texts in J. S. Bach’s Saint John Passion and Saint
Matthew Passion. Heargues that the consonants and vowels provide a “timbral”
effect and that they communicate “the cultural beliefs and values of [Bach’s]
time and place.”14 This first function demonstrates Elliott’s emphasis on the sonic
dimensions of musicing. The second function suggests that a contemporary
performance of these compositions conveys the beliefs and values of eighteenth
century German citizens.
Small perceives text within its framework and relationships among
performers, listeners, and musical sounds. He acknowledges that the words
of a song depict particular emotional relationships more outwardly and directly
than the musical sounds of instrumental compositions.15 According to Small,
meanings attributed to a particular song may change in relationship to the
context of its performance. Heillustrates this notion bydescribing a performance
of “IfIHad a Hammer,” originally performed by Pete Seeger as an anti-war
11. Ibid., 19.
12. Ibid., 165.
13. Small, Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music
(London: John Calder Publishers Ltd, 1987; reprint, New York: Riverrun Press, 1988; reprint
Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1999, 50.)
14. Elliott, Music Matters, 188.
15. Christopher Small, “Performance as Ritual: Sketch for an Enquiry into the True Nature
of a Symphony Concert,” in Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event (London: Routledge
&Kagan Paul Ltd., 1987): 6–32.
Mary Cohen 135
song. The 2005 performance at a U.S. Republican Party dinner referred to House
Majority leader Texan Tom DeLay, and his nickname, “The Hammer.” Small
suggested the Republicans at this dinner party were “exploring, affirming, and
celebrating what they saw as their victory in the American culture wars.”16 Small
considers the relational meanings among the performers and audience members
of a particular concert. Rather than focusing on the sonic factors of the words
and the original meaning of the composition, Small notices that the words sung
have unique meanings that change with the specific nature of each performance
of such words.
Elliott also perceives musicing primarily as a cognitive act centered on the
stylistic and structural elements musicians must negotiate. For Elliott, musical
understanding is evident when an individual is musicing, which he states
involves “a multidimensional form of thinking.”17 He names a musical composition
a“thought generator” and defines musicianship as a “form of knowledge.”18
For Small, relationships are at the center of musicking. He incorporates a
person’s whole body experience of music-making, relationships that occur with
others, and contextual elements related to the performance in his concept of
musicking.
“Musicing” and “musicking” both involve creating music. Elliott’s concept
focuses on sonic elements and the individual thinking necessary for composition,
performance, and listening. Small’s concept incorporates both social and the sonic
elements. These differences point toward the uniqueness of Small’s thinking in
the world of contemporarymusic education. Furthermore, Small’s ideas have
continued to influence music educators in the twenty-first century.19
Small’s Life and Work
Various published sources partially detail aspects of Christopher
Small’slife, including some scattered anecdotal accounts written by Small
16. Small, “Creative Reunderstandings”(paper presented at the Conference on Globalization,
University Centre, Trondheim, Norway, 2005): 3.
17. Elliott, Music Matters, 33.
18. Ibid., 296.
19. For examples, see Pamela Costes, “TUNOG Pil-AM: Creating and Reinventing the Sound
of the Filipino Natives of America” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2005); Marc Duby,
“Soundpainting as a System for the Collaborative Creation of Music in Performance” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Pretoria, South Africa, 2007); Miriam Dvorin-Spross, “Tune, Tot and Kin:
Constructing Music Praxis in a Humanities Course for Undergraduate Nonmusic Majors” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Washington, 2005); Kevin Fellezs, “Between Rock and a Jazz Place:
Intercultural Interchange in Fusion Musicking” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Cruz,
2004); David Borgo, “Musicking on the Shores of Multiplicity and Complexity,” Parallax, vol.
13, no. 4 (2007): 92–107.
136 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
himself.20However, no overview of his life and work has been published before.
This investigation offers such an account, drawing on primary source materials,
interviews, and personal correspondence, with special notice to how his life
experiences related to or influenced his concept of musicking.
There is a discrepancy surrounding the date of Christopher Small’s birth.
According to his parents, Neville Charles Christopher Small was born on
March 17, 1927 in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Official records,
however, document his birthday eight days later, on March 25, 1927. Small
first realized this inconsistency when he acquired a birth certificate for university
entrance requirements.21 Small’s parents remained adamant that he was born
on March 17.
Thus, although his birth certificate, current passport, Spanish residencia,
and other official documents date his birth as March 25, Small nevertheless
believes his parents; he continues to celebrate his birthday each St. Patrick’s Day.
Said Small, “Until then [when he sought the birth certificate] it had been March
17, St. Patrick’s Day, which was when my mother swore was the date I arrived,
and she ought to know. . . . I still celebrate the 17th. Gives the astrologists fits
because they don’t know whether I’m a Pisces or an Aries.”22
This anecdote demonstrates an ongoing theme in both Small’slife story and
his philosophical discourse—he has a pronounced tendency to be selectiveabout
what sources of authority he accepts, and occasionally he is at odds with
prevailing custom. Though he has devoted a good portion of his life to making,
teaching, and writing about music, for example, Small earned a degree in
science and originally intended to earn a medical degree, but not to be “any
old common-or-garden GP or even surgeon.”23 He wanted to study for the
Diploma of Public Health and work as a public health doctor.
20. Brief summaries of Small’s life include two short autobiographical accounts: (a) “Growing
Up in New Zealand” Echology, no. 3 (1989): 38–40 and (b) a nine-page unpublished autobiography
written for Hildegard Froelich. John Thornley has published partial accounts of Small’s life in
“Christopher Small: Master of Musicking,” Music in New Zealand, no. 17 (1992): 34–36 and
“Christopher Small: ‘AMusician Who Thinks About His Art,’” Music in the Air,no.11
(2001):16–22. Robert Christgau has published three articles about Small’s theory of musicking:
(a) “Christopher Small on Musicking,” Chamber Music no.18 (2001): 38–40, 42, (b) a three-
partonline interviewavailable from http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/chrissmall.html,
http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/chrissmall2.html, and http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/
chrissmall3.html; Internet, and (c) “Thinking about Musicking” Village Voice, September 5, 2000,
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/small-00.php (accessed 24 April 2006).
21. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 29 May 2006.
22. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 26 June 2006.
23. Christopher Small, unpublished autobiography, 1. Copy in author’s possession.
Mary Cohen 137
Relationships
Interpersonal relationships offer another ongoing theme in both Small’s
life and his discourse. One of the three people to whom Small dedicated Music
of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music
(1987) was his life partner, Neville Braithwaite (1927–2006). Braithwaite and
Small became friends because of their similar upbringing, passion for music,
and mutual respect. Braithwaite, a native of Kingston, Jamaica, ran a youth
center located in a racially-mixed suburb of London. Small recalled how
Braithwaite, his West Indian friends, and his family shaped Small’s thinking
about African American influences on popular music, particularly as he
became immersed in black music and dance through Braithwaite’s youth
center. He stated, “Music of the Common Tongue came very naturally out of
all that, though writing the book took more than six years and I thought it
was going to kill me.”24 Small was teaching full-time with twenty-one hours
of weekly student contact when he wrote this text. Despite these challenges,
Small called it “my favorite of my three children.”25
Musical Influences from Cradle to Career
Life in the Small household offered multiple opportunities for Christopher’s
musical growth. These include his family, relationships, and educational
experiences. It is also interesting to consider his professional appointments,
influences, and retirement activities. His early musical influences planted seeds
for Small to perceive music-making as particularly valuable to daily life.
Relationships, both intellectual such as his own relationships with ideas and
social such as those with his students and colleagues, helped him develop his
insight into the role of music-making and human life.
Charles Arthur Small and Doris Evelyn Haggett Small
Small described his father, Charles Arthur Small (1894–1969), as “a lovely
man, extremely handsome with a muscular physique that he kept to his
death.”26 Small recalled his father’s white hair, his kindness and generosity, and
his fine piano skills. Charles loved to sing old popular songs and sea songs,
accompanying himself on the piano. One of his favorite party songs was “The
Cobbler’sSong” from London’s longest running show at the time, Fredric
Norton and Oscar Asche’s musical Chu Chin Chow.Charles saw this musical
while serving as an army dentist in London in 1919. The show, according to
24. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 10 July 2006.
25. Robert Christgau, “Thinking about Musicking,” Village Voice.
26. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 29 May 2006.
138 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
Small, provided moments of escape for people fighting in World War I. A heavy
smoker, Charles died of lung cancer at age 76.27
Small reports that his mother, Doris Evelyn Haggett (1893–1977), was a
highly intelligent woman who studied to be a teacher in Wellington and taught
primary school for several years. She was, Small said, what they called a
“bluestocking.”28Small’s parents met when Charles’s parents invited Doris to spend
school holidays at their farm, and as Small described, “Bingo! Teenaged lovers!”29
By supplying a wide variety of musical recordings, occasionally taking him
to hear live musical performances, and by regularly singing young Christopher
to sleep, Doris provided opportunities for him to develop a passion for music.
Small specifically recalled her singing lovely Edwardian music-hall songs to him
when he was a child.30 Small’s parents, each of whom experienced a Victorian-
style upbringing,31 were kind and liberal-minded. They encouraged their
children, Lawrence (1919–1990), Rosemary (1922–), and Christopher (1927–),
to exercise a great deal of freedom both in thought and action.
Both of Small’s siblings enjoyed making music. Small recalled that he and
Rosemarywould sing songs from the Gilbertand Sullivan opera The Gondoliers
27. Ibid.
28. “Bluestocking” is an old-fashioned pejorative term for an intellectual woman. During
the 1750s, a group of independently minded women gathered to hold literary discussions instead
of participating in idle chatter during card games. One of these women, Mrs. Vesey, invited
Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, a publisher, translator, learned botanist, and minor poet, to attend
one of the gatherings. At that time, formal evening dress required black silk stockings. Mr.
Stillingfleet could not afford the silk stockings. Mrs. Vesey encouraged Mr. Stillingfleet to come
in his informal day clothes, so he came wearing blue stockings. One of the participant’s
husbands rudely called the gatherings meetings of the Blue Stocking Society, and the term
“bluestocking”eventually came to describe intellectual women. For moreinformation see Sylvia
Harcstark Meyers’s The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in
Eighteenth Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
29. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 29 May 2006.
30. The songs that Small’s mother sang were popular English ballads from the Edwardian
era, a period from 1901 through 1914. King Edward II, who followed Queen Victoria’s reign,
ruled England from 1901–1910. Citizens of this era indulged in fashion, cuisine, entertainment,
and travel. The era was known as the “Gilded Age,” and the glitz and fashion of the Titanic
were emblematic of this era.
31. The Victorian era ranged from 1837 to 1901. The British overpowered New Zealand
in 1840, but in 1907 New Zealand became self-governed. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) was
the daughter of Edward, the Duke of Kent, and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. At age 18,
she became Queen of England, and three years later she married her cousin, Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The term Victorian England stemmed from Victoria’s ethical manners
and personal tastes, which generally reflected the middle class. For more information on the
Victorian Age, see Josephine M. Guy’s The Victorian Age: An Anthology of Sources and Documents
(New York: Routledge, 1998).
Mary Cohen 139
“over the washing up.”32Christopher and Rosemary played piano duets when
they were older. According to Small, she played “with a sparkling light touch
and a strong technique.”33
At the age of twelve, Lawrence sold his Hornby train set and purchased radio
equipment. He gave his younger brother, Christopher, a small, portable, one-
valve battery-powered radio. Christopher’s interactions with music now lasted
into his bedtime, as he used the radio to listen to the local station while under
his bedcovers.34
Small’s Educational Experiences
Acombination of experiences fed Small’s musical passion, which he described
as a “slow acquisition of an addiction.”35 These experiences included a variety
of musical listening opportunities. In addition to listening to the radio under
the sheets, he listened to records on the family gramophone, a large wind-up
acoustic model that played seventy-eight revolutions per minute records. Small
reported he still has “a kinesthetic memory in the seat of my pants of where I
had to get up to turn the record over.”36 During his frequent bouts with
bronchitis and sinus problems, this record player sat next to Christopher’s bed,
which was covered with records.
After the age of thirteen, the schools that Small attended offered no music
classes. He reflected, “From what I haveseen latterly,that [no school music classes
in secondary schooling] might have been a blessing.”37
Such retrospectivecomments perhaps stemmed from Small’s later perception
of music education in schooling contexts, perceptions that evolved through
subsequent college teaching and professional observations. Small came to
believe that schools led children to be consumers of knowledge about music,
rather than creators of music: “The concern for product, as usual, means that
32. Christopher Small, unpublished autobiography, 1.
33. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 5 July 2006.
34. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 29 May 2006.
35. Christopher Small, “Growing Up in New Zealand,” Echology 3 (1989): 38.
36. Christopher Small, unpublished autobiography, 1. Other record selections that Small
listened to as a youth included Schubert’s BbTrio, excerpts from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde,
Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, English jazz musicians such as Nat Gonella and His Georgians, Harry
Roy and His Tiger Ragamuffins, Paul Whiteman, Clare Butt singing “Land of Hope and Glory,”
Gounod’sSerenade, selections by Beethoven, Schubert, Gilbert and Sullivan, popular music,
spirituals, London vocalists Turner Layton and Clarence Johnston, the song “It Was a Lover
and His Lass,” some comic musical monologues, one record of a four-record set of Schumann’s
Piano Concerto, Frank Crumit singing “The Song of the Prune,” Jim Davidson and the ABC
Dance Orchestra, “Three O’ Clock in the Morning” waltz played on Regal Zonophone by the
Hilo Hawaiian Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Fifteenth String Quartet, Opus 132.
37. Small, New Zealand, 38.
140 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
little attention is given to the process, and we find that the training of these
young lions becomes ever more arduous; scales, exercises, solfege dominate the
life of the young virtuoso to the point that it is a miracle that any love of music
survives at all.”38 He described this routine focus on product rather than process
as “boring many of our children out of their minds and, inevitably before long,
music teachers out of the schools.”39
Small enjoyed listening to a variety of musical styles. At age twelve, he prided
himself on being able to whistle the entire Dvorak “New World Symphony” from
start to finish. Although his parents distinguished between classical and jazz, Small
did not deem one musical style better than another style. He described himself
as “blissfully unaware at that age that there was one thing called ‘classical music’
and another called ‘popular music’ and that one was ‘better’ than the other.”40
Small’s relationships with musical sounds and music-making as a young
person were, in general, more playful than his peers. For example, Small recalled
that “never in my whole life have I practiced scales.”41 Hamilton Dickson, his
piano teacher from 1934 to 1942, did not require him to participate in the Royal
Schools of Music examinations, for which Small was grateful.42 While his peers
prepared selections for these examinations, Small played an eclectic mixture of
music from Finnish composer Selim Palmgren (1878–1951), Norwegian
composer Edvard Grieg (1843–1907), Spanish composer Enrique Granados
(1867–1916), French composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918), Hungarian
composer Bela Bartok (1881–1945), and popular selections.
Small attended Palmerston North Boys’ High School from 1940 to 1941,
where he tended to socialize with other academically-focused students. Some
of his peers despised a certain classmate who played popular songs by ear. Small,
on the other hand, secretly envied this skill, yet he did not tryto play piano by
ear until twenty years later when he worked at a school that could not afford
to purchase musical scores.43
From 1942 to 1944, Small attended Wanganui Collegiate School, a boys’
boarding school in Wanganui, on the North Island of New Zealand. Small
38. Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education (London: John Calder Ltd., 1977), 193.
39. Christopher Small, “Cage and Cardew—Words on Music,” Music in Education 37,
no. 360 (1973): 79.
40. Small, New Zealand.
41. Small, unpublished autobiography, 2.
42. The Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music have a series of examinations
in eight grades that are divided into Practical and Theory. Annually, they issue a syllabus listing
Bach selections, classical pieces, and compositions by modern composers. Each student must
prepareone selection from each group.
43. Small, New Zealand, 40.
Mary Cohen 141
preferred listening to musical recordings and music-making rather than playing
rugby, so the music master, Lance Craig, gave him a key to the music room.
The music room at Wanganui housed a Bechstein grand piano and a big
Capeheart record player.44 Craig would show him a record, book, or a
piano score, and let Small decide whether it interested him or not. Small
listened to a diverse and extensive record collection, a gift from the Carnegie
Corporation that included the whole history of Western classical music as it
had been recorded at that time. For example, the collection included seven
hundred recordings by American composers such as Charles Ives (1874–1954)
and Henry Cowell (1897–1965) among others. He could also play piano
compositions of his choice using Craig’s private collection of piano scores.45
As a University of New Zealand National Scholar in 1944, Small possessed
the academic skills to fulfill his parents’ expectations to become a doctor. Small
recalled that his decision to study medicine “was kind of a default decision, for
lack of anything that at the age of eighteen I wanted to do more.”46 However,
soldiers returning from World War II received preferential treatment on their
medical school applications, so Small majored in zoology instead and earned
abachelor of science degree from Otago University in 1949.
Through his zoology studies, Small learned about comparative anatomy,
primarily by doing dissections. He recalled his “zest and a perpetual astonishment
at the unity in variety that they [the dissections] displayed.”47 He reported
that he learned about the relationships within an individual creature’s similar
parts, between those parts and another creature’s related parts, and in a broader
sense, between one group of creatures and another group. Those learning
experiences informed his later thinking about complex relationships, which
became a central concept in his futuretheoryof musicking.48
During his zoology studies he engaged in musical activities on his own,
including composing. “While I was at university doing the science degree
Itook part in a deal of musical activity one way and another and tried my
hand at composition, all untutored. God knows what the stuff was like.”49
As he was about to enter medical school, however, Small discovered that
he was no longer interested in studying medicine. Instead, his passion for
44. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 4 June 2006.
45. Christopher Small, “Towards a Philosophy of Music Education: Part 1: Education and
Experts,” Music in Education 39, no. 372 (1975): 110.
46. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 11 May 2006.
47. Christopher Small, unpublished autobiography, 4.
48. Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover,
N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1998): 208–9.
49. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 11 May 2006.
142 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
musical activities dominated his life, and he decided to pursue musical studies
formally.
Once he decided this, Small went to Wellington in 1949. There he studied
piano with Hungarian Kato Kurzweil, one of Bela Bartok’s pupils who had
completed her Ph.D. in Vienna. Kurzweil, a German Jewish refugee, told Small
he needed to earn a diploma or Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music (LRSM)
if he wanted to be a professional musician. Kurzweil enrolled Small in the top
Grade Eight level of the LRSM Exam. Small had not taken these exams in the
past because his previous teacher did not deem it necessary. Kurzweil died of cancer
prior to Small passing the LRSM exam. She was Small’s final piano instructor.50
The following year, Small tested for the Diploma in Musicianship, which
assessed sight reading, keyboard harmony, and performing on the piano. Small
recalled that one of the examiners descended from the English composer Sir
William Sterndale Bennett (1816–1875), whom German composer Robert
Schumann (1810–1856) admired. This examiner asked what Small considered
an idiotic question: “Mr. Small, what is your attitude to music?” When asked
recently about his answer to this question, Small recalled responding with
something such as: “I take it very seriously, if that’s what you mean.” Upon
reflection, he noted that it was not this exchange per se that was important,
except that the examiners, representing traditional classical genres, might have
detected something in Small’s answers that disturbed them—something, Small
noted, that he did not yet perceive.51
This exchange occurred in 1955. Small wrote Music, Society, Education twenty
years later. Even at that time he was unaware that his ideas were contrary to
the conventional wisdom on classical music.
With supportfrom his parents, Small completed his bachelor of music degree
in 1955 from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. He described
it as “an old-fashioned English degree.”52 The newly formed Department of Music
at Victoria University had one classroom situated over the chemistry labs that
was used both for lectures and recitals. The odor in the air contained faint smells
of hydrogen sulfide coming from the chemistry rooms below. In addition to
having only one classroom, the music department had limited personnel and
resources: two faculty members, one office, a record player, and a piano. In
retrospect, Small believed that he “was taught pretty well.” Small recalled that
he was “thoroughly grounded in the history of western music, harmony, canon,
fugue, orchestration and so on.”53
50. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 4 June 2006.
51. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 11 May 2006.
52. Christgau, “Interview with Christopher Small: Part One.”
53. Small, autobiography, 5.
Mary Cohen 143
One of the lecturers was the New Zealand composer, Douglas Lilburn
(1915–2001). Lilburn had studied at the Royal College of Music with British
composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). The university required
students to compose a large work for chorus and orchestra and had no
individual instrumental or vocal performance requirements. This mandate that
all students compose and Small’s subsequent experiences composing various
pieces may have influenced Small to develop an attitude that everyone is
capable of creating music.
Small’s only regret related to his formal musical studies was following the
advice of Professor Lilburn, who suggested that he should not accept a job as
assistant conductor of the Wellington Amateur Operatic Society. Contrary to
the group’s title, the society performed musicals, not operas. Lilburn told him
at the time, “If I were you, I’d keep my ears clean.” Later, Small deeply regretted
this decision because it was “an opportunity lost to learn essential skills on the
job.”54 As a result of this missed opportunity, Small shared the following advice
to young musicians: “Never, NEVER, pass up an opportunity to make music.”55
Small pursued other professional activities while completing his bachelor’s
degree in music. In 1952 he worked as music director for Morrow Productions,
Ltd., an educational animated film studio, and taught music, English, French,
chemistry, and other subjects at Horowhenua College, a small country secondary
school in Levin, New Zealand.
After composing scores for films, Small was invited by a dance teacher in
Wellington to compose a score for an all New Zealand ballet. In February 1960,
amainly amateur cast performed this ballet, titled “Children of the Mist,” in
Wellington, which he regarded as “the biggest thing I had ever attempted.” Small
described the exhilarating feeling of hearing his composition performed: “I’ve
never had such a high in all my life as the night of the orchestra rehearsal, hearing
my music played by twenty-fivegood musicians from the New Zealand
National Orchestra.”56
Using this composition as part of his application, Small competed for and
was awarded a New Zealand Government scholarship in 1960. This two-year
scholarship paid five hundred pounds annually to study composition abroad.
At that time, New Zealanders considered England their “mother home.” Thus,
Small decided to study in London. Small’s initial plan was to live there for two
years. He ended up living there for twenty-five years and pursued a variety of
teaching and work engagements.
54. Ibid., 5.
55. Small, New Zealand, 40.
56. Small, autobiography, This ballet was revived in 1970 by the Royal New Zealand Ballet
for its New Zealand tour.
144 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
Life in London
When Small arrived in London in April 1961, he had no advisor and he
was uncertain where and with whom he was going to study. Thirteen years later,
he reflected, “When I arrived here I was as green as hell. I felt utterly lost and
acutely conscious of the cultural gaps.”57
Small initially attempted, unsuccessfully, to get into the Royal College of
Music. He also wrote to one of the foremost English composers of the day, Sir
Michael Tippett (1905–1998), and asked if he could study with him. Tippett
suggested he work with South African composer Priaulx Rainier (1903–1986).
She mentored Small as he composed a number of instrumental pieces, songs,
and a large orchestral piece.
At the advice of Rainier, Small attended a summer music program on the
Dartington Estate near Totnes, Devon, in southern England in 1962. There,
Small met composer Bernard Rands (1934–). Rands was then a lecturer at the
music department of the University of North Wales in Bangor. He had
previously studied in Florence with Luciano Berio (1925–2003). Small described
his first encounter with Rands as resulting from a “chance remark to this
stranger.”58 After Rands asked to look at Small’s compositions, he spent a
couple hours in the common room at Dartington privately tutoring Small on
the principles of serial composition. Rands continued to work with Small
from 1962 to 1970. Small admired Rands’s articulate communication skills,
his patience, tolerance, and integrity. Despite Rand’s tutelage, however, Small
did not embrace serial composition: “I just couldn’t make myself believe that
what I had written sounded like music.”59
Rands introduced Small to the idea of music as gesture, although Small
recalled, “I really didn’t understand it at the time.”60 Theorists have argued that
music itself could be conceived as gesture. For example, Robert S. Hatten broadly
defined gestureas “any energetic shaping through time that may be interpreted as
significant.” Hatten suggested that his definition included any motor action,
sensory perception, or their combination, and indirectly included representation
of “sonic gesture in notation.”61 Rands conceived of musical gesture in this sense
of gesture in notation as well as a tool for a composer’s exploration.
57. Hazel Shaw,“New Sign with Kiwi Polish—Hazel Shaw Meets a Radical Music Teacher,”
Guardian, 11 June 1974, 21.
58. Christopher Small, “Bernard Rands,” Musical Times (1967): 906.
59. Small, autobiography, 6.
60. Ibid., 6.
61. Robert S. Hatten, “A Theory of Musical Gesture and Its Application to Beethoven and
Schubert” in Music and Gesture, ed. Anthony Gritten and Elaine King (Burlington, Vt.:
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006), 1.
Mary Cohen 145
Rather than rely on Rands’s concept of gesture as a tool for composing,
Small would eventually perceive gesture in a broader conceptual framework,
relating it to musical performance and relationships. According to Small, social
relationships are rooted in a language of gesture, such as eye contact, vocal
inflections, and body movements. Humans, Small suggests, communicate
most effectively through these gestural interactions.
Small contends that musicking is a mode of gestural communication. In
the actual moments of musical performance, as well as during other human
interactions, gestural language is dynamic and open, not preset or predetermined.
Moreover, participants’ relationships differ with each particular performance
because of different expectations, different settings, and different people that
participate in the performance.
Small indicates that the information all living creatures need to respond to
concerns relationships. Responding to or interacting within relationships is a creative
process. The interaction between agent and experience may arouse a particular
response of beauty, rather than considering beauty a reified construct fixed
within an object. Rands’viewof notation as gesturefalls morein line with the
idea of musical score as object. Nonetheless, Rands’s introducing Small to musical
gesture pointed him in a direction of thinking about music in a different way.
After Small’s scholarship expired, he substitute taught and worked for “a
cheapjack publisher that made pirated versions of Soviet publications on science
and technology.” Realizing he did not want to live this type of life, Small
decided to return to full-time teaching.62
Small’s Teaching Positions in England
Small “had to go right back to a rookie’s job, but that was good for me.”
In April 1967 Small joined the faculty of Alperton High School, a secondary
modern girls’ school in north London.63 During his work at this school from
1967 to 1968, Small’sstudents composed a twenty-minute Christmas Cantata
based on NewTestament texts, with each class contributing a section of the piece.
Small also taught students to play recorders, but he quickly realized that
beginning players have difficulty in maintaining good intonation. According
to Small, he switched to penny whistles and achieved instant improvement: “a
much pleasanter sound, and moreenthusiastic participation from the class.”64
62. Small, autobiography, 6.
63. Alperton SecondaryModern School was set up under an Education Act from the 1940s
that was intended to give a suitable and decent education to students that were not academically
focused. The more academically-focused students attended “Grammar” schools. Because of this
distinction, Small was surprised to see the students at Alperton rehearsing Sophocles when he
first visited the school.
64. Ibid., 6–7.
146 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
Rather than subjecting his students to lectures about composers or facts about
music theory, Small typically encouraged students to make music. Composer
Jenny McLeod (1941–), for instance, described her experiences as a student in
Small’s music classes as “vastly enjoyable, never a dull moment, always something
new happening, and us always doing something, always making music.”65
From 1968 to 1971, Small next taught music at Anstey College of Education
in Sutton Coldfield, a suburb of Birmingham. Although Small hoped to
compose for dance projects, to his surprise the dance staff did not encourage
collaboration. Small found he had time to offer himself on Friday afternoons
as a teacher at a local primary school. His superiors at the college, however,
frowned upon such activity.66
Small, nonetheless, found a way to circumvent officials at Anstey. He
simply began to participate in community music activities on Saturdays. Small
worked with the Schools Outreach section of the Belgrade Theater in Coventry,
afew miles east of Birmingham. Small arrived with a vanload of instruments
and helped create music for an upcoming theatrical production.67 He recalled
working with actors at this community center for fourteen “exhilarating”hours
one Saturday, creating and recording music for their play.68
Small simultaneously ran an adults’ Saturday afternoon music workshop
for the Birmingham and Midland Institute, a large establishment for community-
based activities. He facilitated participants’ use of simple classroom instruments,
reporting that they all enjoyed it. Small’s skills at facilitating student composition
resulted in invitations for him to demonstrate ideas for student composition
throughout the English Midlands areas.
Small participated in the 1970 Isle of Wight Rock festival,69 an experience
that contributed to his perception of music as a communal activity. He
purchased a backpack, sleeping bag, and ventured off to the festival on his own,
because he could not find anyone his age (forty-three years) to accompany him.
He caroused with a group of young United States Air Force conscripts and their
wives, who “found me amusing and were nice to me and kept me happily stoned
65. John Thornley, “Christopher Small, ‘A Musician Who Thinks about His Art,’” Music
in the Air (2001): 11, 16–22.
66. Small, autobiography, 7.
67. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, 4 June 2006.
68. Small, autobiography, 7.
69. The third annual Isle of Wight Rock Festival was held August 26–30, 1970 and has
been called “Britain’s Woodstock.” There were approximately 600,000 people in attendance.
Jimi Hendrix performed his final concertat this festival because he died the following month.
For a video recording of the festival see Murray Lerner, Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Music
Festival 1970 (NewYork: Sony Music Entertainment, 1997).
Mary Cohen 147
the entire weekend.”70Small recalled being immersed in live music nearly
twenty-four hours daily. Among the performing groups were The Who, Joni
Mitchell, Chicago, Joan Baez, Donavan, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and Tiny
Tim. Small explained that “music became the centre of a common ritual which
subsumed all the other experiences and showed how partial and incomplete they
in fact are.”71
After completing the 1971 term at Anstey College of Education, Small began
as senior lecturer at Ealing College of Higher Education in London. During
his tenure from 1971 to 1986 at Ealing, Small, along with twenty colleagues,
constructed a new Bachelors of Arts in humanities degree under the Council
for National Academic Awards. His responsibility was to design the first year
music course, which he insisted must be accessible to anyone interested. The
course included a weekly three-hour composition workshop that proved useful
and popular. This program attracted a variety of students. One of these students
introduced Small to John Stevens (1940–1994), a jazz drummer considered by
Small as one of the finest teachers and musicians he had ever met.
Stevens organized a group called the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, whose
membership included some of the best British jazz musicians, such as pianist
Stan Tracey (1926–), as well as “tyros like me [Small].”72 Small explained that
“it was in fact in attempting to analyze my experiences in jazz that I was first
led to the idea of relationships as the key to musical meaning.”73
In1974, Small composed “Actions for Chorus: Some Maori Place
Names” for the City of London Choir’s Commonwealth Day Concert at the
Commonwealth Institute in London. The City of London Choir, under the
direction of Donald Cashmore, commissioned Small to compose this uncommon
piece.74 According to an article in the Guardian, Small used nontraditional
notation, providing a picturesque graph: “There are no notes, there is no beat.”
Small indicated that because attention was focused mainly on timbre and
pitch textures rather than precise pitch, many school children would find this
style familiar.75
70. Small, autobiography, 7.
71. Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education (London: John Calder Ltd, 1977): 171.
72. Small, autobiography, 8.
73. John Thornley, “Christopher Small,” 18.
74. Small was in charge of the composition workshop that Donald Cashmore ran at Ealing
College. Cashmore was enthusiastic about Small’s teaching: “Chris was appointed to teach
contemporarymusic. Hehas this wonderful missionaryattitude which says that everyone should
be involved and not just listening or performing. He endears himself to kids and old-age pensioners
alike.” (Cashmore, as cited in Shaw, “New Sign.”)
75. Shaw, “New Sign.”
148 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
Small loved working with a music group led by the sound poet, Bob
Cobbing (1920–2002). Cobbing used language sounds to create vocal
performances in a style somewhere between recited poetry and song. In
addition to Small at the piano, the group included four other musicians: a
woman singer who “wove marvelous lines of sound around Bob’s voice,” a flutist
who performed on beautifully constructed Andean flutes he made, a
percussionist “who had the biggest collection of hubcaps” Small had ever
seen, and a trombonist.76
Neville Braithwaite
On March 31, 1973, Small met Neville Braithwaite (1927–2006) at a party
in west London. According to Small, Braithwaite was born into a loving, open
family in Kingston, Jamaica. Like Small’s parents, Neville’s parents taught him
and his five siblings to embrace values such as civic virtues, sociability, hospitality,
and ambition. Braithwaite was the first black youth leader in England and Wales,
and directed a number of Youth Centers in England. When he met Small, he
was running a youth center in a racially-mixed London suburb. Braithwaite
provided a space for these teenagers to meet and feel safe. He produced arts
festivals two or three times each year, highlighting various artistic talents of the
youth such as drawing, painting, photography, singing, dancing, fashion, and
even body-building.
Braithwaite had a variety of talents, including being a fine dancer, singer,
and a gymnast. Paul Steinitz (1909–1988), conductor of the London Bach
Society Choir, invited Braithwaite to sing with his choir. Small and Braithwaite
developed a close relationship and both men were able to take early retirement
in 1986.
Small’s“Retirement.”
In1986 at age 59, Small took early retirement from Ealing and purchased
ahome with Braithwaite in Sitges, Spain, about twenty-two miles south of
Barcelona.77 There he still spends time writing, reading, participating in amateur
dramatics, lecturing, and socializing. Taking advantage of a change in Spanish
law, Braithwaite and Small were married on March 10, 2006.
Braithwaite began to suffer from Parkinson’s disease in 2002, a challenge
for both of them. In addition to Parkinson’s, a large tumor developed in
Braithwaite’s brain in August 2006. Small spent a great deal of energy trying
75. Shaw,“New Sign.”
76. Small, autobiography, 8–9.
77. Sitges, Spain averages 300 sunny days per year. It has seventeen beaches including a gay
beach and a nude beach, as well as an active gay nightlife.
Mary Cohen 149
to make Neville’s last days as comfortable as possible. Braithwaite died in his
sleep on the morning of October 12, 2006.78
Small’s retirement, to date, has been an active one. In addition to serving
on the advisory board for the non-profit group Musicians United for Superior
Education,79 Small conducted a local sixteen-voice international choir in Sitges.
The membership included people with diverse cultural backgrounds: Catalan,
Dutch, German, English, Irish, Jamaican, Spanish, and Swiss. According to
Small, their musicking was “a vehicle for their feelings of identity and mutual
respect.” The choir has sung selections by sixteenth-century composers such
as Victoria and Byrd as well as pieces by William Billings.80 The choir disbanded
around 1990.
For several years, Small also accompanied a local sixty-voice Catalan choir
for which he arranged “The Holy City” for tenor and chorus. Braithwaite sang
the tenor solo. He also composed “Hymne” for the twenty-fifth anniversary of
the choir.81
Some critics were offended by three thirty-minute radio shows prepared by
Smith for BBC Radio Three in March 1998 that featured African American
music. Three European publications, The Scotsman, Time Out, and City Limits,
praised Small’s series, titled “This Is Who We Are.” On the other hand, two
British newspapers, The Observer and The Times, devoted more than half of their
78. Christopher Small, e-mail message to author, October 18, 2006. On 20 May 2007, the
English TheatreClub in Sitges organized a tribute to Neville Braithwaite’s life. It was held at
alocal music café bar with capacity for approximately 80 people. The program selections that
were most directly related to Braithwaite’s life were: (a) a reading from The Wide Sargasso Sea,
anovel set in Jamaica in the 1830s by Jean Rhys, (b) other Caribbean readings, (c) and two
video clips of Braithwaite performing English pantomime—Braithwaite cast as the Genie of
the Lamp in the 1987 Barcelona International Theatre Club’s production of Aladdin singing
“When You Wish Upon a Star,” and Braithwaite in 2003 performing his signature tune, “Liza,”
aJamaican folk song made famous by Harry Belafonte, in the beautiful gardens of a Sitges hotel.
Many of the performances had little to do with Braithwaite’s life but were dedicated to him.
Small recalled, “People did what they did best in his honour, which was what made the event
so moving.” Braithwaite’s sister, niece, nephew, and his nephew’s wife traveled from the United
States to attend the event.
79. Musicians United for Superior Education started in 1990 in the Buffalo, N.Y. area. Dr.
Charles Keil began this organization in an effortto bring moreactive music-making opportunities
to children of all socioeconomic levels in the Buffalo area. Its primary objective is to build children’s
academic, artistic, leadership, personal, and social skills. See http://www.musekids.org/ for more
information on this organization.
80. John Thornley, “Christopher Small: Master of Musicking,” Music in New Zealand, 17
(1992): 34–36 and John Thornley, “Christopher Small, ‘A Musician Who Thinks About His
Art,’” Music in the Air 11 (2001): 16–22.
81. Christopher Small , e-mail message to author, 2 May 2007.
150 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education
weekly radio review columns to describing how unworthy Small’s programs were
of the high intellectual standards of Radio Three. Small recalled receiving racist
hate mail. Despite the negative attention, he noted, “I have to admit that I really
enjoyed the chance of getting up the Establishment’s nose, for once—right in
the inner sanctum of BBC Radio Three!” In describing that program, Small
suggested the African American music tradition has had “far more profound
human significance than those remnants of the once-great European traditions
that we hear today in the concert halls and opera houses, not to mention the
classical radio channels of wealthy industrial societies.”82
Summary
Throughout Small’s life he has refused to accept restrictions on his listening,
writing, composing, and teaching. He appreciates structure, but feels free to
improvise and act in ways that he deems most important, even if those ways
are different than mainstream practices. He has found meaning in social and
conceptual relationships which have occurred in many aspects of his life, such
as his scientific studies, musical studies, teaching, composing, and performing.
Throughout his life, he has not deemed one style of music “better” than
another style. His zoology studies have guided him to become more aware of
relationships among living organisms. Small has always been actively involved
in creating music and these experiences, as well as his careful reflections about
the role of music in human lives, have become the basis for his philosophy of
teaching and his concept of music.
82. Thornley,“Christopher Small . . . .” Selections from partone of This IsWho We Areincluded
Count Basie’s 1941 “One O’Clock Jump,” Aretha Franklin’s 1972 “Amazing Grace,” and Muddy
Waters’s 1948 “I Feel Like Going Home.” Part two of the program included the London
Community Gospel Choir’sperformance of “Swing LowSweet Chariot,” the second movement
of Louis Mareau Gottschalk’s Nuit des Tropiques, Bob Marley singing “No Woman No Cry,”
and the United Kingdom-based reggae band Steel Pulse’s 1979 “Handsworth Revolution.” Part
three of the program included the soul/funk band Maze’s 1979 “Joy and Pain,” Louis Jordan’s
1947 “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,” and Sweet Honey in the Rock’s “When I Die
Tomorrow.”