Fostering Cultural Musicology Literacy in Education: A Case Study of the Chengdu Jiezi Saxophone Art Festival

Abstract

This study examines the development of cultural musicology literacy in music education, using the Chengdu Jiezi Saxophone Art Festival as an example. It addresses the long-standing issues of saxophone pedagogy in China, focusing on imitating Western works and techniques while neglecting cultural musical expressions. The main objective of the study is to understand how an artistic platform may enhance the national musical identity understanding of the students and community members for saxophone pedagogy while dealing with how to fuse Chinese folk music with saxophone musical idioms. To this end, this study employed a qualitative research method with a single case study. The research involved 12 key informants chosen from purposive sampling, consisting of the founder of the festival, academic festival organizers, and professional composers and performing artists. The research gathered data using three main research methods: semi-structured in-depth interviews focused on the philosophical underpinnings of the informants, observation of the rehearsals and presentations as a framework to record and document artistic interaction, and clear-cut examination and analysis of music scores of the representative works to do so. The results show that cultural musicology literacy is cultivated through a three-pronged approach consisting of material integration, structural transformation, and expressive re-articulation. The festival is also identified as a special type of educational ecosystem that offers a seamless and uninterrupted chain of musical creation, performance, and publication. This offers a space in which the traditional logic of music is advanced and interpreted in a contemporary context, based on the true and authentic relationships established between composers and performers, thanks to the feedback loop of the festival’s work. The findings also show that to culturally sustain professional music education, music schools must move from a model of basic Western imitation to one of structural abstraction and cultural integration. This will eventually help provide a unique musical voice for the saxophone within a global artistic framework.