We started by discussing Dr. Taggart’s early background and when she began to form a strong connection to music:

I (Cynthia) grew up in Wisconsin right outside of Milwaukee, but I was born in Madison. Music was an important part of my life from the very beginning because both of my parents were musical. My mom was a music teacher and eventually became a voice professor at a college. My dad was an attorney, but he sang in the Milwaukee Symphony Choir, and he was a euphonium player growing up. I still have memories of driving to my grandparents’ house every Sunday, which was about 45 minutes away, and we all had lyric sheets. The entire time, we would be singing songs from the 20s, 30s, and 40s like You Are My Sunshine and Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye. So, music was really an important part of our family life. We always had music going on in our house as well. My mom was a big Barbra Streisand fan and would play show tunes, opera, and jazz. 

I started French horn in fourth grade, which ended up being my primary vehicle musically, although I also was a pianist (not a very good one) and a singer in school choirs and at Interlochen Fine Arts Camp. Yet, I gravitated mostly towards the French horn and identified primarily as a French horn player. I ended up going to the University of Michigan as a performance French horn major, although, I didn’t remain a performance major for long. I soon recognized that I liked people better than I liked practicing. I really enjoyed teaching and working with people of all ages, and it became clear to me that education was probably a better fit for me than performance to pursue my musical interests. So I finished the degree requirements for both vocal and instrumental music education, and then I went to teach in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I started as an elementary general music teacher and eventually was also an elementary instrumental music teacher. I taught there for 4 years and, as a young teacher there, I became familiar with and immersed in Music Learning Theory for the first time. 

Dr. Taggart shares about her initial introduction to Music Learning Theory at the Sugarloaf Seminars and the impact this had on her career:

The Sugarloaf Seminars were amazing, and Dick Grunow provided the inspiration for me to attend. When I was at the University of Michigan, Dick also was at Michigan; I was an undergrad, and he was a doctoral student. I ended up taking instrumental methods from Dick, because James Froseth was on sabbatical at the time. Dick and I became friends from that point forward, and when I started my first year of teaching, I received a letter from him saying,” I did this amazing thing this summer and you need to do it.”  He had taken the Sugarloaf Seminar in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia with Edwin Gordon. I trusted Dick, and I knew him well enough to know that if he said it was a good thing, it was worth checking out. So, the next summer, which was 1980, after my first year of teaching, I went to Sugarloaf. It was a beautiful, park-like setting with old brick buildings and a swimming pool, and the entire seminar experience changed the way that I thought about music teaching and learning forever. There were brilliant fellow students like John Holahan, John Feierabend, Jim Jordan, Dick Grunow, Alec Harris, Lili Levinowitz, and others. We learned from one another in a playful, immersive environment. We started at 8:00 in the morning and didn’t finish until almost 10:00 at night. That experience was even more intense than our current PDLCs in a couple of ways. There was not a lot of practical application, so there was no focus on classroom activities. We had learning sequence activities practice and theory lectures all day, with a little break in the afternoon for our sanity, to allow us to practice and to rest a little bit intellectually. We worked all morning, much of the afternoon, and all night until 10:00. The days consisted mostly of Ed lecturing, explaining his theoretical ideas, demonstrating learning sequence activities, and talking about how his ideas might play a role in our teaching practice, but Music Learning Theory hadn’t been implemented deeply yet in practice, so the seminar was mostly theoretically oriented. 

It was also amazing because it explained so many things for me. My first year of teaching was really tough. Everyone loved me and I hated it. Every Sunday night I would cry at the thought of going back because I couldn’t imagine getting my students from where they were to actually really being able to do some things musically when they left me. Music Learning Theory sort of laid out a pathway for me to get them there. It also explained and resonated with the way that I had learned music. It made such a fundamental sort of gut-wrenching theoretical sense to me that it really changed the way I thought about music learning and teaching.

I have spent a lot of my professional life translating Music Learning Theory into practice, along with others like Beth Bolton, Dick Grunow, Chris Azzara, Wendy Valerio, and Alison Reynolds, and my attending Sugarloaf was the very beginning of that. We didn’t have much to go on. We didn’t have Jump Right In or Music Play, so we had to think about to how to apply Music Learning Theory to classroom activities and figure out how to connect what was happening in Learning Sequence Activities with what happened in the rest of the music class. I was playing with those ideas while simultaneously trying to develop my own musical skills so that I had the “chops” to implement Music Learning Theory meaningfully. Young teachers who are applying Music Learning Theory for the first time experience similar struggles in terms of their skills, but now there are many more resources in terms of how to practically implement Music Learning Theory in classrooms. Music Learning Theory is so different from what most of us have experienced as students, and teaching it requires different musical skills. 

I then asked Dr. Taggart to elaborate on her experience contributing to Jump Right In:

Writing Jump Right In has felt like the longest pregnancy in history. (She laughs.) We’re still working on Jump Right In, and it has been more than 20 years! There are a lot of things I would like to change about it now as well, like some of the repertoire that currently is included in the series. There are songs that should not be there. When we started choosing the repertoire decades ago, music educators were much less aware of cultural appropriation and issues surrounding equity, justice, and inclusion. The inspiration for the series came from my and Beth Bolton’s teaching, our discussions with Edwin Gordon, and our concern about the lack of materials and resources to take Music Learning Theory beyond just doing learning sequence activities for a few minutes and then going back to the status quo. We wanted to coordinate learning sequence activities in a meaningful way with classroom activities as a way to bring Music Learning Theory to life in the classroom. We wanted to integrate it so that Music Learning Theory played a more powerful and meaningful role in the music education of students. Ed was very supportive of that work. He recognized that he hadn’t spent sustained time over multiple years with children in the classroom, so practicing teachers had lots to contribute and could be a huge help in translating his work to practice. In some ways, I became the Music Learning Theory practitioner that I am today by writing Jump Right In, because it really forced me to think through its practical application in a deep, systematic way and envision and imagine what Music Learning Theory could look like with children. I had explored those ideas in my teaching, but writing Jump Right In took it to a new level for me. 

Dr. Taggart shared about her 40-year friendship with Edwin Gordon:

My first impressions of Edwin Gordon were of a brilliant man who had brilliant ideas and was thoroughly engaged in those ideas. He was always asking questions, learning, and growing. That is one of the things that I really respected about him. He kept growing and was always curious. He always wanted to learn more, not just about Music Learning Theory, but also about woodworking, philosophy, psychology, the psychology of music, and more. He was deeply engaged in ideas. I was really excited to be able to work with somebody like that. It eventually resulted in me being one of his doctoral students. I left a degree in progress at the University of Michigan and transferred to Temple University because I wanted to be immersed in his intellectual and musical depth and to learn from him. At Temple, I took many classes from him, but I also got to sit on the floor with him every Tuesday morning while he was teaching classes of very young children. It was magical watching him engage with those children on the floor, playing with them, eliciting responses from them, asking them questions in a musical way. I learned so much just from watching him teach. Then, as I progressed in my degree program and beyond, he encouraged me to feel and act more like his colleague, although a big part of me will always feel like his student. After I graduated, for more than 20 summers, I taught summer workshops with Ed. He would live at my house, and we would eat all our meals together. I had him to myself for the entire week or two weeks that he was with me. We became very close during those times, which is not to say that we didn’t have bumpy times, because we all have bumpy times. But, our relationship deepened to more than my being his student, and I really treasure those times we spent together. I felt like he sort of “adopted” me to the point that, when he was in hospice, I was one of the few people he allowed to visit him. That was so meaningful to me. I traveled all the way to Iowa to see him. Even then, he was engaged with ideas, telling jokes, and expressed how curious he was to see what was next. His curiosity continued into death. 

I asked Dr. Taggart to elaborate on her involvement on the GIML board and asked her to share some of the major accomplishments from the organization since it was first founded:

I was there as GIML was getting off the ground, which was very exciting. The beginnings of GIML resulted from the hard work of a small group people who were very thoughtful and energized about Ed’s work. And, I have continued to be involved with GIML since its early days. To this day, I continue to learn through my involvement in GIML and my interactions with GIML members and faculty. Because Music Learning Theory played such a huge role in my life and my professional development, I’m very committed to the organization and to giving back to the organization. But it’s not just giving back; it’s continuing to learn and to take from the organization as well. 

GIML has grown radically since its beginnings. PDLCs didn’t begin until long after the founding of the organization, and they are very important to GIML now. I think that PDLCs are central to the mission of GIML, because they allow for a deep immersion in Music Learning Theory. As a result, they really help teachers get their feet on the ground in terms of implementing Music Learning Theory into their practice. Just going to a couple of workshops and doing some reading is helpful, but not enough. The richness and depth of Music Learning Theory present many challenges when starting to implement it in the classroom, and engaging in a PDLC provides a learning community with whom to help navigate the challenges. What GIML provides its members has radically changed since the beginning. We now have online workshops during the school year and in summers, which certainly was not possible in the 80s, and we have monthly faculty online hangouts to allow GIML members to ask GIML faculty and other practitioners for advice and ideas. We also have helpful publications like the quarterly Newsletter and Audea. We continue to gather materials and resources for professional development and for reading for the members. Music Learning Theory itself has evolved through GIML, and the resources available to people about Music Learning Theory have also developed through GIML. 

I waited until Ed passed to become President of GIML, because I felt like right after his death was an especially important time for the organization. It needed leadership that had a strong sense of the history of the organization to move it forward in a way that would honor what has happened before and take advantage of what was possible now. To begin, the GIML Board engaged in a rich strategic planning process. We asked questions about the benefits of membership, how GIML can provide more benefits for members, and how can we help Music Learning Theory reach broader audiences. Our discussions and the resultant plan provided a map for how GIML could move forward. One result is that GIML now has growing international engagement, including a brand new chapter in Iran! And, I’ve presented some online workshops in which there were participants from 15 or 16 different countries, some of them getting up at 3:00 in the morning to take part. Obviously none of those things were happening in the beginning of GIML, and I’m so grateful they’re happening now because they allow us to reach more people, and to learn from those people. We have an opportunity to find out where the struggles are in their practice and create ways to support them in their struggles. 

I asked Dr. Taggart to share more about how Music Learning Theory has changed already and how she sees it evolving more in the future: 

Music Learning Theory has evolved, and it’s continuing to evolve, and that is what Ed would have wanted. He always said that if Music Learning Theory looks the same 20 years after he dies as it does when he died, he will have failed. He very much wanted people, through research, teaching, and experience in the classroom, to continue to learn, grow and apply what they have learned to Music Learning Theory and its application in the classroom. He would want us to grow, and he would want us to change, so Music Learning Theory looks radically different now than it did when we started. The theory itself and certainly its practical application has changed radically since I first engaged with it in the 80s. 

Improvisation, inference learning, and student-directed learning has become more central. They always were important in the model, but people were struggling so much with implementing some of the early stages of discrimination learning that they often would forget to encourage students to think on their own musically. They forgot about inference learning. Now inference learning is much more integrated into Music Learning Theory Classrooms. Ed always talked about the importance of independent musicianship and developing independent learners, but the only way to do that is by engaging them in inference learning and giving them opportunities to make inferences with scaffolding. So I think inference learning has become much more central to the theory and practice of Music Learning Theory. That is one of the fundamental ways Music Learning Theory has changed in the last 20 years. There is a lot more improvisation and composition. 

As music education moves forward, I hope that it will break down the barrier between music as practiced in schools and music as students live it out in the real world. Music Learning Theory, with its focus on aural/oral musicianship, can play an integral role in that process. In addition to large ensembles, I think that there will be a lot more focus on songwriting and small ensembles, music endeavors that are more student-driven than traditional ensembles. Some students get frustrated when engaging in traditional, large ensembles, because they don’t have an opportunity to express their own musical ideas. Sometimes, as a result, they quit and find other ways to engage in music that allow them to express their own musical ideas more fully. Music education must change to engage these students, and Music Learning Theory is poised to facilitate that change. I’m excited to see the other directions that it takes. Right now I am thinking a lot about harmonic audiation and how that can facilitate improvisation and children’s expressing their own musical ideas. I’m co-authoring a book with David Potter on improvisation in elementary general music and choral settings that can be used from the very beginning of elementary music instruction, with activities to build readiness, and progressing all the way through vocal improvisation in Major and Minor tonalities, and tonic, dominant, and subdominant functions. Improvisation is going to become even more of an important element in music education, thanks in part to Chris Azzara’s work and the work of others who have built on what he has done. 

I asked Dr. Taggart to share more about her upcoming book about harmonic audiation: 

We started out thinking, “We’re going to have students improvise in all the different tonalities and meters,” and then we started writing and providing the readiness for improvisation in all of those tonalities and meter. We were already at page 150 and we had not gotten past tonic/dominant in major. So we had to limit the scope a bit. It’s going to have four sections: major tonic/dominant, minor tonic/dominant, major tonic/subdominant/dominant, and minor tonic/subdominant/dominant. It will have songs and activities taking students all the way from resting tone audiation activities, to audiating chord roots, to singing and audiating full chordal harmonies, and then improvisation over those harmonies and chord roots. In each section of the book, there will be many activities that lead students toward successful improvisation, built around songs in those tonalities with the appropriate harmonic functions. We’re drawing mostly from folk repertoire for the activities, but then we also have a bit at the end of each section that uses popular songs and lists all the popular songs by decade that are appropriate for use with children and use the harmonic structures that we’ve been teaching. We give teachers some ideas for activities they could do with some of the popular music as well. We’re close to 400 pages and almost done with the first three sections and half of the fourth section, so we’re getting close. My hope is that we’ll complete the writing by the end of the year, if not sooner. 

I asked Dr. Taggart to share about points of frustration or struggle as she reflects on her career as a Music Learning Theory practitioner: 

One of my biggest frustrations was using the Tonal and Rhythm Register Books, and I think that frustration is shared by many. Although pattern instruction and the Register Books are important and have contributed important things to Music Learning Theory, as they currently stand, they’re a stumbling block for teachers. Many of us have spent a lot of time and thought and used our experience to rearrange and revise, streamline, and figure out how we can make the Register Books more useful in our individual practice. So the Register Books have been one of those stumbling blocks for me, and I’m happy to say that in the last 10 to 15 years of Ed’s life, he gave me and several others permission to rewrite and revise the Register Books. Jennifer Bailey, Heather Shouldice, and I are engaged in that process right now. It’s a slow process because we know how critical it is, but we’re trying to make it possible for students to get to music reading before they leave us. It will probably mean that they have a smaller pattern vocabulary, but some students only have music class once a week, so they don’t get through more than the first couple units by the time that they leave. So there will be multiple pathways through the books, and I think it will make them more flexible and I hope more useful for teachers. 

Most of us, in the beginning of implementing Music Learning Theory, struggled with some of the skills. I had good aural skills and tonal skills. I had better rhythm skills, but I had never been exposed to rhythm solfege, so I was learning those things along with my students. Even though I was a strong musician, implementing Music Learning Theory was still a bit of a struggle, but it became easier with practice. One of the things I love most about Music Learning Theory is that it gives back. I have become so much stronger musically as a result of teaching using Music Learning Theory as a framework. I am a much better audiator as a result of engaging in Music Learning Theory with my students, because I’m learning alongside and hopefully sometimes slightly ahead of them, and it really improved my own musicianship and empowered me musically. So it improved my teaching, but it also engaged me as a musician and a learner, and I found that really compelling. It filled me back up. I’ve seen that with so many of my students who struggled at the beginning of their undergraduate degrees and were still struggling a little bit when they left, but have gotten much stronger musically as they became teachers. After a couple years of teaching, they come back and enroll in a PDLC. I watch them teach and find myself thinking, “Wow, look at the growth! Look at how different they are musically.” It’s very exciting to see. 

In reflecting on the highlights of her career, Dr. Taggart shared: 

Oh I don’t know that I can choose. There are big highlights and then there are little highlights and the little highlights in many ways are equally as important because they keep you moving. Teaching some of my early childhood classes, and seeing the looks on some of their faces as they’re listening to me sing, and developing relationships with the kids that become playful and allow us to have these musical conversations, and getting into their musical heads a little bit, and seeing how capable they are and how much they own. Those are just all joyful.

On the flip-side of that, when I retired, I had a party. I invited the elementary general music teachers in the state in whose life I played a role. I invited all the past doctoral students from all over the country in whose life I played a role, and 100 people came. It was so meaningful to see all those people in the room . . . people that I love. . . and see what a difference they are making in the lives of their students. It was this ripple effect that one party sort of helped encapsulate that for me, and it was super meaningful. I look at people like Heather Shouldice who wanted to be a high school band director, and Jill Reese, and all of these people . . . Jennifer Bailey, that I had in my methods classes when they were undergraduates, and it really is exciting to see how much they are doing, and it makes me feel like Music Learning Theory is in really good hands, because they are so thoughtful, and they are so musical, and they are such good teachers.

Dr. Taggart talked about misconceptions regarding Music Learning Theory and what advocacy can look like for practitioners: 

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that it’s all about patterns. They think it’s all about these couple minutes of learning sequence activities at the beginning of the class period and that is so not what it’s about. For me, Music Learning Theory is all about context. It’s all about syntax so that we have something to hang those patterns on and help give those patterns meaning. So that is a really big misconception. I think people think it’s this sort of behavioristic, atomistic approach to music learning, and it’s not at all.

One of the best ways to advocate for it is to be a fabulous teacher. I have never been one to say you need to convert everybody. What I want is people who embrace it and implement it in their practice so they can serve as models for others and to whom others are drawn. Because if you have something going on in your classroom, people are going to get curious about that. And then when they’re curious about it, they’ll come, and you can share your thoughts and ideas. It can become a really organic need-to-know, excitement-to-know process, rather than a top-down process. Those are the kinds of processes that are the most meaningful. So when I went to Sugarloaf, I went because I had questions. I had things I was seeking answers to, and Sugarloaf provided a lot of those for me. I think a lot of the university methods classes I taught provided those for other students as well who eventually went on to become teachers. I think use it, engage in your classroom, and become a wonderful teacher, partly because being a wonderful teacher will give you stories to tell.

Eventually, giving conference presentations and sharing videos of what you do in the classroom is extremely powerful. The practical application of Music Learning Theory is really difficult for people to envision, because it’s different from what they’ve ever seen, although it doesn’t need to be radically different. Sometimes simple little tweaks can turn an activity that they’ve always done into something that is powerful from an audiation perspective. So, you explore Music Learning Theory in your classroom and begin to see its many benefits. Then you can collect and document those benefits and share them with others when they begin to be curious. 

I asked Dr. Taggart if there was something she wished she knew at the start of her career that she knows now. She goes on to share thoughtful advice for music educators:

One of the things that I wish I would have known then was to give myself space. To allow myself not to be perfect. To allow myself to make mistakes in front of my kids, laugh, admit it was something I didn’t do as well as I wished I had, because that way it gives them permission to make mistakes and explore as well. So, one of the things I wish I had known is that you don’t have to be perfect. You can learn alongside them, and it’s something where we’re all growing together and starting where we are, and that’s fine. Give yourself space and acknowledge when things aren’t going well to the kids, because they need to know that you know that and you’re learning too. Make it really explicit. Make it really explicit to them that they’re all musicians so that they don’t see you as the music maker in the classroom, but they also are music makers in the classroom, and get out of their way. Don’t sing with them, sing for them so that they have to take ownership of their musicianship. If you’re always singing over them, they don’t have to own their musicianship, but if they’re the ones making the music, they have to. So those are all things I wish I had done.

One of the things I really would encourage, and I know that this is hard because two weeks is a long time, is to take a PDLC. Those immersive, in-person experiences made all the difference in my ability to apply Music Learning Theory. I really highly recommend doing one, going back and applying it, and then coming back and doing another one. I came back to Sugarloaf three times, and that was essential for me, because I came with a different level of understanding each time. Even in the 20 years that I taught with Ed, I would learn new things as I listened to him teach, partly because the theory had changed and partly because I had a different level of readiness, so I was able to understand things that I hadn't heard the first time around because I was so overwhelmed with other ideas. So, keep coming back and take advantage of all the things GIML has to offer. Those faculty hangouts can be tremendously helpful for people, because they are a chance to talk with a faculty member and ask questions. “I’m applying this now, and this is blowing up… help!” They, as well as the other teachers on Zoom at that time, who have experienced some of the same things, will have ideas to help you through. You can really take advantage of GIML as a community of learners who are excited to share their ideas and continue to learn. So I think really taking advantage of the organization and engaging in it is another bit of advice that I have for people. 

Summary & Conclusions

I am beyond grateful for the conversation I had with Dr. Taggart. She has such a deep understanding of Music Learning Theory and was thoughtful and vulnerable as she shared her experiences with me. Dr. Taggart communicated her expertise in a way that was inspiring, yet relatable. Attending the Sugarloaf Seminars was a spark in Dr. Taggart’s career. The knowledge she gained there provided a tangible pathway for music teaching and learning for her and her students. From there, Dr. Taggart saw Music Learning Theory evolve over time as she spent her career translating theory into practice. Being an influential member of GIML from the beginning, Dr. Taggart’s knowledge has served in the lives and careers of countless Music Learning Theory practitioners, and her impact continues to ripple through the field of music education. 

Music Learning Theory is always evolving and it will continue to evolve. My conversation with Dr. Taggart highlights why that change can be a great thing for music educators. At the end of our conversation, Dr. Taggart stated, “Music Learning Theory is so powerful. I continue to learn and think more deeply about it. It is something that will engage me forever, and I find that exciting.” Music Learning Theory challenges its practitioners in ways that empower their teaching and musicianship, and that empowerment can be shared with their students as well. It’s an approach to teaching music that highlights musical independence and a student-centered learning environment. Recent evolutions in Music Learning Theory and its practitioners, such as focusing more on harmonic audiation and improvisation, cater to this student-centered musical space. If we can create these learning environments and, as Dr. Taggart says, just be fabulous teachers, the benefits of Music Learning Theory will speak for themselves, and our community will continue to strengthen and grow.