This article explores the music school as a locus of musical production that is rarely subjected to critique. Departing from the viewpoints of Bruno Nettl (1995) who describes the music school as a society “ruled by deities with sacred texts, rituals, ceremonial numbers, and a priesthood”, it is hypothesised that many of the questions put forward in his Heartland excursions (1995) still pose challenges to schools of music (or tertiary departments of music) in South Africa today. While the new musicology has taken local music scholarship by storm and turned its more traditional, formalist-oriented practices upside down, it can hardly be denied that this progressive discipline is still practised within institutionalised contexts that are heavily invested in the autonomy principle. Within the South African musical landscape, this is most true for those schools of music or tertiary music departments viewed as leading institutions.The aim, therefore, of this paper is to introduce questions relevant to a critical dissection of the dichotomy between the premises of a cultural or critical musicology, and the institution of the music school as a conservative “production of belief”. Stephen Miles 1997: 744) – specifically in a country where musical pluralism is an important aspect of all tertiary education, namely, developing skills and knowledge that are relevant specifically to the complex demands of our multi-faceted society. Accordingly, the way in which the autonomy principle continues to reinforce the legitimacy of the idea of autonomous music will be investigated – a principle constructed so subtly that implicit supremacy is promoted most effectively through the unspoken practices of concert requirements, the emphasis on music competitions, faculty status, and other internationally recognised markers of musical prestige. This principle clearly underlies a pre-defined set of professionalised values forming the foundations of “successful” music institutions. However, finally it will be argued that music schools, in pursuing a truly critical mediation between music and society, should not engage only with questions of music's social meaning, but in particular with the question of how music comes to be socially meaningful.
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