The Pineapple

Abstract

As I began my research at the Eastern Metropolitan Conservatory, my intent was to study terms of evaluation. My plan was to examine the concepts and criteria used in evaluating music and musicians by students and teachers in the conservatory. Such a plan entailed an underlying dualism, one derived in part from Edmund Leach’s formulation {discussed in Chapter One} regarding the relation between ethics and esthetics, that is, between social action on the one hand and cultural form on the other. My “hypothesis,” if it may be called such, was that negotiations of social identity and evaluations of music would