Music, Emergence and Pedagogical Process

Music presents features typical of complex systems, whether for the multiple aspects it contains or the type of connections it establishes between systems that are seemingly far apart in terms of context, problematic and local characteristics. Actually, in music it is detected the necessary persistence and coexistence of contrasting or apparently irreconcilable elements whose interaction gives rise to what we call “beauty”; this can be more accurately defined, by way of complexity, as an emergent property of artistic production. In this sense, music can help us to redefine “cognitive paths” in virtue of its profound ability to represent and make emergent cognitive processes. Perception, representation, abstraction, creativity and non-linearity are, among the emergent properties of the music-system, those which are most consistent with the process of learning. A didactics of music based on complexity as methodological point of reference shapes the pedagogical process as an interaction in which teacher and student are involved in a reciprocal relationship. From the superposition of their roles in real experience and from the relational aspects, a form of self-defined learning process arises taking on the character of emergent property of the system.