The Child As Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development.(Book review)

* The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development, edited by Gary E. McPherson, Oxford University Press (www.oup.com/us; (800) 451-7556), 2006. $69.50.

Questions about musical ability in childhood are intriguing and timely. More and more good scholarly work is apparently being done in this fascinating field; editor Gary McPherson terms it a research "explosion." This book has an engaging title and an attractive cover, but doesn't really seem intended for the average reader. It is a compilation of research articles by various academics mostly from the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. The quality of the submissions is variable. Most are rich with intelligent thought and interesting findings; some are skillfully written with readability in mind; some typify that passe academic style of stiff, overlong, abstract sentences that are hard to read. All offer rigorous scholarship in the form of frequent source citations throughout the text. This is serious stuff, and will certainly provide good value to doctoral students and other academics.

The subtitle calls the volume a "handbook," but I wonder. My dictionary defines a handbook as a manual or small reference book on a particular subject--something you can pick up and readily glean some clear, helpful information from, in other words. This is not a book designed for browsing or skimming, however; it has almost 500 pages of densely worded text, the font is ...