In 1997 the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that school officials at West High School did not violate Rachel Bauchman's constitutional rights by including Christian religious music as part of its curriculum, or by staging school performances at religious sites. Three philosophical questions are investigated in this paper: whether the…

This article examines the relationship between authority and music. It starts with the proposition that music--as an art or an educative enterprise in Western environs--remains a highly idealized enterprise and this idealization creates an alibi for action that is characteristically narrow and guided by authority. Schmidt claims that authority is…