This study investigates the musical lifeworlds of five musically dedicated senior secondary high school students in order to explicate meaning structures withinudtheir 'musical ways of being'. These structures illuminate the participants' musical lives as they are 'lived' and each idiosyncratic and unique relationship with music.udWhile the study illuminates broad features of the way 'musical lives are lived' it also highlights two specific lifeworld realms. The first is the realm of lived musical experiences that are described as deeply felt, formative, trans formative or epiphanic.udInterpretation of these experiences provides insight into the ways that the participants had commenced musical lives. The second is the realm of lived experience with different types of music learning processes. Illuminating musicudteaching and learning processes from the perspective of each student is designed to contribute to the ongoing dialogue and discussion of music's place in formaludinstitutional settings and informal, student initiated communities of practice.udData were generated from interviews with the participants, their parents and music teachers, and also from observations of musical performances, researcher fieldudnotes and reflexive journal entries. A 're-storying' process was then conducted usingudnarrative analyses and syntheses and phenomenological interpretation. The re-storied research texts were then structured and presented as composite 'portraits' of eachudparticipant.udThe project promotes narrative and phenomenological 'ways of thinking'about music, music experience and processes of inquiry. I have explored a pragmatic, embodied and situated experience of narrative and phenomenological 'ways ofudthinking' rather than operating from a priori principles and abstract theories about them. This pragmatic engagement is made visible by the insertion of vignettes, atudstrategic points, of my situated, lived experiences and learning processes with being a narrative and phenomenological thinker.udThe findings suggest that by illuminating the essential mearungs within individual musical lifeworlds, music may be perceived not as a thing, but an activeudprocess and a socially mediated, integrated structure of self. Sensitivity to andudempathy with the ways students live musical lives may assist educators to achieve situational appropriateness whilst teaching. Understanding the ways that life andudmusic are inseparable will help to counter the alienating tendency in Western musicudeducation to view music as an autonomous aesthetic object that is independent ofudthe experiencer. The findings suggest that music educators engage in 'pedagogicaludself-transformation' by adopting a narrative and phenomenological stance. Thisudtransformation, I argue, promotes empathy where educators are primarily engaged asud'enhancers of musical identity' and 'interpreters of the musical texts of life'.
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