-‐ have musical validity;
-‐ have relevance across different musical activities
-‐ take account of both maturation and cultural setting;
-‐ identify qualitative, sequential and hierarchical changes
-‐ have widespread cultural application;
-‐ be supported by reliable data (Swanwick, 2001:229)
Over the years, several people indeed have tried to develop such a theory for
chronological stages of musical development, comparable to psychological
theories as described by Piaget or Vygotsky. Here, two main theories will be
discussed, and compared to abovementioned criteria by Swanwick.