Biography
Emil Devedjiev is a scholar of musicology and music education whose work bridges philosophy of music, aesthetics, and pedagogy. Since September 2024 he has served as Associate Professor at Shumen University “Bishop Konstantin Preslavski”; previously he was Associate Professor (2021–2024) and Assistant Professor (2017–2021) at the National Academy of Music “Prof. Pancho Vladigerov” in Sofia. His academic profile is complemented by editorial service on the board of the series “Musical Philosophy” (Fundamenta Musicae).
His research unfolds along two interconnected strands. The first examines the philosophical and methodological foundations of musicology—rationality, “musical logic,” and the interface between scientific rigor and the logic immanent to musical practice—asking how musicological method can remain anchored in the lived act of musicking. The second focuses on music pedagogy and early musical development: classroom didactics, enculturation, and the interdisciplinary profile of the music teacher. A central throughline is the dynamic between musicological rationality and the non-rational dimensions of performance—how immediate musical experience generates knowledge and community, including through Platonic notions of ethos and nomos reframed for contemporary educational settings.
Research
Publications
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“The Whole City Must Never Cease Singing”: Plato and the Community of the Musical Nomos
In: Philosophy of Music Education Review
Abstract
This paper explores the fundamental tenets of Plato’s philosophy of education, particularly his views on a practice of great educational potential: communal musical participation. According to Plato, music can attune the individual and the community to cosmic harmony and this, in turn, is the only way to form and maintain a community. The paper explores how the concepts of ethos and nomos are utilized to explain music’s role in community cohesion. It argues that Plato’s understanding of the power of immediate and pre-reflective participation in music can provide valuable insight for contemporary philosophy of music education. The concept of nomos, in particular, allows music educators to take this frame of thought to better understand the role of music in creating communities.
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The Musicologically Rational and the Musically Rational
Рива, София
Abstract
The present study aims to identify and articulate a point of intersection between science and the activity of “music.” The integration of science, musicology, and music within a common thematic field is achieved by examining the concept of “scientific rationality,” understood as a normative concept of correct (rigorous, logical) thinking, correct conduct, or their mutual correspondence. From this perspective, musicologically rational denotes a conception of correct musicological thinking, whereas musically non-rational refers to music itself in its unfolding.
Musically non-rational contains rigor—musical rigor, musical logic—that does not lend itself to scientific verification, yet at the same time constitutes the fundamental point of orientation for musicological rigor. Given that the musically rational (the musically logical) is part of the musically non-rational, some of the discrepancies between classical scientificity and musicology may be viewed less as an inability of the latter to meet the methodological criteria of the philosophy of science, and more as a relativistic stance taken by the former toward its objects of inquiry.
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Musical development and music education
Riva, Sofia
Abstract
Musical Development and Music Education (Riva, 2021) offers an experimentally grounded psychological overview of how children develop musically and how that knowledge can sharpen classroom practice. The authors frame the book around two pressing pedagogical realities—the gap between teachers’ experiences and children’s musical worlds, and policy-driven regulation of schooling—arguing that developmental music psychology can orient curricula and methods more reliably. The volume spans eight chapters: two methodological and six thematic. It introduces core cognitive perspectives (Chomsky, Piaget, Bruner; the mind–brain problem) and contrasts them with behaviorist approaches to learning and classroom management to situate today’s research landscape. It then synthesizes stage-based models of musical growth (Gardner; Swanwick & Tillman; Hargreaves) and theories of children’s musical thinking (Serafine; Bamberger), highlighting implications for instruction. Early musical perception—from prenatal to infancy—is mapped across spectral (pitch, scales, harmony) and temporal (rhythm, meter) structures. A central concept is musical enculturation: how culture narrows perception and how education can broaden children’s “code” repertoires across Western and traditional idioms, a question with particular relevance for Bulgaria. The closing chapters review how training shapes competence and how musicians differ cognitively from non-musicians, the links between musical ability and language (phonological orientation, dyslexia), and mechanisms of musical emotion across ages. Intended for educators and researchers, the book functions as a compact guide to current evidence with direct classroom relevance.
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Linguistic Analogies in Edwin Gordon’s Theory of Early Childhood Music Development
In: Докторантски четения
Abstract
The text outlines the central ideas in Edwin Gordon’s theory of early childhood music development through an analysis of his linguistic analogies. According to Gordon, the first nine years of life are crucial for shaping a child’s musical potential, which is initially fluid but gradually stabilizes. Optimal development requires musical learning to occur in a natural, spontaneous, and intensive manner, analogous to first-language acquisition. Gordon identifies four “musical vocabularies”: listening, singing/rhythm chanting, audiation–improvisation, and music literacy, emphasizing the foundational role of the first two, formed earliest in life. At the core of his theory stands the concept of audiation—the process of internally hearing and understanding music, which underlies all musical actions. Gordon argues that musical development is often hindered by the dominance of verbal practice, which obstructs the spontaneous emergence of the singing voice. Therefore, early home music-making is essential for establishing musical experience and understanding. The text highlights the need for music pedagogy to recognise its unique nature, distinct from verbal instruction, and to adopt educational approaches grounded in the natural mechanisms of children's musical learning.
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Methodological Relativism in Epistemology as a Problem of Musicological Rationality
In: Докторантски четения
Abstract
The question of methodological relativism in epistemology illustrates one of the most serious problems in music-related research, namely the reduction of the cognitive relation to music to the purely scientific characteristics of its elements, particularly to those of the natural sciences. If musicological rationality is a form of cognitive relation that, on the one hand, remains grounded in musical experience and, on the other, stands in relation to epistemology and the sciences, the following question arises:
How can musicological rationality remain knowledge of music through musical experience without turning into knowledge of abstract objects through scientific method?
In other words, how can we avoid the methodological relativism of scientific investigation and remain guided by music itself?
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Musical Act and Rational Investigation
In: Музикалната философия
Abstract
The article is concerned with the question whether music is accessible to rational investigation. The musicological answer is reduced to the efforts to examine what happens in the musical act because it is the only event in which the relation with music is possible. The musical act is the defining moment, but the tradition of rational investigation has always been associated with the possibility of a self-contained investigation of this act as a set of elements, characteristics and regularities. This tradition is born in the philosophy of Antiquity as an attempt to deduce terms and conditions for music, which do not match the spontaneity of the musical act and the immediate rendez-vous with music. Among all types of rationality, only the musicological rational has the advantage of being capable of seeing musical „rigor" (accuracy, order, etc.) as supra-rational, insofar as it goes beyond the theoretical rigor and testifies to regularities of a completely different order. The question of the rational in music is valid only because the musical act follows regularities, but musical regularity (Gesetzmäßigkeit) is beyond the regularities accessible to the rational.
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Phenomenological Projections of the Musical
In: Алманах
Abstract
The phenomenological view focuses directly on the immediate grounds of things; correspondingly, the phenomenological projections of the musical aim at highlighting the immediate foundations of music activities and references, at highlighting the immediate grounds of music itself. In light of the phenomenological view, the encounter with the musical is possible only in the musical immersion itself, the musicalisation. The rational relations concerning the musicalisation lie outside it. They do not reach it, nor comprise it. Conversely, the division of matters into musical and non-musical is based on the musicalisation. And since the only evidence of its exictence is the very act of its accomplishment, the issue of musicalisation comes down to the issue of my own musicalisation. The musicalised I is the core issue of the musical.