'Heidegger and Joe:' Revisiting the 'thing' in the context of a student's experience of an online community

In many countries it has become commonplace for students at school to undertake their own composing in the classroom. At the same time students often develop their own creative musical interests outside school hours. This paper looks at how teachers might re-evaluate students' self-initiated compositional activity. By utilising Martin Heidegger's writing, this paper seeks to contextualise a philosophical position in relation to the musical work and to question how we as educators envision the student's music, and ultimately how we come to understand and evaluate a student's work. With reference to the field of music theory and music education the intention of this paper is to open a discussion examining how we might view music as an art object seen within its own context. With reference to a case study of a student working in an online environment parallels are drawn between Heidegger's depiction of an art object as a 'thing' located and valued in its own context, as opposed to music seen as an object that is de-contextualised from an audience or its place of making.