Creating space for composing - Frames, tools and collaboration

Abstract

This article presents a study that investigates how a music teacher enables composition amongst high school pupils in a musical theatre project. The main aim is to explore the way in which the music teacher teaches pupils to compose music and play in band for a musical theatre project. The musical theatre project aims to encourage pupils to create a musical, whilst the present study shows which learning tools are used in this process. A sociocultural and ethnomusicological approach was employed, drawing on field studies and interviews with the music teacher. The results demonstrate that the music teacher strongly influences the adolescents in their learning process and the teacher creates frames that the pupils can respond freely to, making the pupils secure and free at the same time. This approach from the music teacher enables many compositions with his or her pupils.

Keywords: Composing, teaching, ethnomusicology, music education, sociocultural perspective