As with any cooperative learning
group, students need structure to complete the task: defined roles for each group mem- ber; a musical goal or problem to be solved; a time limit; sound sources or instruments to be used; and clearly stated expectations for the musical product.
5. Composition as a tool for expressing emotion
Students immediately take ownership of their compositional task when they are asked to represent emotions. Students enjoy sharing feelings through poetry and visual art; composition can be another mode of personal expression. Using musical con- cepts that students have already learned, ask them to introduce expressive elements such as tempo, tempo changes, dynamics, and phrasing. Play recordings that can be perceived to express a certain emotion. For example, ask students to record an emotion with descriptive words. Then with specified sound source (e.g., found sounds, barred instruments, rhythm instruments), students can identify sounds that represent the de- scriptive words. These sounds can then be structured and formed into a composition.
6. Composition as a representation of a picture, story, or poem
Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibi-
tion” or Saint-Saens’”Carnival of the Ani- mals” are famous examples of compositions promoted by pictures, stories, or poems. Music teachers can come closer to, reach- ing the goal of MENC Standard 8: “Un- derstanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts” by using famous works from visual arts and literature as prompts for writing music. Many important works of art are available in general music texts, and most school li- braries have access to an abundance of these materials through online databases. The use of pictures, stories, or poems as prompts for music composition is usually associated with Orff teaching, but can also be found in Kodaly, Dalcroze, and other music educa- tion approaches. There are countless ways that students can use materials from other artistic disci- plines to create. For example, when a cer- tain picture or word appears in a storybook, students might choose an unpitched percus-
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sion sound to identify
it.The sounds could then be organized into a musical form, eval- uated, and performed.
7. Composition to explore elements such as rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, or expressive elements
Composition allows students to cre-
atively explore the wide range of possibili- ties within a single area of music. For the purpose of exploring rhythm, for example, a composition might include combinations of quarter and eighth notes. These two sim- ple rhythms can become interesting when combined with expressive elements like dy- namics, phrasing, and tempo changes. Sim- ple melodies and harmonies can be added. The addition of movement to the rhythm composition would add even more interest. The possibilities are endless.
8. Composition to explore musical forms
As a student progresses through general music, musical forms move from simple to complex. The first musical structures that are
explored are same/different 53 phrases, echo, and call/response. Question/answer,
song forms cumulative songs, a and b com- binations (e.g., aba, aaba, aabb, etc.) coda, repetition, and blues forms are just a few structures to explore through composition. Composing in different forms gives a stu- dent a direct experience with musical struc- tures that analysis alone does not provide.
9. Composition to teach cross curricular themes
Music teachers are increasingly asked to
reinforce other subject areas. Only a portion of music teachers teach music alone; most music teachers work as part of a team with teachers of other subjects. Music composi- tion is especially useful in getting students to organize thoughts into a new framework, which makes it an ideal tool for cross cur- ricular learning. For example, a class might create a melody based on the symbols of the state of Georgia: setting each syllable of the symbols to pitches (e.g., Che-ro-kee rose, peach, brown thrash-er); combining the beats into a four beat motive; varying the motive to make a b motive; and finally combining the motives to form an aaba structure. In another example, students who
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