Description
Free improvised music is often regarded as overcomplex and under structured, even amongst professional musicians (Bailey, 1992). It requires approaches beyond ordinary listening experiences to capture its essence and significance (Lothwesen, in print), which are based in practical experiences and cognitive reflective skills. Even though music education successfully applies improvisation as means to foster creative skills (Züchner et al., 2018), it remains rather unknown which categories and criteria children use to describe and judge improvised music – regardless if it was performed by themselves or someone else. So, the aim of this study is to unravel children’s aesthetic judgments by detecting and differentiating their ways of verbalising subjective experiences and impression after listening to and performing improvised music.
In a musical intervention, children at primary school (4th grade, N = 17) were introduced to improvised music in four workshops in which listening, improvising and reflecting were core activities (Schwarz, 2024). Data was collected in video stimulated focus group and single interviews and analysed following the protocol of structured content analysis (Mayring, 2022). As a result categories emerged which point towards explicit aesthetic criteria formed by children that are to be discussed like e.g. structure, transparentness, coherence and emergence. In addition also basic musical parameters show here indicating a musical understanding that seems to be clearly formed by tonal and metrically stable music. These findings will be discussed regarding developmental approaches (Tam, 2021; Parsons et al., 1978).
The analyses of the data is still ongoing, but we would be happy to share and discuss first insights and preliminary results. We are convinced that tapping on pedagogical questions will help to better understand how children verbalize their musical experiences in processes of improvisation and improvised music. It will also help to develop didactical settings enabling such experiences and to foster childrens’ aesthetic development.
| Names, affilations and contact information | Ulrike Schwarz, Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, ul.schwarz@t-online.de Angelika Vogel, Hochschule für Musik Trossingen, a.vogel@stud.hfm-trossingen.de Kai Lothwesen, Hochschule für Musik Trossingen, k.lothwesen@doz.hfm-trossingen.de |
|---|---|
| Bio | Ulrike Schwarz is an improvising musician and teacher who works in different ensembles and interdisciplinary contexts, performing on the borderline between improvisation and composition. She teaches free improvisation and Jazz with children at the University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt, and has also been working as a teacher at a primary school. Angelika Vogel is currently studying school music for grammar school level at the University of Music Trossingen and archaeology at the University Tübingen. Dr Kai Lothwesen is professor of systematic musicology at the University for Music Trossingen. With a focus in music psychology and music sociology his research mainly follows an empirical paradigm, examining cognitive and social processes of musical creativity and improvisation. |