Minds on Music: Composition for Creative and Critical Thinking

English | Publisher: R&L Education, 2009 | 300 Pages | PDF | 1,3 MB
This textbook enhances preservice and practicing music educators' understanding of ways to successfully engage children in music composition. It offers both a rationale for the presence of composition in the music education program and a thorough review of what we know of children's compositional practices to date. Minds On Music offers a solid foundation for planning and implementing composition lessons with students in grades PreK-12.

We recognize good compositions when we hear them, but do we really know exactly what it is that makes a good composition or how to teach children to compose well? We’d like to suggest that we do and we can, with the proper tools and guidance. In the creation of this text we have assumed three things: children can compose, children want to compose, and children possess the knowledge, interests, and experiences to compose.

Without our help, young composers may never know that their beautiful songs—their sound effects, their hummings and whistlings, their joyfully clapped rhythmic soundfests—are all wonderfully significant indicators of their innate musicality and their emerging selves. Our challenge as educators is simply to help children develop and refine these abilities to the fullness of their potential.