Contemporary professional landscapes in classical music fields are rapidly changing and younger generations of musicians are confronting their creative careers, more often than not in connection to self-employment and freelancing. This narrative inquiry investigates the pathways and livelihoods of composers in a changing professional ecosystem…

With the intent of informing the practice of music teachers navigating "multi-musicality" in their classrooms, this qualitative study, employing case study and narrative research tools, investigates the experiences of three musical "boundary crossers"--professional musicians whose work traverses the popular-classical divide.…

Songwriting has been used in music therapy for decades to help address trauma, alleviate depression and build confidence in both children and adults. With components that great music education models point to--composition, agency, collaboration, and means for self-expression, songwriting seems to be a useful tool for music educators as well. Yet,…

The purpose of this research was to learn about the short-term residue of composing and improvising activities experienced in a woodwind lab course. Five undergraduates enrolled in a Music Learning and Teaching program in the United States shared what they retained after completion of the course and how they were thinking about composition and…

This article presents a project, Shapes of Water, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, which gave music education students the opportunity to compose children's songs about climate change with the help of artists from two fields (contemporary circus and music) and a scientist (chemistry). The article outlines the ways in which the composing…

This article reports part of the results of a larger study, where the goal was to explore music composer's representations of music composition. Previously published interviews of 57 established vanguard contemporary music composers (based across continents) were subject to a thematic analysis, validated by an independent analysis of a percentage…

This study explores young people's arts participation through music-making in Finland and the factors that may regulate that participation. It seeks to understand the construction of active modes of arts participation in and through adolescents' musical life courses. The interview study was conducted with young people (N = 18) participating in…

Accessing the strategies implemented during real-time musical creative processes represents a challenge for researchers. Retrospective verbal protocol with subjective aided recall (RVPwSAR), where a first-person video is used as an aid to elicit feedback from a subject, has shown great potential for the study of real-time decision-making in sport,…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the process of composing educational music. As part of a research project titled "Sound Connections: Composing Educational Music" Canadian composers completed email interviews, responding to semi-structured questions about the process of composing educational music. Using…

This study aimed to understand the nature of feedback that students and teacher exchanged in a workshop-based collegiate songwriting course. Two research questions guided the study: (1) What kinds of feedback do students and teacher give as they respond to each other's work? and (2) What factors contribute to the culture of feedback in this class?…

In recent decades, the teaching and learning of composition has become an important topic for research in music education. Composition is established as one of the three main areas in the Norwegian curriculum "Laereplanverket for Kunnskapsløftet" (LK06, 2006), and the importance of creative competencies is being increasingly recognized…

The purpose of this study was to determine if participation in a composition competition influenced four K-12 students' self-concepts as musicians. Research questions explored motivations for these four students to enter into a composition competition, influences of the competition on students' self-concepts as musicians (if at all), and effects…

The purpose of this research was to investigate teachers' beliefs about compositional experiences in the elementary music classroom. Elementary music teachers (N = 176) in Michigan completed a researcher-designed questionnaire, which included a combination of forced-choice and open-ended questions regarding how teachers define composition, why…

There has been a gradual increase in the body of literature regarding seniors' musical preferences, learning approaches, development, and creativity. This literature dispels existing myths that perceive older people as a homogeneous group, characterized by decrepitude and diminishing capacity, and with a passive contribution to society. A…

The purpose of this research study is an examination of a music artist-teacher's pedagogical approaches and practices in teaching composition to a Year 5 IB (International Baccalaureate) class in a Singaporean specialized arts school. The study is approached as a qualitative case study spanning a 5-month period involving observation and recording…