The notion of the spiral for progression and development is familiar both in general educational discourse and in the domain of music education. This brief article considers the spiral within the context of lower secondary school group composing in England. Through the use of examples taken from two schools in the English midlands, it argues that…

Throughout recent decades, there has been a surge in work to create a diverse classical music canon by finding and promoting works written by composers of underrepresented identities. Despite these efforts, one area that has received little attention is the music written by women during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Reviving the works of…

Historically, the piano gained significance over the years with the performance techniques that composers put forward in their works. In parallel with this developmental journey, the improvement of the art of interpretation led to the emergence of new playing techniques throughout periodical changes. The romantic era can be presented as an example…

This article explores the potential of gestural migrations as a novel approach to violin pedagogy, allowing us to trace enlightening parallelisms between the learning of musical performative gestures and the gestural dimension of cinema as a time-shaped/shaping artistic discipline. As a case study, I take the first movement of Claude Debussy's…

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…

In this paper we discuss the musical work of classical composer Benjamin Britten as a lasting legacy for public music education. Our starting point is the contemporary urgency to rethink both public music education in general, and the public-educational significance of Western classical music in particular, in the face of the dual threats posed by…

According to Franses (2013, 2014, 2016), artists such as painters, writers, and classic composers did their best work at the optimal moment in their lives, and the moment was found to be close to the divine proportion of 0.6180. This study showed that, on average, songwriters wrote their own hits at 0.5206 of their life, which seems to be related…

The Society of Music Analysis report indicated that digital music often sits uncomfortably within a curriculum where the main focus is on the non-digital. This article takes as its starting point a broad definition of digital music as both a type of music and a way that music is represented. It will examine how digital music has altered the music…

Background: A growing body of research indicates that music-based interventions show promising results for adults with a wide range of speech, language and communication disorders. Aims: The purpose of this scoping review is to summarize the evidence on how speech-language therapists (SLTs) use music and music-related elements in therapeutic…

This study examines the learning processes that take place when upper secondary students apply and generate theories while drawing on their preferred music and writing songs of their own. One music theory teacher and two researchers collaborated to design an emergent sequence of lessons focusing on students' interests, questions and creative work.…

Few university students in Italy today possess the necessary skills to read a musical score. Consequently, alternative strategies are needed in order to visualize -- and hence to memorise -- music. This is the main reason underpinning the pilot laboratory of musical architecture, which was launched in 2019 as university workshop thanks to the…

The purpose of this narrative action research study was to tell Marcus's story as an ensemble director learning how to teach composition in his middle school orchestra program. Marcus collaborated with Sam, a university professor, and designed a study to examine his teaching in his 49-member advanced orchestra class. As time passed, the focus of…

Music, movement, and imaginative play are essential for young children to explore and understand the world around them. It is important for educators of early primary students to consider how they can facilitate meaningful learning experiences that are practical, engaging, and allow children to investigate unfamiliar musical ideas in supportive,…

This design case describes how the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) informed the development of SpectrumPlay, a digital tool created to support learning and instruction of elementary music literacy and composition in inclusive music classrooms. The learning supports embedded in the tool enable students with visual processing…