Abstract
Evidence found throughout the history of Western European art music reveals traditions that encompassed improvisation. This furthers the idea that without improvisation, music education based on canonized works of Western European art music is incomplete. When the goal of music education is to preserve works exactly as notated, improvisation occupies a marginal role in representations and practices commonly associated with the canon. Drawing upon participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this ethnographic case study investigates narratives of experience and pedagogical strategies of two Dalcroze music teacher-participants who treat canonized repertoire as an impetus to creative thought. Field sites included a kindergarten and an adult music class. Several themes emerged from the data analysis, providing a basis for understanding how previous experiences influence classroom practices and pedagogical strategies for opening creative processes in interaction with canonical repertoire. Findings show that the teacher-participants consider improvisation as inextricably linked to other musical processes and conceive of teaching itself as improvisation, treating features of repertoire as material for creative development. By revealing pedagogical practices that offer exceptions to an established model, this study illuminates patterns of interaction that challenge a widespread view of music education based on Western European art music as enacting static preservation.
Introduction
Much in the same way that the study of language enables one to enter and be a part of a continuity of consciousness represented in great texts throughout history, musical notation allows the performance of another’s music, without dependence on oral transmission or relying solely on the originator’s presence. Since notation facilitates the transmission of a tradition outside of an insular and idiomatic culture, it can allow the re-creation of an idea across boundaries of time and regional divide.
What if the study of literature involved only the reading and orating of texts? Let’s imagine that writing and speaking extemporaneously are cut from all classrooms and curricula. Teachers no longer invite student responses to literature; instead every student takes a turn speaking the lines of literary texts. What patterns of interaction would follow such an educational movement?
The behaviors often observed in interaction with canonized works of Western European art music 1 might give some indication. As practiced according to a modern conception, a common approach involves reliance upon written notation and the linking of visual cues to the required fingerings, without necessarily comprehending structural features. Schleuter describes this process as resembling “typewriting [a] series of words without understanding the language” (1997: 38). My own performance of piano repertoire in childhood involved associating notation with fingerings until a selection was almost mechanically committed to practice and memory. Once I had memorized a piece, I distinctly recall my impulse to alter and reimagine various features of the music I had learned. I remember my disappointment upon realizing that my piano teacher at that time in my childhood strongly discouraged alternative interpretations or creative interaction with canonized repertoire.
Arguments for excluding improvisation and creative transformation are often made on the basis that doing so would not be in keeping with the composer’s intentions. Yet, in practice, composers and performers throughout the history of Western European art music acted upon existing conventions, altering, transforming, and reimagining what had come before. Evidence taken from music history reveals that historical performance practices encompassed experimentation and improvisation (Brown, 2015; Campbell, 1991; Ferand, 1961; Gjerdingen, 2007; Moore, 1992), feeding the development of compositional techniques throughout the course of Western music history (Ferand, 1961). As Thibeault describes the discrepancy between current and historical performance practices, “Whereas a musician in Mozart’s time would have been educated as a performer, composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and conductor, today’s music programs train specialist performers to realize works under the direction of a conductor who ‘plays’ the students” (2009: 257). The roles of performer and composer, which are now distinct and separate, were unified during past eras of music history in a manner that is no longer the case in modern practice.
Acknowledging the inherent conflict that exists between preservation and creative transformation, I investigate the processes and experiences of two Dalcroze 2 music teachers who treat canonized repertoire as an impetus to creative thought. The music classrooms of each of these music teachers, a kindergarten 3 class and a class of adults, situated within two separate music schools, served as field sites for ethnographic inquiry. The research questions guiding the study are as follows: “How do music teachers create pedagogical and curricular strategies to open a dialogic encounter with canonized repertoire?” and “What previous experiences do music teachers draw upon to cultivate creativity and improvisation in their curricula?”
I begin with a literature review that provides empirical and theoretical basis for the study by tracing the nature of improvisation. I then outline the methodology, addressing the influence of my background and identity through a statement of positionality, before describing participants and field sites, data collection and data analysis methods. Findings reveal evidence of the teacher-participants’ inner lives, construction of meaning, conceptual schemata, and teaching strategies, showing the influence of previous experience, as well as how pedagogical and curricular strategies can open creative processes in interaction with canonized repertoire. I conclude with implications for research and practice.
Improvisation and the creative process
Musical improvisation may be broadly defined as culturally situated creative activity, taking place in real-time, with notation used as a point of departure, if used at all (Kenny and Gellrich, 2002; Pressing, 1984). A considerable body of research advances the concept of improvisation as socio-cultural activity, deriving its structure and character from cultural models and the internalization of a musical vocabulary, permitting the spontaneous expression of musical ideas (Azzara, 2002; Della Pietra and Campbell, 1995; Kenny and Gellrich, 2002). Welch (1999) emphasizes that the educator who cultivates improvisation performs a scaffolding role within an environment that activates instinctive processes of social learning. Using Vygotskian socio-cultural theory, Wood, Bruner and Ross introduced the metaphor of “scaffolding” (1976: 90) to describe functional categories of teaching strategies used to build upon student interest and prior knowledge.
As a means of generating novelty, improvisation furthers the process-orientation and disposition of mind that support creative processes. However, since the focus in learning Western European art music tends to be upon preservation of works in a finished state (Sloboda, 2004), the transformative possibilities that could be realized in interaction with the primary source material are not typically encouraged, or even permitted. Most often in this context, “the new and personally meaningful insight 4 of a youngster who is learning how to combine ‘riffs’” 5 (Beghetto, 2010: 455) is not allowed.
According to the predominant terminology adopted within the interdisciplinary field of creativity studies, a fixed treatment of canonized repertoire that disallows improvisation may be described as a “well-defined problem” (Stokes, 2006: 124; Weisberg, 2006: 138), a task that “can be solved with little search and little variability” (Stokes, 2006: 124). This type of learning can take place through muscle memory and motor movement on the surface of understanding, expanding the student’s familiarity with cultural resources, but without any realization of “habitual variability” (Stokes, 2006: 122), through which a student develops comfort with the variation involved in the creative process. In the parlance of creativity studies, “deliberate practice” (Ericcson, 1996: 21) is described as activity in which the potential for creativity is limited: “concentration, repetition, and correction of errors in a well-defined task with an appropriate level of difficulty” (Stokes, 2006: 124), a description that applies to commonly-ingrained patterns of behavior that accompany the standardization of Western European art music in canonized form.
The norms that inhibit spontaneous transformation of canonic repertoire are culturally agreed upon limitations, realized in the “cultural context of artifact production and evaluation” (Glăveanu, 2013: 71). As a consequence of socio-cultural change, performance practices of improvisation were largely lost in the late 19th century (Moore, 1992), in favor of a canonical treatment of repertoire (Moore, 1992; Sloboda, 2004). Through classicization in the cultural context of music instruction, the composer’s work is treated as a monument to be admired in a finished state (Kanellopoulos, 2011: 114), serving a purpose of preserving artifacts of culture, but denying the possibilities for creative variation that are embedded in the structure of music.
Drawing on Bahktinian theory, Kanellopoulos (2011) critiques the “monological voice of authority” 6 (2011: 114) as preserved through classicization, instead advocating the use of free improvisation, removed from extant tradition, for the purpose of exploring indeterminacy and openness. There is a duality within the monological paradigm described by Kanellopoulos (2011), as there is some form of opposition between a reverence for finished works of art and the improvisatory creative act.
Furthermore, Schmidt-Jones (2017) notes that even the study of music theory does not often include the creative processes that a theoretical approach makes possible. Advancing the use of music theory as a conceptual framework that allows for improvisation and composition, Schmidt-Jones designed an online open education resource (OER), through which she conducted participatory action research to promote active construction of knowledge through curriculum based upon students’ own musical goals, which included acquiring skills in improvisation and composition.
Observing the scarcity of empirical studies addressing the creative processes of improvisers in the Western European art music tradition, Després et al. (2017) investigated strategies utilized by expert improvisers working in Western classical music. In order to access a depth of knowledge and expertise, quality-sampling in the case study research design permitted focus upon five expert improvisers. A retrospective verbal protocol was used to prompt the improvisers’ recollection of strategies used at particular moments of generative activity. Consistent with Chamblee’s (2008) observation that improvisers perceive and interact with the response of an audience, Després et al. (2017) found that expert improvisers anticipate and form their improvisations according to the imagined perspective of others. This concept mirrors Glăveanu’s “perspectival framework” (2015: 172), a theoretical construct according to which Glăveanu asserts that creativity necessarily involves adopting multiple perspectives.
Després et al. (2017) developed a taxonomy of strategies, arranged in an organizational scheme consisting of five categories, within which subcategories were further defined by the researchers. By revealing the integral patterns of thought of experts, Després et al. illuminate potential for the design of pedagogical and performance practices fusing Western European art music and opportunities for improvisation, through which heuristic devices of experts may be adapted to spark the creative processes of improvisation for learners at any stage of development.
Processes of musical creativity in childhood and adulthood
Directed toward revealing the structure of consciousness as represented in human experience, a phenomenological approach draws upon methods for philosophical description based on the foundational work of Husserl (1900 [1970]). Examining the essential properties of experience, Custodero (2007) and Burnard (2000) investigate musical improvisation through phenomenological analysis.
Custodero (2007) questions the perception of musical creativity as a fixed linear rubric and critiques the view of a child’s creative output as merely a preparation for adulthood artistry, which disregards the gestalt of a child’s sense of purpose and meaning. Custodero adopts a lifespan perspective in analyzing data drawn from two pairs of participants who realized collaborative improvisational performances: two adult composers and two 7-year-old children. This study is particularly relevant in consideration of the influences that instruction might exert upon the nature of children’s improvisation. The children were “much more free and musically expressive” (2007: 89) when improvising with instruments on which they had no experience of applied instruction. According to Custodero, this finding suggests limitations posed by “habits of interaction and association” (2007: 89) and concomitant “self-perception” of expertise (2007: 93). Patterns of convention introduced through instruction may have led the young participants to become narrowly focused upon perceived correctness, relying upon a strict realization of passages of repertoire learned in applied piano lessons. While the children sought out convention by utilizing previously learned musical material, the two adult performers expressed resistance to convention and the aim to “forget we know how to play,” suggesting a return to a childlike proclivity for exploration.
Also working from a phenomenological perspective, Burnard (2000) investigates the distinguishing characteristics of musical composition and improvisation processes as experienced by 18 12-year-old children. Through the analysis of interviews, recordings, and observations, Burnard presents a model that qualitatively maps the distinct experiences of each creative process. During the improvisations, the children employed gestures to communicate and demonstrated an acceptance of indeterminacy, revealing a “shared and negotiated space” (Burnard, 2000: 239). In contrast, performances of the children’s own musical compositions yielded preoccupation with details of performance, with repeat performances revealing issues such as dependence on formal musical elements and memory. Once composed, musical works were perceived as fully formed material, with subsequent performances involving the reiteration of a “set of operations” (2000: 234), dependent on memory of a preconceived outcome. Contrastingly, improvisation was considered by the student-participants to be a shared, time-bound activity, realized through interaction, and directed toward connecting successively unfolding musical parts.
Stokes (2006) predicts that those who are unaccustomed to exploring variability will experience anxiety during the initial stages of experimentation. According to Stokes’ theoretical framework, variability levels are learned, so that, in the absence of outlets for variability and indeterminacy, a low variability level is set as a kind of habituated default setting. Stokes conceptualizes the crafting of “constraints” (2006: 7) as a device for generating the creative process, assigning roles to each of a pair of strategic constraints for creativity: the first serves as a “barrier” (Stokes, 2006: 7), allowing the second to further search among novel responses. Despite limitations imposed by learned patterns of interaction, children who are unaccustomed to exploring musical spontaneity have been observed to become more responsive to improvisation in interaction with musical stimuli, recalibrating their variability levels according to Stokes’ conceptual model.
Rowe et al. (2015) made use of improvisation technology to investigate how 19 piano students, ages 6–10, engage in improvisation in interaction with MIROR-Impro 7 software. Participants were products of traditional piano studios focused primarily upon Western European art music repertoire, scales, and sight-reading, with limited improvisational activity. Following six 20-minute software-mediated improvisation sessions per student-participant, the researchers analyzed and interpreted the improvisational activity of 4 of the 19 students. Observing commonalities among the participants according to level of experience, the researchers concluded that the least experienced pianists relied upon a free use of gesture, while the older students of age 10, those with more experience in piano lessons, showed less spontaneity and more focus on repertoire, an orientation that became more exploratory over the course of time during which the study took place. Observed improvisatory activities included taking turns with the interactive system, making use of a rhythmic or melodic pattern introduced by the system, combining motives from learned repertoire with spontaneously generated material, and simplifying known repertoire in order to interact with the system. The students voluntarily used previously learned repertoire as a point of departure for their own creative processes.
These findings support the claim that variability practices can be socialized, in this case, in response to interactive software in a context in which creative processes of improvisation are often denied. Recognizing that practices commonly associated with Western European art music focus upon transmission and preservation of the canon, I seek to investigate how the treatment of this repertoire can foster creativity through improvisation. How do music teachers create pedagogical strategies to open a dialogic encounter with canonized repertoire? What previous experiences do music teachers draw upon to cultivate creativity and improvisation in their curricula?
Methodology
This study was designed to further understand the nature of improvisation as practiced by two music pedagogues within a Western European art music framework, with the objective of identifying vital aspects of the participants’ knowledge and formative experiences. I chose an ethnographic case study method of inquiry, recognizing the potential of ethnography “to provoke and to liberate our conversation about human possibilities from routinized common knowledge” (Wardle and Gay y Blasco, 2011: 118). Through the analysis of patterns and narratives of experience relayed by the two key informants, I examine a mode of pedagogy in which Western European art music and improvisation are integrated.
Statement of positionality
As researcher, I cannot deny the subjectivity I bring to the topic of improvisation in interaction with Western European art music, as a result of my own identity and background. I felt drawn to this subject as a result of my experiences pursuing historical performance as a means of recovering and experiencing the creative processes, traditions, and practices of music of the past. Given my personal investment in restoring the creative process in pursuit of a dialogic encounter with the past, it was essential to analyze my attachment to this subject before entering the field.
In consideration of my positionality, I contemplated the potential effects of my background and identity on the research process and participants. Having taught music in public and private schools for eight years, I am well acquainted with the conditions, behaviors, and content of a music classroom. However, I am not a Dalcroze pedagogue and had no prior experience with the particular music teachers who were key informants. Therefore, I entered into the experience of participant observation as an outsider to the practices and goals of Dalcroze pedagogy. Continuous “self-conscious reflection” (Schensul & LeCompte, 2013: 25) was needed in order to analyze and account for presumption or bias, sources of which could stem from 1) preconceived impressions regarding possible conclusions, and 2) my selection of interviewees who are known to place a similar value on musical creativity. Every effort was made to examine any assumptions, so that my background and identity could benefit productive dialogue and understanding as I enacted my role as researcher.
Participants and field sites
Participants were recruited on the basis that they cultivate a classroom environment in which improvisation is integrated with the study of Western European art music. Both participants gave informed consent and expressly indicated their choice to be identified by name. Cynthia 8 and Michael 9 , both of whom are music teachers and Dalcroze pedagogues, were chosen as key informants, selected on the basis of their personal and professional interests in improvisation, creativity, and canonic repertoire. Each invited me to observe music classes taking place under their direction: a kindergarten class and a class of adults. Members of the adult music class ranged in age from their early 20s to their 50s and 60s and included music teachers, trained musicians, as well as newcomers to music. The classrooms, though belonging to different schools, are located in the same building, a community hub for music, located on the Upper West Side of New York City.
Data collection methods
Research questions were operationalized through the use of semi-structured interview questions (see Appendix), observations, and fieldnotes, collected from February 25 through March 18, 2016. A quotation, shown below, was used as a data elicitation tool, according to a method used in anthropological fieldwork: Music education’s rather ambivalent attitude toward improvisation can, to a large extent, be attributed to the “monological voice of authority” imposed on music education by art music and the ideology of classicism that dominates its production, transmission, and consumption. (Kanellopoulos, 2011: 114)
A semi-structured interview-based design was considered conducive to the purpose of the study in that it enabled the negotiation of a shared understanding of the nature of improvisation within practices associated with canonized repertoire, allowing for the collection of data based upon knowledge and experience.
Focusing upon the teachers as participants, all identifying information regarding students was omitted from the fieldnotes and interview transcriptions. In the adult music class, participant observation took place through total immersion in three 2-hour classes. In this context, I relied upon brief jottings, taken during scheduled breaks from the class and immediately following each class. During my observations of three 45-minute kindergarten music classes, I did not participate in any way and was free to sit, observe, and jot notes. In each context, immediately following the classes, I devoted substantial time to expanding my notes and recounting as many details as possible.
Data analysis
Field notes and semi-structured interview transcripts were analyzed and coded with consideration for activities, behaviors, ideas, and other phenomena that appeared repeatedly. Through a process of “item-level analysis” (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999: 68), themes were identified among the units of cultural knowledge, establishing a basis for further examination. Codes were organized in a spreadsheet according to themes and subthemes, then consolidated according to conceptual categories through a recursive process of analysis until the categories of themes could be applied to the entire database. Corresponding texts, taken from fieldnotes and interviews, were inserted into the spreadsheet, so that the texts appeared side by side, according to thematic groupings. A taxonomy of these themes took form, as the relationships among phenomena were analyzed.
Findings
Descriptions of pedagogical practices, educational and teaching experiences, transcribed from the interviews and recorded through documentation of participant observation, reveal evidence of the musician-pedagogues’ inner lives, construction of meaning, conceptual schemata, and teaching strategies.
Narratives of experience
The narratives of experience of the key informants are described through discussion of the following themes: Improvisation as inextricably linked to other musical processes (Cynthia and Michael), Convergence of drama, movement, and music (Cynthia), and Divergence from apprenticeship models (Michael).
Improvisation as inextricably linked to other musical processes
The narratives of experience provided by Cynthia and Michael reveal that their early musical improvisations did not have a particular mystique, a reverential remove from any other way of being. Both expressed their surprise upon realizing later in life that processes of improvisation are sometimes separated from other modes of music making. According to Michael, his childlike sense of improvisation was that it was “just something that he did…kids don’t have these, ‘Oh my god! I’m improvising’ moments. The concept of ‘improvising’ wasn’t differentiated from any other type of problem.”
Similarly, Cynthia describes her impression of an assignment she was given when she was in her 30s. Asked to write a melody, Cynthia’s immediate reaction was that she didn’t know how to do such a thing, even though she had been improvising and picking out melodies since before she “could walk, if not talk.” According to Cynthia: And there I’d been singing all my life, “lalala”… It just amuses me that once it’s put into, “We are now going to write a melody for these Orff instruments, or a song that goes with the Orff instruments, and so forth.” Of course, once I tried, it was all perfectly natural. (March 11, 2016)
These impressions and recollections suggest that, couched in certain terminology, processes that are seemingly natural become subject to self-conscious awareness and scrutiny.
Convergence of drama, movement, and music
The origins of Cynthia’s teaching practices, linking music, movement, and improvisation, can be traced to her childhood memories. From Cynthia’s earliest recollection, she was “picking out melodies on the piano,” “making things up and accompanying,” and imbuing works of canonic repertoire with a programmatic element, “sparked by music having a dramatic purpose.” In contemplating her early experiences in music, Cynthia includes among the various modes with which she engaged in improvisation: “connecting to…music through movement,” as well as making up stories in response to music. Having discovered Dalcroze later in adulthood, Cynthia described the feeling of “joy, the utter joy of moving to music,” as well as the familiarity and unity with her early musical experiences, “It just felt like coming home. There I was, back again, 3 years old in my living room.” The elements of imagination and movement integral to Cynthia’s current musical practices are thus linked through the improvisatory experiences of her early childhood.
Divergence from apprenticeship models
Under the supervision of music educators, Michael’s early music education relied on the scope and sequence of one series of method books after another. In Michael’s early teaching experiences, he emulated the teaching strategies of his own teachers, adhering to the use of instructional method manuals. In retrospect, Michael assesses his teaching at that time to have been as “uncreative” as his playing: I think I probably taught them [the students] the way I was taught, out of some…method book… I kept doing that through college. And I got through college and I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I cannot look at number 17 anymore, to hear the New World Symphony squawked out one more time. (March 10, 2016)
Rather than merely following a set plan or adhering to a particular method book at the expense of nurturing the individuality of his students, Michael’s current teaching practices are intent upon cultivating student learning as realized through participation with others in the social environment.
Teaching practices
Themes describing the teaching practices of both Cynthia and Michael include: Coordination of perception and physical action, Teaching as improvising, and Validation of multiple ideas and interpretations.
Coordination of perception and physical action
As Dalcroze pedagogues, both music teachers design musical experiences in which students enact a representation of musical stimuli through physical movement, including locomotor movement (across space) and non-locomotor movement (in place). Cynthia describes this method as follows: One of the ways we improvise with classical music in a Dalcroze class is that we work with aspects of a piece, with only the teacher knowing what the piece is, the teacher improvising on the piano, the students improvising with their movement and with these aspects in multiple ways. So, when we finally hear the piece, we recognize how the composer uses these aspects, and it can be pretty thrilling. (March 12, 2016)
By exerting control over physical movements to consciously match musical sounds, the students demonstrate recognition of the musical passagework. Experimentation with movement permits demonstration of understanding and imagination of new combinations of motives through non-verbal communication and embodiment, which are intrinsically intertwined with the act of making music.
For example, in the adult class, the students were asked to develop creative movements in response to Mussorgsky’s The Old Castle, from Pictures at an Exhibition. As Michael performed the piece on the piano, the students were given time to develop movement ideas corresponding with two musical motives. The students were then invited to interact with a partner in counterpoint, incorporating some of the partner’s movements while maintaining and communicating some elements of the individually generated original ideas.
At the end of the class, each student was invited to embellish the The Old Castle with individual improvisations at the piano. The students took turns joining Michael at the piano, seemingly without fear or nervousness. Just as partners responded to each other’s movements one after the other; likewise, the piano improvisations took place in response and in counterpoint to the original piece. While each student improvised, the other members of the class were asked to realize interpretations of the new sounds of the various improvisations through movement. In this context, the act of improvisation did not take place in isolation, but was framed by multiple activities designed to enhance understanding, stimulate thought, and open the creative process. Asked how he cultivates this mode of interaction, Michael provided further elaboration: I look at it like a yoga class…hot yoga… [the yoga instructors would say] “We have it hot here because that allows your bodies to get far more limber, and you can do far more than you could do with 15 minutes of yoga in your basement.” And so, I kind of look at it like that. We’ve had two hours of just pure open exploration. I’m exploring, they’re exploring, we’re moving around in a context…adults just don’t do that anywhere…unless they’re dancers, or in some other kind of physical creative environment like that. So, by that time, everybody’s so free and loose that they kind of slip into the piano, and they’re not afraid to just try stuff. (March 10, 2016)
As a participant observer, I was struck by the sensation that I was thoroughly prepared to improvise upon realizing my turn at the piano. I felt stimulated by a new understanding of the music as imagined and conceived in large-scale movements, which, in turn, were readily translatable to the movements of my fingers across the piano keys.
Another example of coordination of perception and physical action took place as the kindergarten music students synchronized their movements to match the rhythmic motives of the Scherzo of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Through their physical movements, the children demonstrated knowledge and memory of musical form and constituent formal units. A bass motive, played at the conclusion of the B section, signals the re-entrance of the A material. Upon hearing the double bass, the children enthusiastically waited in order to time their performance of corresponding movements with the return of the A material (“beat, beat, running and beat” in their concept). There were squeals of delight among the children, which sounded unmistakably like an exhilarating game of peek-a-boo, as if the music had been in hiding and had reappeared. Incidentally, the universality and timeless appeal of peek-a-boo have been attributed to features shared with humor, “surprise, balanced with expectation” (Stafford, 2014: para. 7). Excited chatter and rumbles of laughter punctuated the musical form, in keeping with the scherzo’s origins, rooted in jest. Laughter and play were evidence of the students’ engagement with each other and musical materials within the social setting of the classroom. Physical movement functioned to reinforce comprehension and internalization of rhythmic motives, which thereafter became material for the students’ own spontaneously generated patterns, as the activity culminated in the students’ improvisations of new combinations of the rhythmic motives found in the scherzo.
Later in the same class, the students applied their understanding of rhythmic motives to the structure of a scale. Selecting among indeterminate rhythmic values to fill the span of an octave, individual children volunteered to sing scales using the rhythms found in Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Each individual’s performance involved the impromptu selection of variable combinations of the rhythmic units, producing new patterns of metrically organized motives, decided upon by individual students “in the moment.”
Movement is a means through which musical material enters the consciousness through embodiment, which is integral to the act of making music. Subsequent invention through experimentation, combination, and recombination of internalized motives, allows ideas encountered in music, including Western European art music, to be transferred to a canvas of sound, from large-scale to fine motor movements and from the rhythmic vitality of words to corresponding rhythmic movement on an instrument.
Validation of multiple ideas and interpretations
By showing interest in each individual, the instructors promote the exchange of ideas and validate multiple perceptions, interpretations, and divergent thinking. Through her design of scaffolding strategies, Cynthia employs the use of her young students’ imagination to invite response and development, drawing upon stimuli connected to the children’s own natural sense of wonder. For example, Cynthia prompted the students to volunteer ice cream flavors that became associated with the plot of a story and the rhythms found in the Scherzo of the Schubert Trout Quintet, a scaffolding device that served as a platform for the students’ interest, comprehension, and creative development.
Chanting the flavors of ice cream volunteered by the students according to the rhythmic motives found in the Trout Quintet, Cynthia prompted the students to translate the new sounds into the syllables they had associated with their corresponding movements. Encoding the flavors of ice cream into familiar rhythmic syllables, the students demonstrated recognition of the rhythmic features in a new context, which were then matched to notation.
Students’ ideas for flavors of ice cream served as a means through which the rhythmic motives found in the Schubert Trout Quintet became material for the children’s further practice, play, and subsequent musical improvisation. As scaffolding devices, the new syllables and imaginary sequence functioned to retain the students’ interest and delight, as they practiced the rhythmic motives in isolation. Cynthia oriented the children as to the location of an imaginary ice cream shop, as featured in the story. The students coordinated their movements, corresponding with each flavor of ice cream as they traveled “up and around and through the town to get to the ice cream shop,” all the while, embodying and internalizing the multiple rhythmic units that would later become material for creative transformation.
After the students had practiced and had gained mastery of each of the motives in isolation, they were invited to construct new patterns using the rhythmic units. The kindergarten students realized variable combinations as they selected among the familiar motives to find novel rhythmic pathways in singing a scale. The rhythmic motives found in the Schubert Trout Quintet functioned as building blocks, used to extemporaneously construct new material. By acknowledging each child’s ideas, experimenting with different possibilities, and showing a commitment to fluidity and fluency, Cynthia encouraged dispositions of thinking that promote variability and creativity, while connecting the impulses of spoken language to rhythmic vitality and the wonder and play of childhood.
Another example of validation of multiple ideas and interpretations took place as the adult students were invited to listen to a piece, performed by Michael on the piano, using his right hand alone. Prompted to contemplate the meter, the students were then given the opportunity to conduct according to their perception. Thereafter, Michael added the left-hand part to the right hand and there was a revelation of the true meter and identity of the piece, a bagatelle of Beethoven. Until this point, the musical stimulus was truly ambiguous. Beethoven had composed the piece in such a way that performance of the right hand alone yielded multiple interpretations of the metrical structure. The members of the class were assured that each answer was valid and were invited to conduct the individually deciphered meters while looking around the room at the other students’ diverse interpretations.
The social nature of learning: Teaching as improvising
Rather than using standard teaching methods, both key informants expressed and demonstrated a philosophical orientation toward teaching as improvisation, in contrast to reliance upon procedures outlined in a method or text book. Both teachers were observed to nurture the social nature of learning, responding in the moment, consciously directing the music curriculum toward the students’ experience and engendering creative and critical thinking while exploring collaborative construction of knowledge.
Michael speaks to his concept of negotiating meaning within the social setting of the classroom: When I teach, I am improvising. I have a list of stuff [material]… I drew from the list, but it had to go somewhere else and… I let it go there. And I do that everywhere, pretty much everywhere. And when I feel like, “Wow, that went exactly as I planned,” then I know it’s probably time for me to stop teaching this. (March 10, 2016) When I don’t have to improvise as a teacher, I think I’m not carefully looking at them [the students] anymore. I can’t see them [the students]. And so, I know it’s time for me to take a break from that for a while. (March 10, 2016)
These quotations reveal that Michael’s sense of his value as a teacher is dependent on his analysis of the dynamics of the setting, his consciousness of each individual’s participation, and his response, facilitating social learning. The lessons of each key informant seemed to serve as a “lead sheet”
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for the developments realized within each class, in which meaning was negotiated through social exchange. According to Cynthia: …a well-planned Eurhythmics class is a form of fabulous improvisation. You know, what comes first; how will I get them hooked? But it’s all through music, and the stories and the atmosphere in the room and so forth… (March 11, 2016)
Both music educators create a dynamic community of learning, in which there is security, freedom of thought, and close connectedness. An observable lack of fear among the students was found to accompany the subthemes related to the conditions of the socio-cultural environment. The social nature of learning appears to be facilitated by means of instilling trust and building rapport, achieved in each context through the validation of multiple interpretations and divergent ideas.
Canonized repertoire and improvisation: opposing conditions assessed
Research on the subject of improvisation reveals certain widely held beliefs regarding the limited nature of improvisatory practices within the tradition of Western European art music (Kanellopoulos, 2011; Sawyer, 1999). Influenced by his experiences, Michael’s sense of the current state of improvisation in Western classical music counters this widely held perception: There is a lot of experimentation within classical music. And, actually, I think today, the lines between jazz and classical are rapidly disintegrating. You know there’s a spectrum and we can say, yeah, that’s definitely jazz, yeah, that’s definitely classical. There’s a lot happening in the middle. And there are a lot people today who don’t see a difference, and are as free improvisers as they are readers. So, I think that’s changing. And I think it makes less and less sense for kids to play music from a page only. And it makes less and less sense for the teachers to teach that way. (March 10, 2016)
It seems reasonable to suggest that improvisation, in interaction with canonized repertoire, has potential for further examination within a social constructivist framework, in consideration of social learning environments as naturally conducive to the generative practices of collaborative creativity. Asked for his reaction to the data elicitation tool, Michael offered his interpretation: I think it’s the monological voice of authority of the teacher in the American classroom, “We will do this, here’s your worksheet, finish it, and here’s another when you’re done with that.” … And it happens to fit very nicely with…the way classical music has ended up, coming from the page and a conductor. I think those two, it’s a nice marriage… And the minute you let improvisation into a classroom, you know, let’s face it, things can happen. You want those things to happen, but how do you keep control of 25 kids, and have them improvise? That’s the question. (March 10, 2016)
Michael’s commentary suggests that fostering creativity in the classroom shakes the strata of authority by diminishing the control of the teacher. Yet practices such as dictating a set of standards and expecting students to conform to a predetermined criterion can be stifling to a student’s musical creativity.
Discussion
These findings describe a conception of Western European art music that is actualized in contrast to the “monological voice of authority” (Kanellopoulos, 2011: 114). The experiences and practices of the key informants illuminate pedagogical approaches, philosophical orientation, and consequent creative activity that represent exceptions to widespread practices in which works of canonized repertoire are perceived and performed as if static objects. To teach and practice improvisation, the key informants cultivate habits of mind that produce high variability in musical response, challenging commonly assumed dichotomies between Western European art music and improvisation.
Themes drawn from the data may be considered in relation to the phenomenological observations of Burnard (2000) and Custodero (2007), whose findings suggest that children perceive and choose to adopt patterns of interaction established in instructional settings, undergoing enculturation as a process of learning patterns and standards of behavior. Noting distinct modes of music making associated with composition and improvisation, Burnard (2000) observed that pieces composed by 11-year-old participants were considered to be static material, subjected to processes by which the composers-as-performers sought to improve conditions related to performance, rather than creation. With consideration for the paradigm of textual authority that Kanellopoulos (2011) attributes to the tradition of Western European art music, composers of the canon are not the only composers whose works become a monument to be preserved in a finished state.
Custodero (2007) suggests that 7-year-old piano student-participants imposed narrow concepts of correctness upon their own creativity as a result of their efforts to abide by certain rules of convention as learned in an applied piano studio. Freed of these perceived rules on an unfamiliar instrument, the children demonstrated ideational fluency and immersion in spontaneous creative musicianship. Similar patterns of creative freedom were observed in the present study, as the kindergarten students explored the spontaneous creation of new combinations of rhythmic patterns, and as the adult students transferred extemporized body movements to improvisations on the piano. Students’ sensitivity to the meanings and value ascribed to improvisation by others in the social setting of the classroom may be analogous to the observations of Chamblee (2008) and Després et al. (2017), who have noted that expert improvisers imagine an audience’s response and improvise accordingly. Instances of ideational fluency, as observed in the present study, show that powerful instinctive processes of social interaction can influence not only the adherence to prescribed norms constraining creativity, but also the expansion of the boundaries of symbolic interaction with cultural resources that support creative processes of improvisation.
Specific teaching strategies of Cynthia and Michael appear to resemble “structural,” “atmospheric,” and “conceptual” strategies of expert improvisers as identified and classified by Després et al. (2017). Within the category of structural strategies, Després et al. identify a type of “meso-structural strategy” (2017: 152), involving the selection of pre-established musical elements drawn from an “idea bank” (2017: 152), a collection of motives or “overlearned technical elements” (2017: 152) that can be combined in new ways. Through the use of Cynthia’s scaffolding strategies, kindergartners identified and practiced rhythmic motives found in the Trout Quintet, which then became a part of a working inventory and knowledge base from which to draw in exploration of motivic combination and recombination.
Among types of conceptual improvisation strategies, Després et al. (2017) observe a general strategy of harmonic priority, established through placing the improvisation in a harmonic framework in relation to chord tones, while a melodic priority involves the selection of pitches according to “scales, modes, or intervals instead of chord tones” (2017: 151). At Cynthia’s invitation, the kindergarten students situated their improvised combinations of rhythmic motives, the product of a meso-structural strategy, within the context of a scale, finding new and variable rhythmic combinations while singing the predetermined pitches. Given the set parameter of a scale, the students’ freedom was reduced in the tonal dimension, a restriction that served to further the students’ exploration of variation in the rhythmic dimension. As a scaffolding strategy, simplifying the pitches that were available for use in the students’ rhythmic improvisations can be viewed as an example of the functional category “Reduction in degrees of freedom,” first identified by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) and further applied to the study of music by Kennell (1992). According to Stokes’ (2006) theoretical framework, the pre-established material of the scale for use in the kindergarten students’ rhythmic improvisation may be considered as a “constraint,” functioning to “promote (or direct search among) high-variability, novel responses” (Stokes, 2006: 7) in the rhythmic dimension. Several facets of Stokes’ (2006) constraint theory apply to the present study, including the potential for paired constraints to aid in generating and exploring creative possibilities, the concept of a “first chorus” (2006: 8) or knowledge base as material for improvisation, and the role of “habitual variability” (Stokes, 2006: 122, 131, 134) in the development of creativity (Stokes, 2006: 10).
Després et al. (2017) consider “atmospheric strategies” (2017: 153) to include the imitation of a composer or a particular piece and the design and use of an ostinato. In the present study, Michael led the adult students to utilize an “atmospheric” strategy as they improvised rhythmic ostinati through embodiment in large-scale movements, then transferred the familiar rhythmic patterns to passagework on the piano through use of a conceptual strategy, demonstrating harmonic and melodic priority in placing the rhythmic motives within the framework of The Old Castle. As Cynthia and Michael are composers, improvisers, and pedagogues, the presence of strategies as identified by Després et al. in their teaching practices further illustrates the function of strategies for musical creativity and the applicability to pedagogical practices.
In consideration of music as an artifact of culture, past and present, the music educator operates within both predefined conditions of preservation and open-ended experimentation. Prevalent practices, situated within larger networks, often generate expectations for musical performance as codified interpretation of canonical text. In light of these expectations, it can be challenging to concurrently maintain cultural resources and encourage creative freedom.
Patterns that are present in the teaching practices of Cynthia and Michael were prefigured in each of their childhoods, as both recounted exploring creative possibilities that were not predetermined by a musical score, but rather, instantiated through play and a “natural” way of being in childhood. Cynthia’s pedagogical practices open an interactive dimension through which her students explore improvisation as an act of playing with sound, as she had experienced in her own childhood. Michael leads his adult students to a state of openness, of being “free and loose…and not afraid,” a state of mind he experienced in childhood, which may be compared to Custodero’s finding that adult late-career composers expressed the wish to seek out and recover a childlike mode of disposition, attributing to childhood such traits as “curiosity, absence of fear, and trust” (2007: 89).
The linking of current practices and narratives of experience invites consideration of ontogeny, through which an individual embodies manifestations of a future self (Toren, 2002: 188). Cynthia and Michael seem to draw upon meaningful childhood experiences in their later teaching practices. Imagining stories in response to music, the free unfolding of playful interactions of sound, and a concept of improvisation as a natural way of being are recounted as meaningful experiences in childhood, revealing nascent features of identity and ontogenic origins, “childhood dispositions” (Custodero, 2007: 90) that have been further developed in later teaching practices. Improvisation takes place as symbolic interaction with canonized repertoire as cultural artifact, creating a continuum of teaching, self-revelation, and creative musical interaction, as culture, past and present, converge.
Implications for research and practice
The instructional strategies and experiences of the participants suggest that improvisation, in interaction with canonized repertoire, has potential for future research, generating an expansion of teaching pedagogy and new ways to interact with Western European art music. By countering a commonly assumed dichotomy, that practices of Western European art music necessarily inhibit improvisation, this study may offer encouragement to music educators to create opportunities for improvisation in interaction with canonized repertoire in the context of their own instructional settings. Processes of creating and improvising can provide teachers and students enjoyment in collective experimentation, with the aim of activating creative thinking, engagement, ownership, and individual agency. The presence of the participants’ early experiences of meaning within their later teaching practices suggests that drawing upon such experiences may yield ideas for future creative development.
Rather than focusing on transmission of the canon and preservation of a “fixed end model” (Allsup and Westerlund, 2012), the teaching philosophies and instructional approaches demonstrated by key informants reveal that the treatment of canonized repertoire can lead to the discovery of art music as a means of experimenting with the creative processes inherent within its design. Motives, harmony, and other salient features of musical repertoire can be considered as raw material for students’ ideas and a springboard for generating ideational fluency as a disposition of mind.
The tension between preservation and transformation can function as a catalyst for the design of creative pedagogy. Generating creative interaction enables musicians to become artistic agents, valuing and discovering anew the established, while encouraging the capacity to create expanding dimensions of discovery within the past and the present.
