The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of instruction in writing about music on descriptions of music excerpts. Fifth and sixth graders received 4 days of instruction in music description focusing on metaphor and emotion, analytic music elements, and temporal language. Then, they wrote brief descriptions of six excerpts that were counterbalanced for instrumentation and style. Their descriptions were compared to those of students who did not receive instruction. There were no significant differences between children receiving and not receiving instruction within each grade level, except that the taught fifth graders mentioned significantly more musical elements than did fifth graders who did not receive instruction. There were no significant differences within grade levels in the rate at which expert readers matched descriptions to the original music excerpt, but sixth graders significantly outperformed the fifth graders. When excerpts were not correctly matched, they were usually misassigned to the excerpt with the same instrumentation, corroborating the priority of naming instruments in music description tasks.
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