Pamela Burnard

This article focuses on children's experiences of differences between improvising (i.e. creating spontaneous single-event performances) and composing (i.e. creating revised pieces). Eighteen self-selected children participated from a multi-ethnic, comprehensive Middle School in West London. Twenty-one weekly music-making sessions were conducted over a period of six months. A model mapping qualitatively different ways of experiencing improvisation and composition is presented using data drawn from the analysis of in-depth interviews, observation and recorded performances. The categories also form the arrangement of a model where improvising and composing are distinguished as being orientated towards (i) time, (ii) body, (iv) relations and (iv) space. These findings can be applied to the development of a pedagogy, which challenges some of the assumptions about what it is (and can be) to improvise and compose.

The study from which this report is derived explores children's experience of improvising and composing and seeks to discover how children participate and reflect on creating music. Participants were 18 self-selected 12-year-old children who engaged in 21 weekly music-making sessions over six months. Findings on children's experience of improvisation and composition as distinct modes of bodily intention were determined by the interplay between body movement, instrument and instrument preference. Distinction in bodily intention for improvising was characterised by an intersensory functioning of the "perceiving body" whereas composing engaged the "knowing body" for its kinaesthetic memory.