What Is Creativity and Why Is It Important to Include in Music Education?

It is essential that any music teacher considering incorporating composition and improvisation into their curriculum understand why they are doing so. Many music education researchers and practitioners emphasize the value and importance of including creativity in all music classes (Kaschub & Smith, 2009a; Koops, 2009; Riley, 2006; Taft, 2019; Webster, 2016), but teachers have varying ideas of what creativity is.

While no music teacher disputes that musicians are expected to make basic musical decisions that require some creative thinking, such as adding dynamics, rubato, and articulation when performing a musical phrase, it must be clarified that those aspects of musicianship don’t equate to the general concept of creativity by most standard definitions. Piirto (1998) defines creativity as “a basic human instinct to make that which is new” (p. 41), while Crawford (2016) defines creativity as “the generation of a product that is judged to be novel and also to be appropriate, useful, or valuable by a suitably knowledgeable social group” (p. 7).

In other words, creativity is seen or heard when students develop and perform, or produce a piece of music, that is an original composition or improvisation. Historically, many K-12 and collegiate music education programs have focused primarily on performance, reserving composition only for advanced students, but Webster (2016) has pointed out that “all children are not only capable of music composition but that they thrive on it as a way to deeply enhance their musical understanding” (p. 27). He emphasized that music teachers must offer comprehensive music education including composition on a regular basis.

While composition is recognized and valued as a significant way that students are creative in music, improvisation is an equally important aspect of creativity in music education. Grove Music defines improvisation as “the creation of a musical work, or the final form of a musical work, as it is being performed” and also states that “in virtually all musical cultures there is music that is improvised” (Nettl et al., 2001). Many people associate improvisation with jazz, and it has been widely researched in that area (Fisher, 1981; Kearns, 2011; Rummel, 2010; Warner, 2014), but it should be incorporated into all music classes.

An examination of internationally recognized pedagogical approaches as well as the music of various cultures around the world provide numerous examples of improvisation. Chandler (2018) pointed out research showing improvisation pedagogy in Orff Schulwerk (Beegle, 2001), Kodaly’s concepts (Whitcomb, 2007), Dalcroze Eurhythmics (Anderson, 2012), and Gordon’s Music Learning Theory (Azzara, 1993). The Routledge

World Music Pedagogy Series features a chapter on composition and improvisation in each of its volumes, reflecting the underlying value of creativity in music from all parts of the world.