Listening to Compose. Re-composing Music

This chapter began with a discussion about the musical capacities of listeners that essentially situated music listening as a creative musical behavior that results in listeners generating novel products that include tangible and intangible responses indicative of the music listening experience. We examined strategies for incorporating music listening into students’ composing processes, such that music listening examples serve as models, inspirations, and affirmations for student composers as they organize musical sounds in artistic and expressive ways. Following this, we explored ways to facilitate guided music listening by incorporating repeated listenings to musics that are diverse in style, genre, and culture. To lead students “into” the music example or student composition, teachers and peers formulate questions and offer feedback that potentially guide student composers to discover pathways for expressing themselves through music while simultaneously connecting to others who experience their compositions.

In addition to suggestions for teachers and student composers already offered in this chapter, this chapter concludes with two final examples that demonstrate “listening to compose.” The first deals with student-generated music listening maps based on their compositions, cutting the map apart and recombining the written notation that results in a re-composed piece. The second example involves adapting a familiar song by incorporating a musical feature or impression found in a recording of a different piece of music. In each example, notice the interaction of the three primary music-making roles—composer, listener, and performer. Sample directives and closed, guided, and open-ended questions are provided as models for possible ways to engage students’ critical, creative, and reflective thinking.

Re-composing Music. In pairs, small groups, or as a full class:
1. Student composers collaboratively create a one-minute composition.

2. Student composers create music listening maps (i.e., non-standard, alternative notation that includes drawings, words, graphs, icons, etc.) for their compositions.
Directive: “As you listen to your composition, create a music listening map of drawings, words, graphs, and/or icons that capture specific musical elements, events, and impressions in your composition.”

3. As the compositions are performed (recorded versions are best), the composer “performs” their music listening map. Project the maps onto a screen (i.e., Prometheus or Smartboard); the composer points to the markings on the music listening map as they occur in the music performance. As the composer “performs” the score, the other students try to determine “what about the music is represented” in the music listening map.

Focus Question (prior to listening): “As you listen to the composition and watch the composer perform the music listening map, what about the music is captured on the written music listening map?”

4. At the completion of the performance, students discuss each notational marking on the listening map and its relationship to the music.
Open-Ended Question: “What about the music do you think is represented on the map?”

5. A partner or member of the group (not the composer) takes a paper version of the music listening map and cuts it into large sections (or even into small pieces for individual markings on the map). Original markings should remain intact. For example, if there is a circle on the map, students would not cut the circle in half.

Guided Question: “Where are the natural sections written on the music listening map?”
Closed Question: “Do you want to cut the map into larger chunks, small pieces of individual representations/markings, or some combination?”

6. The partner or group members (including the composer) reassemble the music listening map into a new music listening map for a re-composed piece of music.

Open-Ended Question: “What do you imagine the music to sound like with the rearrangement of the listening map pieces?”

7. The composer and peers create musical sounds, maybe even segments of the original composition, indicative of the new arrangement of the visual music listening map notation.

Guided Question: “What musical sounds or ideas will you keep from the original composition, but repurpose them in the new composition?”
Open-Ended Question: “How else might you arrange these sounds? What are other possibilities?”

8. Students listen to recordings of the original and re-composed pieces in order to compare and contrast how the reorganization of sections, ideas, and sounds maintained or changed the composer’s original musical, artistic, and feelingful impressions.

Directive: “As you listen to the recordings of both pieces, jot down what remained similar and what changed.”
Reflective Question: “How did this recomposed piece change your [the composer’s] original vision?”
Reflective Question: “What about the recomposed piece worked effectively musically and affectively?”

Finding “Something Interesting”. As an individual student composer or small group of composers:

1. Student(s) listens to a recording of and learn to sing the song, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” Student(s) then listens to a recording of Florence Price’s “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” for string quartet (Five Folk Songs in Counterpoint).

Closed Question: “Which instruments played the main melody?”
Guided Question: “What was something interesting that you found in Price’s setting of the familiar song?”

2. Student composer(s) brings a recording of music that highlights “something interesting” (i.e., a rhythmic or melodic pattern, a mood, instrumentation, expressive vocal or instrumental quality, changes in tempi or dynamics, harmonic progressions, etc.). Reflective Question: “Why did you select this particular recording/music/song?” Guided Question: “What is the feature of this music that you found interesting?”

3. Student composer(s) shares their recordings and describe the “something interesting” that is highlighted in the musical examples.

4. Student composer(s) finds a familiar piece of music (i.e., a folk song, part of a piece of music being rehearsed in school or community ensemble, etc.) that they can perform vocally or instrumentally.

5. Student composer(s) takes a “something interesting” from the recordings they just listened to and find ways to incorporate it into the familiar piece of music. Directive: “Find three different ways for incorporating your ‘something interesting’ into the familiar piece.”

Directive: “Describe the effect that the ‘something interesting’ has on each version of the familiar piece.”

6. Student composer(s) perform both the original and adapted versions of the music for the class.

Open-Ended Question: “What did you notice?”
Guided Question: “What compositional strategies did the composer use in incorporating the ‘something interesting’ into the familiar song?”

7. Following the performances, students discuss what was similar and different in the two versions of the music. Discuss the effect of adding the “something interesting” into the familiar song.

Guided Question: “How did the incorporation of ‘something interesting’ change the musical and affective impressions of the music?”
Open-Ended Question: “What are other ways that the composer might have used the ‘something interesting’ in the familiar piece of music?”

References: Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Allyn & Bacon.

Bloom, B. S. Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, Handbook I: The cognitive domain. David McKay Co. Inc.

Dunn, R. (2006). Teaching for lifelong, intuitive listening. Arts Education Policy Review, 107(3), 33-38.

Ebie, B. (2004). The effects of verbal, vocally modeled, kinesthetic, and audio-visual treatment conditions on male and female middle-school vocal music students’ abilities to expressively sing melodies. Psychology of Music, 32(4), 405-17.

Hickey, M. (2012). Music outside the lines: Ideas for composing in K-12 music classrooms. Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, C. (2020). Exploring the aesthetics of African-American classical musics. American Society for Aesthetics. Retrieved from https://cdn.ymaws.com/aesthetics-online.org/resou rce/resmgr/files/diversity/Jenkins_African_American.pdf