Making New Relationships

Both “making with trees” and “making with keys” were experiences of improvisatory, transdisciplinary making with, which “troubled” (Haraway, 2016) notions of the teacher as in control, as pre-planning a linear route of learning, or having pre-set outcomes that they were steering the experiences toward. Instead, in both experiences, there was an exploratory playfulness. The trip to the wildlife area was not intended to become a “music lesson,” and in setting up the improvisation activities with student teachers, there was no intention for keys to emerge. This messy, indeterminate making with aligns strongly with what Cage calls “purposeless play”:

This play . . . is an affirmation of life—not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord. (Cage, as quoted in Hill, 2018, p. 59)

This awakening to living and therefore to the here and now of making shifts our attention. No longer is making only a tool for understanding, a sound demonstration of learning, or a site of skill development for the future. Making is not about a “world to come,” a world we cannot know in advance and plan to be ready for, but instead is about making with as becoming with the world as it is now. As Haraway (2016) argues, shifting our attention to “worlding with” involves learning to be “truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings” (p. 1).

Making with the dead wood of the tree that was gradually rotting away or making with the teacher’s keys that were present in her pocket at that moment of time or making with the emotional response to the newly made instrument (keys) being dropped, was to make different relationships. This requires different ways of being “teacher-maker,” with a different relationship with materials.

Both “making with trees” and “making with keys” involved allowing others to create their own material relationships, not seeing these relationships as static or achieved, but as something of the moment. In both experiences, the materials (keys and trees) were actively “doing.” They were accepting our human involvement with them, allowing the bark to peel, allowing the vibrations to travel along and up the keys and cymbals, allowing the hollow branch to resonate. They were “playing” with us. This view of material play aligns with the French definition of the term which, as well as encompassing the play of children and theatrical play, also includes the idea of materials as “having a little play” in them. The closest we get in the English language is talking of a steering wheel having “too much play” in it. This notion of materials as agentic, of expressing their abilities to be played, allowing us as humans ways into playing with them, changes the nature of our material relationships in composing. We are no longer imposing ourselves onto materials (sonic or physical), but we are playing with, making with, what the materials allow us to do.

To re-see materials as “doing” is to change the relationship we have with them as composition teachers, where materials are no longer inert, to be used, but instead are full of potential, are actively shaping and “teaching” with us. In “making with trees,” recognizing that the materials (the tree, the branch, the stick) were in relationship with Gregor and observing his exploration of their potential to “play” with him, and make with him, also repositioned my relationship with the material. In that moment my relationship was one of attentiveness to what the trees were “doing” with Gregor. This attention to material “doings” requires us as “teacher-makers” to consider our own material relationships, as was evident in “making with keys.”

Supporting material play in young makers, where we are part of the making that is happening, therefore involves us being comfortable in exploring our own material play. As a discipline, music is a materially rich space. We as music teachers have a wealth of material relationships, embodied ways of being with materials, and understandings of material skill that are part of our habitual ways of being music teachers (Cooke, 2020). As McWilliam (2005) notes, habitual ways of being also characterize forms of pedagogy, where “acquisition of certain routinised patterns of thinking and behaving . . . [is] useful . . . when the conditions in which they work are predictable and stable” (pp. 3-5).

However, the type of making with experienced in both “making with trees” and “making with keys” was far from predictable and stable. In spaces where materials, bodies, forms, sounds, and ideas were entangled and in motion, imposing habitual ways of being musical and being a music teacher might, as McWilliam (2005) also argues, have “actually become impediments to social success” (p. 5). This was most strongly felt and seen in “making with keys” where the introduction of the keys “troubled” notions of disciplinary “doing.” They were not expected to emerge in this space, they were not considered “instruments,” and in becoming instruments they “troubled” notions of expertise, who was the expert, and how they were to be played. They therefore “troubled” notions of skills, of right/ wrong and of “habit.” Together with the attentiveness of the students, they forged a new and unknown relationship that was of and in the moment. This making involved entanglements in the here and now, where habitual ways of being musical and being a music teacher were expanded by the forward motion of the purposeless and playful exploration of materials and processes of playing-with.

Concluding Thoughts on the Interplay of Transdisciplinary and Improvisatory Creativities for Nurturing Young Composers as “Makers”

To nurture our young composers as makers with is to allow their making with materials to be both improvisatory and transdisciplinary. This involves a re-seeing of material play as a core aspect of composing where, like many art forms, the maker improvises their way, exploring the possibilities their entanglements allow. This changes how we see materials, not as inert objects to be used but as active and mutual participants in the processes of making, where they exert influence, and can emerge unexpectedly into the compositional space. It also challenges notions of disciplinary boundaries, because being a maker is entangling with anything that has the potential to be generative.

This type of entangling is not only about developing young makers’ exploratory abilities, seeing the potential in materials, and saying “yes, and” (Johnstone, 1979), but is also about helping them understand their sound-material worlds. Such understandings arise from what Jackson (2016) calls “plays of forces,” where movements, intensities, and exploratory making “regenerate the territory” from within and outside, “mak[ing] it newer each time and motivating] it to continue” (Jackson, 2016, p. 190) in ever- changing, ever-developing relationships.

The research we have highlighted (see also Cooke, 2020) demonstrates a growing consensus that nurturing young composers necessitates them creating their own opportunities and developing skills that will enable them to become “makers.” As teachers, supporting the development of young composers-as-makers-with, we must also be open to transdisciplinary and improvisational playing with materials. As with the example of the student teachers, sometimes we need someone or something to “trouble” (Haraway, 2016) our existing relationships with materials, pushing outward in a centripetal way to support young makers when they become with different types of entanglements.

Three Key Messages for Supporting Young Makers.First, seeing teaching composing as “making” involves being dynamic, responsive, and open to what happens in the moment or as a result of a particular coming together of materials, bodies, forms, and ideas. Composing in this sense requires allowing children malleable spaces in the present, rather than fixed habitual or historical precedents. It is about supporting children to join in with and make with, rather than being imposed on or imposing themselves onto.

Second, seeing oneself as and being a “teacher-maker” means nurturing young composers in ways that are purposefully malleable and fluid, where “interferences” and “eruptions” caused by transdisciplinary and improvisation creativities are generative and reliant on shifting tasks. Young people are thus seen as self-directed learners who are enabled by a learning community where they can make with and through meaningful and mutual relationships.

Third, nurturing young composers invites us to engage with a multiplicity of practices that are social, collaborative, and collective, and that encourage unlearning the rules and exploring a myriad compositional creativities. These creativities have the potential to be recognized and valued, and to become manifest in conversation with real-world practice. Learners have redrawn the boundaries of composing as making with. This requires teachers to do the same.

References: Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.

Bell, D. M. (2014). Improvisation as anarchist organization. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 14(4), 1009-1030.

Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity Press.

Braidotti, R., & Bignall, S. (2018). Posthuman ecologies: Complexity and process after Deleuze. Rowman and Littlefield.

Britzman, D. P. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. State University of New York Press.

Burnard, P. (2012a). Musical creativities in practice. Oxford University Press