How Transdisciplinary and Improvisational Creativities Can Nurture Young Composers and Teachers as Confident “Makers”

Abstract

Several studies on composition pedagogy in music education research suggest teachers are insufficiently knowledgeable about and lack confidence in composing. There is also overwhelming evidence of a lack of professional development in this area, suggesting the problem may be more deep-rooted. Perceiving how teachers act, understand, enact, and nurture young composers helps to fill the gap in the current literature. In this chapter we (a) challenge a monodisciplinary perspective on composing, (b) dismantle the myth that composing is a solitary act, and (c) make explicit how teachers and student teachers can become confident music composition pedagogues. We explore transdisciplinary and improvisational creativities that challenge individualistic views of composing. We present a way to re-see young composers and teachers as entangled in material and embodied processes where they are makers with each other and the world. We expand the concept of improvisational creativity from the usual understanding within the music discipline to a transdisciplinary creativity—that is, humans and non-humans pushing outward generatively to create different relationships between child, teacher, materials, and environments. We reconceptualize transdisciplinary creativity as that which seeks to de-couple the specific language of a discipline—in this case music composition—from its original context, in order to open up new possibilities for making and becoming makers/composers.