This book is the product of many years of experience by the author as a Professor of Music Education at North Western University's Bienen School of Music, Chicago. Her research interests, passionately exhibited here, lie in the creative teaching of music through composing and improvising.
The first two chapters (‘Introduction’ and ‘The Issues’) are centred on the aims of the book and contain thought-provoking comments on the defining of composing and creativity. It is clear from the start that the main aim of the book is to emphasise the importance of embedding composition in the music curriculum (from the earliest education settings to undergraduate study) and to ensure that this is done creatively. Although the context is clearly the United States classroom this should not deter the international reader as much is of universal relevance.
The book is immediately readable with an abundance of references to other arts subjects when considering aspects of creative teaching. The analogy with Art education is particularly thought-provoking in that it exemplifies how easy it is for subjects one naturally assumes to be creative to be taught in a non-creative fashion. This will be particularly useful for any longstanding music teachers who are re-evaluating their composition teaching, as well as those new to the music classroom. It may also prove motivational for the many music teachers who have never been formally trained in composition, as it attempts to dispel any elitist view. Hickey points out that children's composing may not, and indeed does not have to, sound ‘right’ but that it is the creative process and the exploration which are important. This all sits very well with other publications (e.g. Fautley & Savage, Reference FAUTLEY and SAVAGE2007) which discuss creativity in more depth.
Chapter 2 also discusses specific issues, notably assessment, notation and technology in composing, touching on how we might approach composition creatively but in synthesis with music theory and the need for musical ‘rules’ and parameters, this echoing earlier writers (e.g. Mills, Reference MILLS2005). The section on assessment rubrics might be particularly pertinent at this time when assessment level descriptors are being reconsidered in light of the draft National Curriculum for Music in English schools (DFE, 2013).
Chapter 2 concludes with a proposed flexible composition curriculum which is then described in detail in Chapters 3–7. These chapters offer many practical suggestions for actual lessons and might be particularly useful for the non-specialist teacher, or the teacher who is not so confident with teaching composition.
There are many thought-provoking elements to these chapters including how we might inspire pupils to compose rather than merely teaching them according to an assignment brief, and how we can encourage pupils to find their own unique composing voice. Much is made of the use of improvisation and how this should shape our teaching before we introduce technical issues and rules. The suggestion is that children will learn the rules through creating their own music first. I found it a useful exercise to think about turning the pedagogy on its head and working with children in a more emergent, organic way: Hickey describes it as learning from the ‘inside-out’ rather than the ‘outside-in’.
Chapters 3–7 are highly readable but I did find myself continually questioning how one might introduce such a teaching model into our time-constrained and assessment-fuelled curriculum. However, Hickey is perfectly aware of the reality and deliberately asks us to step outside of it for a moment, to consider how the music curriculum might look if we had the opportunity to design our own ‘music utopia elementary school’.
The final chapter, ‘Composition at the core of school music’, introduces us to the idea of imagining such a system, based on Dewey's (Reference DEWEY and Boydston2008/1933) Utopian vision, where we think beyond the everyday constraints to an imagining of the ideal music education scenario. Here the main repertoire is created by the children themselves and forms the basis for their performing and listening activities. Rather than an ‘add on’ activity, composing becomes the core of all we do in the music classroom, providing a healthy balance with other subjects.
Further in this chapter Hickey creates an overview of the way music teaching might be approached in this utopian school, describing the progression through the curriculum based upon the ideas discussed in the previous chapters. She takes us on a very enjoyable journey, describing aspects as diverse as wall displays which encourage a cross-curricular composing project to a class of children composing their own musical theatre production. The progression through this programme of musical learning is described through a spiral approach (as advocated by Bruner, Reference BRUNER1960) whereby concepts are continually revisited and complexity is developed gradually.
This book delivers on several levels. For those who wish to experiment with creative approaches in the classroom it gives a wealth of ideas for lessons and activities and particularly useful and interesting suggestions for listening materials. For those who wish to consider the music curriculum in more depth it encourages us to re-evaluate our thinking about how and why we teach composing, and to question how pupil-centred our curriculum models really are. It questions the assumption that children must be taught to compose, suggesting that most children have a wealth of musical experience before coming to school which makes them as capable of making up music as they are of creating stories.
It may also encourage a new-found confidence in teachers to tackle composing from a more intuitive and explorative starting point. Achieving a balance between freedom and control sounds like a tall order but if Hickey is right, the curriculum model espoused here could help us achieve just that in a truly creative fashion.
This book is a very enjoyable read, highly accessible and thought provoking too. I can recommend it wholeheartedly.
