Introduction: How are the creative processes of musicians and dancers related? How can musicians and dancers reimagine their common roles? What would equality look like in a room of musicians and dancers? How would ideas be exchanged in such an environment? What would creative collaboration look like? In what ways can a collaborative group of musicians and dancers improve communication amongst one another?

​    In this essay, we explore how creative experiences in groups might impact communication among members through group creativity experiences for the Urban Art Ensemble at Arizona State University in the Spring of 2015. Preliminary research began on the UAE’s midterm day when members facilitated their own activities aimed at increasing communication through examining domain specific knowledge related to roles and structure/form. For half of the class, we observed the dancers lead activities that addressed roles and communication. For the second half of class we then saw musicians lead the group in activities focused on form and structure of a music genre. From this point, we developed a two- day project that we hoped would give members a chance to creatively engage in experiences with one another that might help them develop their abilities related to group creative communication. In this essay, we will discuss the impetus and structure of our project, examine what happened through the words of members, and articulate important take-aways that might empower our own work facilitating group creative work and which could be useful for others in similar settings. First, thought, we will set the stage by discussing the unique context of this study, the Urban Arts Ensemble. 

The following manuscript is a concentration master's degree domain project:

Music is often used to tell stories. During any time spent listening to popular music radio and/or YouTube streams, a listener will experience a torrent of stories set to music. Artists like Adele, the Beatles, and Kanye West, among many others, have relied upon music’s narrative qualities to reach their musical audiences and create works that deeply connect with and engage them. If not for music ability to aid in telling a story, there would be little need for the grandiose soundtracks of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Danny Elfman that accompany blockbuster movies.

Classical composers knew this very well as they created so-called “Programatic” pieces of music that sonically, with or without the use of lyrics, led listeners through vivid and intricate story lines filled with richly defined characters. Schubert’s Der Erlkönig, Wagner’s operatic works, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fatastique, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf remain relevant by still delighting musical audiences of all ages because of their strong reliance on narrative. Perhaps it is because of this that program music can make up the profusion of classical masterworks that are heard in general music classrooms.

Program music and music that express narratives are routinely the focus of music listening activities for elementary school students in and out of music class. However, it is the view of this author that music’s narrative qualities possess great potential for developing compositional abilities in a straight-forward and structured manner. Stories provide young composers with an entry point for them to transition plot elements and characters into sonic representations, truly beginning to think in sounds.

Likewise, poetry and music have a strong and time-tested connection. Since composers have been creating musical works for voice and lyrics, poetry and rhyme have been employed as a means of conveying emotional and/or narrative contexts. During the late Classical and throughout the Romantic periods, lieder was a dominate musical form in which composers like Schubert and Schumann, among others, took poetic works and set them to music. Often times, these musical settings can be perceived to be much more powerful than their source material alone.

In many lesson plans, picture books, short stories, and poems (Gromko, 2003; Kaschub & Smith, 2009) are not only used as a jumping off point for compositional activities, but also to help students understand what a composer does and assist them in developing their own compositional “toolbox.” Music educators need to find ways to demystify the compositional process for their students and develop strong compositional encounters that will challenge and build upon students’ creative musical thinking. Using stories or poems as inspirational starting points provide students with a scaffold to build upon that will not only allow the compositional outcome to be unique to them, but also organized in such a way that its form may yield a higher level of aesthetic appeal, as suggested by Hickey (2003).

The Intersection of Music Education and Literacy Development 
Music can be found interwoven throughout the fabric of most “non-musical” areas of the school curriculum. Barrett, McCoy, and Veblen (1997) identify affective, social integration, subservient, and cognitive integration styles of music’s use in classrooms. Music is often used to provide for transitions between one activity to another as is the case in welcome songs, or as a RATHGEBER FREE CHOICE DOMAIN 3 social bonding agent in the form of school songs and music that support community traditions. Music is very often found in non-musical classrooms in a subservient style in which songs are used to reinforce curricular aims. These ways are all present within this author’s educational setting. However, in an attempt to reach out and create more cognitively integrative and interdisciplinary connections between music and non-musical curricula, music educators sometimes must reach beyond their personal comfort zones. As such, I began to seek new ways of integrating music with outside educational concepts.

​While in a staff meeting that focused on the teaching and assessing of literacy targets, I began to discover the profound connections that literacy development has to music education, specifically in the areas of listening/responding to and creating music. Upon rereading Ruthmann’s (2007) article, “The Composer’s Workshop: An Approach to Composing in the Classroom,” and attending a presentation by Kelly-McHale (2011) regarding composing using an adaptation of the “Writer’s Workshop” model, I began to seek out information about the “Writer’s Workshop” and other literacy education methods that might be useful when helping structure activities that would help develop my students’ music composition skills. Upon consulting numerous literacy coaches within my district, I was led to the work of Calkins (2006) as well as Boushey and Moser (2006). As I read The Daily 5 (Boushey & Moser, 2006) and A Guide to the Writing Workshop (Calkins, 2006), my mind began to race with countless possibilities to integrate and build upon literacy development tools and concepts that my students were familiar with and could easily make use of in the area of music composition. As I toyed and experimented with “literacy-based” compositional activities, I noticed how much my students seemed relaxed when composing and fully engaged in their activities. I RATHGEBER FREE CHOICE DOMAIN 4 decided that throughout the following year, I would apply my energy towards developing a philosophically and research supported framework for using literacy education tools in composition as well as create a handful of succinct compositional activities with student examples that I could share with other music educators. By proposing and presenting a session entitled “Book-Based Compositions” at the Illinois Music Educator’s Conference of 2012, I found a way to share my findings with music teachers from all over the state of Illinois. The remainder of this domain paper will highlight the work that was done and the products created for this presentation. 

This manuscript is a composition curriculum from a master's degree composition class:

Composition is a pathway by which people explore society, culture, and history while discovering their place within these spaces. Because of this, composition deserves a central place within the music curriculum. It is a unique creative experience that people have undertaken throughout time immemorial to mark their personal voice and group traditions upon the cultural and historical landscape (Paynter, 1992, p. 21). Composition within the music curriculum affords students the opportunity to explore sounds, organizational systems (forms, etc.), notational systems, musical vocabulary, music history, and other musical concepts through in-depth self-guided interactions they develop a new understanding of the ideas as a whole (Upitis, 1992, p.155). Finally, creative musical activity can be a useful conduit for the management and expression of emotions (Paynter, 1992, p. 10).

From a young age, children are fascinated with sound and thus are inherently music makers. Through the experience of playing, children seek to make sense out of their environment, so too with sound (Barrett, 2003, p. 3). As children grow and enter school, too often this curiosity and creativity is inadvertently subverted in the push for academic and technical achievement. Music education regularly follows this trend in its emphasis of music literacy and performance. Composition is thus buried or relegated as a music literacy and/or standard notation assessment tool. However, composition can, and should, be seen as the basis for musical learning. Students study compositions, learn about the “great” composers, discover musical notation as used by composers. Yet, one factor is missing. Students must be encouraged to and shown how to compose for themselves. Through this seemingly innocuous process, students develop their own creative voice and come to understand and appreciate the work of others. In this act, students become attuned to their own emotions and abilities.

​For these reasons, composition will become embedded within the broader music curriculum. Students will experience fundamentals of music vocabulary and notational literacy through direct interaction and application of the concepts through focused compositions. Listening activities and elements of music history will be analyzed by composing “in the style of” such works to allow students to unfold the complex layers of sound and gain an appreciation for the techniques of the composers. Students will discover how to compose and address the major issues of why people compose. In this discussion, students will be introduced to tools by which they may create their own music, for whatever reason, in whatever setting they choose. Therefore, students may become more inclined towards creative expression through music and become more discerning consumers of music.