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COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS IN MUSIC

Jackie Wiggins
Oakland University, U.S.A.

Researchers have considered a broad range of activities in a variety of contexts toward

understanding processes of composing music. While particulars of contexts and settings
give rise to variation in pathways (Burnard &Younker, 2004) taken by composers, there
are sufficient commonalities to inform lesson design, learning environments, and ways
of scaffolding student creation of original music.
Earlier studies attempted to generalize about process from product analysis. More
recent work looks at process itself, through observation, interview, and protocol analy-
sis of verbal reports. Researchers have designed experiments, collected data in natura-
listic settings, and engaged in work that lies along a continuum in-between experiments
and naturalistic data. Most recent studies recognize contextual and sociocultural embed-
dedness. There are studies of individual and collaborative composing, songwriting by
schoolchildren and rock musicians, composing for acoustic instruments and through
computer environments. Some analyze students’ first “public” composition efforts
while others look at work of those with more experience. In some, music notation was
integral; in others, students invented notation systems, but in many cases, notation did
not enter into the process.
Must a musical composition be written down? What counts as compositional process?
At what point is a student composing or improvising? Does it matter? Do students differ-
entiate between composing and improvising? Are young children inventing songs during
play composing? Is work in formal and informal settings the same? Are there common-
alities across settings regardless of context? Let us consider how researchers define com-
posing and then attempt to map their understanding of the process.

Definitions of Composing
How do researchers define what composing is and when composing begins? In some
studies, participants have time to become familiar with tools (instrument, software)
before composing; in others, this is considered part of the compositional process. Some
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L. Bresler (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, 453–470.
© 2007 Springer.
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differentiate between composing and improvising; others do not. Most consider compos-
ing a process of thinking in sound but some ask participants to compose through manip-
ulating notation in ways that do not necessarily require or allow for thinking in sound.

Composing vs. Improvising

Creation of original music is generally described as composing and/or improvising.
Sloboda (1985) regards these processes as fundamentally different in that “the composer
rejects possible solutions until he [sic] finds one which seems to be the best for his pur-
poses” while “the improviser must accept the first solution that comes to hand” (p. 149).
Kratus (1994) defines a composition as a product with “fixed, replicable sequences of
pitches and durations” and improvisation as “the fluid thoughts and actions of the com-
poser in generating the product” (p. 116). For Webster (1992), composing includes
opportunity for revision during the process while in improvising, “the product or process
is not reconsidered for change” (p. 270). Wiggins (1992) defined composing as “pre-
planned performance of original musical ideas” and improvising as “spontaneous per-
formance of original musical ideas within the context of a real time performance” (p. 14).
Others see improvising and composing as integrated, considering improvisation part
of compositional process. Analyzing children’s products, Swanwick and Tillman (1986)
did not differentiate, considering “the briefest utterances” and “more worked out and sus-
tained invention” to be composing (p. 311). Davies (1986, 1992) described “invented”
songs of children as compositions with improvisational ideas spontaneously generated
within them. For Faulkner (2001), composing is both process and product, includ-
ing … improvising, arranging, and spontaneous singing (p. 5). For Green (2001) and
Barrett (2003), composing encompasses a range of musically creative activities, includ-
ing improvising, performing, and listening.
Burnard (1999a, 1999b) shared young composers’ conceptions of composing and
improvising in their own experience, linking the processes to bodily intention. In impro-
vising, her participants “indicated a willingness to accept uncertainty and participate in
ways for which ‘having no time to think’ was played out as a kind of prereflective playful
impulse” (Burnard, 2000, p. 232), whereas “(c)omposing seemed to be an activity, which
was relived ‘over and over’ ” with pieces becoming time-tested works within which cer-
tain ideas recurred, “a piece I play” (p. 234). This involved a kind of reflective process in
which ideas were found, focused, fixed, and finalised [sic] circuitously (p. 237).

Composing: Notating or Thinking in Sound?

Various authors have considered composing to be thinking – creative thinking (Webster,
1992, 2003) and musical thinking (Barrett, 1996, 1998; Gamble, 1984; Paynter, 1997;
Wiggins, 2001, 2002, 2003). Most musicians agree that engaging in any musical process
involves hearing or conceiving of music in one’s mind (e.g., Gordon, 1984; Swanwick,
1988). The process of inventing and organizing musical material is intrinsically linked
to conceptualizing music in one’s mind or thinking in sound, as described by Aaron
Copland (1952): “You cannot produce a beautiful sonority or any combination of
sonorities without first hearing the imagined sound in the inner ear” (p. 22).