Dear NWSMTA members,

Working with Children Who Have a Natural Proclivity for Music Composition: Part II Middle School Aged and High School Students

Lois Veenhoven Guderian © 2025

Performing and creating music on complex levels requires years of dedicated practicing and the study of music. However, there are many ways to engage students in satisfying musical experience and creative thinking along the journey of developing pianistic artistry and maturity in composing. Providing students with opportunities to apply, in creative ways, what they are learning in piano lessons is one way to support young composers. When explorations in sound and experimentations with musical ideas and the process of decision making are a natural outgrowth of piano studies, youths can gain in musical skills and understanding and be motivated to continue their learning.

In Part I of this article, the following scenario of a 7^th grader was shared: “Our child has had piano lessons before but did not really do well. It takes them a long time to figure out a piece of music. They love music, love to play the pieces they have learned how to play and spend hours at the piano making up their own music. In fact, our seventh-grade child wants to be a composer!” Providing help and guidance for a musical youth with this past experience is not easy. As educators, from this report by the parent, we become aware of the possibility that the youth’s music reading ability is significantly lower than their playing ability and composing ability. The youth needs to develop their music reading ability to match their playing ability. This is also necessary to the development of their ability to notate their own compositions. Often, with young composers, learning to sightread fluently is desired but not nearly as exciting to the youth as is composing and playing. To keep their interest and to support their growth, providing the student with a balance in activities – some that are structured, compositional exercises designed to build sightreading skills and understanding in theory and form with assignments that are wholistic in nature, open-ended and allow for more creativity in thought in the composing process, can be an effective approach. The student will need to build sight reading skills gradually, over time so  starting with assignments that are at their level of sight reading is usually necessary. Example of a structured, compositional exercise: “Improvise or create a new melody for the song Battle Hymn of the Republic. Retain the same lyrics and rhythm. Notate your new melody.” The assignment can be aligned with piano pieces the student is currently studying that contain dotted eighth and sixteenth note rhythms. If the song is found in a method book, they can first learn to play the piece as a piano piece. In this example, the dotted eighth and sixteenth note rhythm pattern is reinforced in a creative, music-writing way. As additional reinforcement, listening for the rhythm pattern and looking for and finding it notated in additional pieces of music as well as singing and playing music that contain the rhythm – including the student’s new, original melody – help to place the rhythm pattern in musical context. All these strategies deepen the student’s understanding in the rhythm pattern while reinforcing their facility in sight reading and playing skills. Flexibility on the educator’s part is important. Students will come up with many creative ideas. Such as, “May I change the lyrics, too? May I add a long ending to the piece?” To questions like these I reply “Yes! What a great idea!”

Another example of a structured, compositional exercise: Using a piece that is not at the level of the student’s maximum playing level, have the student learn how to play the piece and under your guidance, mark the phrases that are questions and answers. For the assignment, the student should retain the questions and compose new phrases, in the same key, with the same length, for the answers.

A wholistic assignment that allows for more creative freedom, the assignment could be quite simple in direction: “Compose a piece that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Make the beginning and ending basically the same. Make the middle section music in contrast to the beginning and ending sections.

Yet another way to provide students with a wholistic compositional assignment is to ask them to make up music that tells a story –a story of their choice. To build a cognitive framework for the assignment, provide and discuss listening examples of programmatic pieces. Suggest that the student listens to others they can find through Naxos or Google at home such as The Moldau by Smetana and Dukas’ The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

In a perfect world, all humans would have opportunities to express their thoughts and feelings in creative ways. For children and youths who show a natural proclivity to use music as their form of creative expression, guidance and encouragement can be essential to their well-being and growth. However, when a youth is studying piano, it is not just about the opportunity for expression and creativity; it is often, also about the love of playing the instrument and wanting to develop the playing skills, theory and knowledge towards writing and performing their own compositions for piano. For middle school and high school students who are studying and playing music at the intermediate or advance levels, composition assignments that are an outgrowth of their literature is an effective way to help young composers grow in their ability to compose. Together with the student, start with analyzing the form of one of the pieces they are studying. Forms such as AABB, rondo form, and theme and variation form are excellent forms to use for this purpose. The forms can be studied, learned and performed, and, then new pieces composed in the form. Assignments like these provide both structure and freedom. From the study of the pieces, the technique and playing skills learned during the lesson, as well as the theory and form experienced in the student’s piano literature provide students with the tools they need to compose. Open-ended assignments like this that are closely related to a student’s current piano work can provide the cognitive starting point and framework for their processes of exploration and experimentation with ideas and the analytical, evaluative, synthesizing, practical applied thinking processes of composing. And, in the process, provide support for the student to continue to grow in piano playing ability and composing, and in keeping their interest to continue.

Lois Veenhoven Guderian, PhD President, NWSMTA