Synthetic activity: Semiosis, conceptualizations and meaning-making in music composition

Abstract

This article is about composition learning of two students in a music programme in upper secondary school with a special regard to how they develop conceptual structures within the musical form of expression and understanding. Semiotics, spectromorphology and cultural historical theory are engaged to discuss the empirical findings that are collected through observation and interview. The compositional task in the study regarded sound-based composition within the field of electroacoustic music, more specifically applying additive synthesis to make raw material for composition, preparatory exercises and finally compositions. Musical meaningmaking and compositional creativity were triggered by the encounter of newly learned concepts with internalized and familiar musical thinking. The learning process could be understood in terms of a concept development process (CDP) in language-based learning.

Learning and music composition: An analysis of composers’ testimonies

“…(2012) and Kozbelt (2012). Learning by listening to music corroborates the notion of Falthin (2014) that learning music composition fundamentally involves the development of new sounds on the basis of old familiar ones. Finally, learning by discussing music and in association with other people corroborates the view of Faukner (2003) and the observation of Love and Barrett (2016) that learning music composition can occur on the context of collaborative learning.…”

“…The existence of a variety of forms to learn composition aligns with the observation that learning music composition involves a variety of learning strategies (Falthin 2014), as well with a probable variety of external resources available to learning music. In particular, the image of more 'closed' or more 'open' learning modes for learning music composition aligns both with the suggestion of Wiggins (2012) that learning musical skills occurs in levels and with the differentiation between 'surface' and 'deep' approaches to learning in general (e.g., Entwistle, 2015), which might be the matrix for those modes.…”

“…In a study of learning music composition, Falthin (2014) also observed that, on top of involving a spectrum of learning strategies that vary between students, learning music composition basically concerns the development of new sounds on the basis of old familiar ones. Falthin (2014) framed this process in Vygotsky's (1986) notion that new concepts are built from restructuring previously organised parcels of objects. Going deeper, Kozbelt (2012) suggests that the acquisition of specific music knowledge and the practice of composing traditional schemes would allow the internalisation and implicit use of the elaborated problem-solving and decision-making processes involved in composition.…”