I am midway through the pilot year of Bristol Beacon's Earthsong: Creative Composers! programme, teaching whole-class composing in primary schools. This week I have helped a Year 4 class compose an original song about a ‘Wandering Albatross’, featuring singing, rapping, trombone riffs, cornet trills and wistful guitar chords; I have also overseen 30 Year 5 composers complete short piano pieces inspired by Bach's Goldberg Variations. Next term's projects will include creating and performing our third Year 5 Beowulf opera, working with the opera singer Helen Charlston.
Two Planets Aligning
The whole-class composing idea Two Planets Aligning emerged from the serendipitous coinciding of two projects. I had recently been a composer on the award-winning Listen Imagine Compose Primary (LICP) research project (see Music Teacher, July 2024) run by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Birmingham City University with support from Sound and Music and others. I was keen to carry on the legacy of this pioneering project and mentioned this to Laurie Stewart and the team at Bristol Beacon, who had also supported LICP. Bristol Beacon were just about to embark on a further five years of their flagship Earthsong project, which delivers whole-class music tuition to primary schools across Bristol.
The idea of adding whole-class composing as part of the Earthsong provision (following on from the Start with Singing and Start with Playing programmes in earlier years) aligned with the Earthsong vision: children could carry on working in whole classes, using their singing and instrumental skills to create their own original music. Working with specialised composers, they would learn different techniques and approaches, gaining confidence to see themselves as composers and music creators.
Delivering in schools
My current work on Earthsong involves delivering a 10-week course of 45-minute sessions to Year 4 and 5 classes each double term (expanding to Year 6 next year). I also mentor other composing tutors on the project, working as a team of five tutors across 11 schools. The relationship with the schools is crucial, and an aim of Bristol Beacon is to make sure that parents are aware of the Earthsong activity. These are schools in more deprived areas of the city, with very few students learning music outside school. With that in mind, I have built in ways of sharing the children's music with parents and other students at the school. This can involve a final performance of the composed songs, a recording or video of their compositions shared with students and parents, or each student creating their own Composer's Notebook.
Navigating the challenges
Teaching whole-class composing has unique challenges. There are constant tensions between allowing each student to explore their own composing ideas and having a sense of whole group cohesion and focus. It is one thing to lead a whole group in singing a unison song or playing a melody together on glockenspiels; it requires a different approach to bring 30 different composing ideas to life! This is where having composers in the classroom (and by ‘composers’ I mean a broad category including songwriters, improvisers or teachers with composing experience in any genre) can help navigate this tricky path.
At the recent LICP conference in Birmingham, the speaker mentioned Jackie Wiggins's concept of ‘artful scaffolding’. This is the negotiation between children's agency (the freedom to express themselves) and the knowledge you give them (the framework and techniques they can use). This summed up the challenge nicely. Even after doing this kind of work for decades now, I still feel like I am learning how to do this! One of the strengths of both the LICP and Earthsong projects has been input from other composers on the team, with advice and encouragement shared between the group. It has also been crucial to have expertise from experienced teaching staff. I have worked with Kirsten Cunningham from Horfield CE Primary throughout the LICP and Earthsong projects. Establishing a long-term ‘composer-in-residence’-style relationship with her school has helped develop and improve the way I teach composing enormously. It has been like a testing ground from which to roll out successful practice to other schools.
Progression
A common problem is that outcomes of composing activities from Year 3 to Year 6 can be indistinguishable, particularly if focused on soundscapes or theoretical tasks which don't connect with composerly intentions or sonic imagination. The main question I ask myself when planning this teaching is: ‘How can students progress as composers?’ My approach this term has been for the Year 4s to build composing confidence, have fun, use voices and work together in whole or occasionally small groups. My Year 5 class have had more individual composing tasks using specific, taught techniques, each achieving their own final composition to share and celebrate. Here is how the activities breaks down:
Year 4
- Composing as a group
- Building confidence improvising vocal melody
- Understanding song structure and setting lyrics
- Exploring notation (general melodic shape)
My role with the Year 4s is to facilitate working by ear, helping to capture and shape ideas. The children's composing activities have ranged from improvising melody on voices and instruments (including whole-class improvisation), simple notation exercises, and making decisions about text, rhythm, melodic shape, song structure, dynamics and other musical elements. In preparation for each session, I have put together a simple score of the children's songs so far (to show the students, but mainly to help me!). I will then direct a final performance of the completed songs with voices, instruments and, of course, choreography!
Year 5
- Composing as an individual
- Understanding and using techniques
- Composing for instruments
- Using notation (basic stave notes, simple rhythm)
With the Year 5 group, I have introduced the music of J.S. Bach and Scott Joplin for inspiration and taught them techniques of sequence and syncopation. This is more individual, directed work. I have focused on using simple stave notation, trying out melodies on glockenspiels and allocating a lot of time in the later sessions to record each short piece with the students playing alongside me on piano. Each week they have added to their Composer's Notebook, which culminates in a final score. At the end of the project, I will put these scores together with the recordings to produce a video of their ‘Goldberg Variations 2.0’!
In both these projects, I have striven to give students a sense of achievement and ownership as they create a new piece. I want each student to view themselves as a composer. I identify various skills and abilities within the group and use them to inspire and model ways of composing for other students (e.g. some children will be confident instrumentalists, have knowledge of notation, or have the confidence to improvise vocal melodies). At the same time, I want to make sure each child progresses in their own way, makes decisions about how they want their piece to sound, and learn how a piece of music can blossom from a small seed.
Toolkit
An important legacy of the LICP project is the superb Planning, Reflection and Progression Toolkit available from BCMG and elsewhere. This provides a unique and comprehensive guide to teaching composing at primary level and has fed into the planning and delivery of the current Earthsong composing sessions.
The legacy for the classroom
LICP had an intention to equip generalist classroom teachers with the tools and techniques to be able to teach composition once the composers left. This was an ambitious aspect of the project and it will be fascinating to see if and how this bears fruit over time. The Earthsong approach is to continue with specialist composer-tutors coming in to schools where teaching composition is a challenge. For the class teachers working with us, there are certainly tools for embedding ways of including music-making and composing in their own teaching. However, I believe it is unrealistic to expect teachers who aren't confident musicians to deliver composition teaching in the same way. The specialist skills that an experienced composer, improviser or musician uniquely brings to the classroom can more fully identify, scaffold and realise the students' composing intentions.
In the future I would love to see both, where primary classroom teachers are equipped to deliver effective composing activities as part of the curriculum, while more specialist composer-tutors are being trained and deployed with the skills both in composition and teaching to expand the Earthsong model, providing ambitious musical experiences that wouldn't otherwise be possible.
Links
- bristolbeacon.org/music-in-schools/earthsong-programme
- earthsongfoundation.com
- LICP Toolkit: tinyurl.com/yx8sw3py
- Research article on LICP Beowulf opera: tinyurl.com/mryv8u9s
