The Routledge Companion to Teaching Music Composition in Schools: International Perspectives

The Routledge Companion to Teaching Music Composition in Schools: International Perspectives offers a comprehensive overview of teaching composing from a wide range of countries around the world. Addressing the current state of composition pedagogy from primary to secondary school levels and beyond, the volume explores issues, including different curricular and extracurricular settings, cultural aspects of composing, aesthetics, musical creativity, the role of technology, and assessment.

With contributors from over 30 countries, this volume encompasses theoretical, historical, empirical, and practical approaches and enables comparisons across different countries and regions. Chapters by experienced educators, composers, and researchers describe in depth the practices taking place in different international locations. Interspersed with these chapters, interludes by the volume editors contextualize and problematize the teaching and learning of composing music. The volume covers a range of contexts, including formal and informal, those where a national curriculum is mandated or where composing is a matter of choice, and a range of types, styles, and genres of musical learning and music-making.

Providing a wide-ranging and detailed review of international approaches to incorporating music composition in teaching and learning, this volume will be a useful resource for teachers, music education researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and all those working with children and young people in composing music.

Kirsty Devaney is a composer and music education researcher based in Birmingham, UK. As a composition tutor at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and founder of the Young Composers Project, Kirsty specialises in composing music with, and for, non-professional and youth groups. Her music has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and shortlisted for a British Composer Award.

Martin Fautley is a Professor of Education at Birmingham City University, UK. He researches and writes about various aspects of teaching and learning in music, specializing in creativity and assessment. He is the author of 10 books, as well as over 60 journal articles, book chapters, and academic research papers.

Joana Grow is a Professor of Music Education at Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany. Her areas of teaching and research are music composition, gender and music education, professionalization of student teachers, language-sensitive music education, and teaching music history.

Annette Ziegenmeyer is a Professor of Music Education at the University of Luebeck, Germany. Her areas of teaching and research cover a broad range of topics such as music composition in schools and beyond, community music/music in social work, and music education in prisons.