The Oxford Handbook of Music Composition Pedagogy (PDF)

The Oxford Handbook of Music Composition Pedagogy presents an illuminating collection of perspectives on teaching and learning in the field of music composition, supplying music educators with knowledge about young composers and their work. The Handbook's forward-looking practices offer teachers tools and strategies for every child to experience music composition as part of their music education. Editor Michele Kaschub, along with an outstanding team of contributing authors, offers a comprehensive handbook providing key scholarly, critical, and practical perspectives on teaching composers and learning to compose. Written by academic scholars, researchers, and music teachers, the 43 chapters of the volume addresses nine major themes: philosophical foundations; identity and inclusion; compositional processes; approaches to composition teaching and learning; nurturing young composers; composing in classroom and ensemble settings; international perspectives on composition in music education; and how the future of composition might be shaped.
The Handbook provides strategies to readers in embracing diversity as it is found in the individual nature of each student-composer and in the broader community of composers. Kaschub proposes an understanding of the value of individual and collaborative work as a function of artistic action, including a wide-range range of experiential contexts so that students can embrace traditional and emerging music, and ways to help students sustain and extend their cultural heritage through composing. The Oxford Handbook of Music Composition Pedagogy underscores the potential that composition holds for advancing student artistry in music education while guiding educators working to achieve that goal.