ABSTRACT

Music of all periods, styles, forms, and cultures should be provided to the students to promote comprehensive musicianship which is one of the most important educational concepts in contemporary music education. Unfortunately much emphasis has been given on the music of the common practice period. There has been little opportunity to experience the music in the twentieth-century idiom. This study is conducted to develop a variety of guided activities for the creative music exploration to promote an understanding of the twentieth-century music for the elementary school students in general music class. The teaching suggestions designed for the study are classified into the following two categories: 1) the teaching approach for a free musical exploration with various sound sources and the twentieth-century compositional devices by searching for new sounds, experimenting, exploring, manipulating and/or organizing sound in various ways 2) the teaching approach to be incorporated into the existing program of music curriculum and to introduce the twentieth-century compositional techniques as a complementary learning activity to the study of the songs in the music textbook. Related literature were reviewed to reveal the logical basis for the teaching of the contemporary music and its importance in student`s musical growth. The study also examined the educational and the musical benefits of music learning in experiencing with the experimental music and creating the emperical composition in the style of the twentieth-century music. The major characteristics of the exploratory activities in this study are summerized as follows: 1) It encourges creative experiment in music, emphasizing the direct contact with sound. 2) It develops the student`s creative potentials because of the creative and experimental nature inherent in the twentieth-century music. 3) It does not require a previous musical experience and knowledge in theory and harmony, thus effective for young student`s musical learning. 4) It provides the opportunities to explore a wide variety of sound sources and various ways of musical expression. 5) It facilitates the discovery of the basic concepts of music and the transfer of learning to the various styles of music because of its concept-oriented teaming procedures. 6) It fosters the musical understanding by participating in a process of exploration of sound and its expressive quality and creative aspect rather than implanting concepts and facts in a manner of rotary learning. 7) It contributes a growth of listening discrimination of contemporary music by helping the student familarize the sound world of contemporary music.