ABSTRACT

There have been many studies about musical composition and musical creativity. Among the research, Kratus and Hickey, in particular, criticized the psychometric method concerning creativity and both studied from the view of cognitive psychology. However, they have differing opinions concerning the concepts of musical composition and musical creativity, the idea of exploration, and the procedure of research. This study analyzes the 6th graders` compositional processes and products, using two different analysis methods. Students were more open to creative exploration in the free composition than in the conditioned composition, and their rankings of their free compositional products differed based on the assessment criteria. These results show that the type of compositional task and assessment criteria must be considered when musical composition and musical creativity are investigated and when musical composition is taught.

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