Engaging students with a contemporary music - minimalism - through composing activities : teachers' approaches, strategies, and roles

A study inviting teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary level to introduce their students to composing activities through a resource album of minimalist projects noted that some teachers led their students to write "pastiche" compositions while others enabled their student composers to move beyond pastiche to an expansion of the given compositional concepts. Results examined compositions of music as imitating the style of an existing work, or whether teachers enabled their students to move beyond pastiche composition to an expansion of the given compositional concepts. This paper discusses the approaches, strategies, and roles adopted by both groups of teachers.