Project Descriptions

3. Learning through Music

a)  Music Communication

The creative processes of music are commonly considered a catalyst for the learning and development of general competences. The knowledge of learning through musical processes has however been limited, both nationally and internationally. Especially in the current Danish debate of professionalizing the teacher (school teachers and otherwise), the understanding of how music education can intensify and strengthen the ability to learn is urgently needed.

The focus of the researchers at VMK involved in IMIPA is the development of music communication (musikformidling) both in it is own right and as a means of strengthening more general (or not specifically musical) competences in the student of music. The notion of music communication includes both the teaching of music and the composing and performing of music in respect of ‘introducing’ subjects to music. Through several projects with children’s compositions, it has been shown that the creativity and remembrance and experience of music is radically different with children than with adults. Part of the research field of VMK will be to concretize this difference and lay it out for the use in the above project of music communication.

After several years of goal-directed development, which has - among other projects - resulted in the Tonespace project, VMK now stands well-prepared to actively enter the era of practice-based research and to face the challenges which this entails. An extremely valuable resource for the furtherance of these goals is the presence of Teré Vadén on the full-time staff of the Center during all five years as already mentioned in the introduction.

(Mogens Christensen, Frederik Søegaard, Axel Momme, Hans Sydow)

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