Composing is part if the mainstream music curriculum for many children yet children's music does not receive the same attention as their art or creative writing. Children Composing 4-14 traces the ways in which composing can be organised and taught within the school music curriculum, drawing on children's own music-making activities. This practical book looks at how teaching composing can enable hildren to progress by acquiring musical skills and understanding, whilst developing their own sense of musical purpose. One of the main concern's of the book is the need to sustain continuity and quality in children's composing experience as they mover through each phase of music education.
Children's Composing is considered in relation to the wider musical context in which they grow up, including cultural differences in composing roles and in perceptions of composing and composers. Projects that bring children into contact with professional composers are critically examined, and suggestions are made for ways of ensuring that composing in schools is rooted in the musical world outside. For more information, please visit the authors web site at: http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/children-composing/

'With great delicacy and intelligence, Children Composing 4-14 shows how we can become more attentive and so more useful in the support we offer to children who are employing instruments or voices for their own expressive purposes. The book is rooted in the realities of classroom life ... above all, it bears witness to an informed and idealistic passion that hard-pressed and test-challenged children need and deserve. - Tom Deveson, Times Educational Supplement