Creating Music: What Children from Around the World Can Teach Us

Children create music in individually unique ways, but also using common processes. Each creating process component stated in the United States’ National Music Standards (imagine, plan and make, evaluate and refine, and present; NCCAS, 2014) is explored in this text using children’s creations from China, India, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States as examples.

Patricia Riley is an associate professor of music and the coordinator of the music education program at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Previously, she taught at the Crane School of Music, the State University of New York at Potsdam and Green Mountain College in Poultney; and instrumental, general, and choral music for twenty years in the public schools of New Jersey and Vermont.