Brief Focused Instruction and Musical Concepts

Abstract

A MATTER OF GREAT INTEREST in music education is the ability of children to learn and to employ basic musical concepts. It previously has been suggested that the concept of conservation, as described by Piaget, may be relevant to musical experience.l Essentially, conservation in music would refer to the ability of an individual to retain the idea of sameness with regard to a complex musical stimulus despite deformations of temporarily irrelevant aspects of that stimulus. For example, a rhythmic pattern might be recognizable in whatever context of tones, tempos, or harmonic variations it occurs. And a tonal pattern might be recognizable even if intervals are distorted or if it is transposed to another key. Previous investigations have shown some evidence for the relevance of the concept of conservation in musical experience.2 In previous investigations the occurrence of conservation has been studied as it naturally occurs in young listeners. However, it is of great importance for musical education to determine whether conservation can be enhanced by special instruction. This article constitutes a report of an initial experiment designed to appraise the eSects of a brief instructional period focused on the development of some simple conservation skills in music listening. An additional purpose of this experiment was to refine the procedures used in previous studies so as to produce a better understanding of conservatiorl and musical concepts in general. The tasks used in the immediately preceding experimerlt3 involved only brief and meaningless tonal and rhythmic patterns; it seemed desirable to develop new materials that would permit the use of complete musical phrases and would facilitate the study of a wider