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Listen to my song: a study of songs invented by children aged 5 to 7 years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Extract

This article examines the musical structural processes used in songs invented by 32 children over a period of 18 months. It takes the view that the organisation and relationships of musical events in time are fundamental to music's meaning, and that we should expect structural considerations to be important as soon as a child begins to be musically articulate.

I have been continuing my study of young children's invented songs (Davies, 1986), analysing them in the light of recent writings on music as mind. If music is an activity of mind, the question arises, what are musical thought processes, and can we find them in the musical inventions of young children ?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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