Research shows that during the transition from preschool to elementary school, acquiring collaborative experience is important. This study aims to demonstrate how children accomplish a collaborative purpose of forming an ensemble and how the ensemble transforms. It is based on an analysis of 5-year-olds collaboratively forming an ensemble in a nursery school. It was found that with the support of the daycare teacher, children gradually regulated their emotions, gave an opinion about each other, and cooperated with each other by occasionally agreeing to each other’s views. They considered the form of the ensemble by playing the instruments together or in turn. They noticed the difference in the tone color of the instruments and the way they played, and therefore, they considered the combination of tone color and rhythm. This suggests that 5-year-olds can create an ensemble by discovering musical elements and, at times, by closely examining musical instruments through a trial-and-error process towards the common purpose. Through collaboration with others, they can achieve a higher level of musical learning.

  In this article, I examine the characteristics of Hisao Kitamura’s “guidance on musical life” from a curriculum theory perspective. He was a music teacher in an elementary school in the Taisho and early Showa periods. According to him, “guidance on musical life” was a theory on educational methods. This was based on the concept of “musical life” according to which children create value in their life by following their individual musical interests. Kitamura’s concept of a curriculum for music switched from a conventional curriculum to a dynamic one that was reconstructed continually by recognizing children’s particular musical interests and dramatically increasing their musical ability by developing those interests. In addition, he proposed that the beginning of a child’s “musical life,” which develops over the course of life, was seen in the primitive form of music performed in infancy. This understanding was based on the theory of the origin of music. From the above, I suggest a reconsideration of the educational practice in elementary schools by music teachers of the Taisho and early Showa periods.