The purpose of this study is to understand the characteristics of spontaneous musical expression in play by four-year-old children. The author has done one year's fieldwork regarding spontaneous play at a four-year old class of a public kindergarten in Tokyo and has observed many cases where musical expression was generated through communicative exchanges among children. The musical expression has been categorized into four types: onomatopoeic words, onomatopoeic words with musical elements, variations of an existing melody, and spoken words with melodic phrases. Focusing on spoken words with melodic phrases, the following two results have been obtained from the analysis of relationship between play and musical expression by looking at the interaction between the inner and outer world of children. 1. Intonation of phrases is directly caused by emotional uplift. 2. Musical expression generated by moves and words is often developed into musical exchange between children.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the development of students' learning in terms of their perception and appreciation of Tayu's vocal sound and the music of Awa Ningyo Joruri, a folk performing art of the area, in a lesson where the focus was on Tayu's voice. The lesson was held in the first grade at Komatsushima Junior High School. The teaching material used was Awa Ningyo Joruri, a Japanese important intangible folk cultural heritage of Tokushima Prefecture. The lesson particularly focused on the scene of Junrei-uta-no-dan from "Keisei-Awa no Naruto". At the beginning of the lesson, the students perceived the pitch of Tayu's voice. Later, they started to perceive the relative pitch and range as well as change of tempo. However, it was difficult for them to perceive the change in tone quality. Therefore, teacher support would be necessary for perceiving the change in tone quality. It has been discovered from this study that students developed their perception and appreciation of Tayu's voice and the music in the following order: pitch, change of tempo, tone quality. Furthermore, it has been discovered that students were able to imagine the characters' feelings once they started to realize the changes in the tone quality of voice and music. As a conclusion, it can be said that "tone quality" is an important teaching content in a music class focusing on Tayu's voice.

View full abstract

When children engage in creative music making, how do they tackle the activity in relation to the three aspects (form, content and skill) of instructional content of music education proposed by Nisizono? The purpose of this study is to propose a hypothesis of the overall developmental aspects of creative music making in elementary school from 1st to 6th grade through estimating the features of learning process of each grade. Previous results from the analyses of the 3rd, 4th and 6th grades have been incorporated. The researcher has planned and taught classes for each grade and analyzed the learning process using the three aspects of instructional content as the framework of analysis. The result shows that the overall developmental aspects are as follows: as children grow older, through their perception of several musical elements and through the images of nature which comes from interacting with and expressing the phenomenon of nature, they extend the qualities of nature they feel through music creation. In order to express these qualities, they perceive an increased variety of musical elements and begin to explore various levels of skills.

View full abstract