Conference Agenda

This study explores how paintings serve as stimuli and reference points for composing music in individual instrumental lessons with children aged 8 and above, focusing on their concept development, strategies, and decision-making to understand aesthetic transformation processes. Building on prior research in group composition with visual references (Kranefeld, 2008; Voit, 2018) and case studies with an associative theme (Janczik, 2024), this work examines detailed individual cases, where ten participants transformed a selected painting into music for their own instrument. The complex study framework is grounded in research on art (Pape, 2016; Sowa, 2016) and child education (Vogl, 2021). Data collection included two interviews each: one on response to the painting and corresponding initial musical ideas, and another on strategies and decisions after composition. Musical concepts were documented through composition process recordings, observations and notated and played compositions, allowing analysis of aesthetic transformation processes over time. Data is organized using MAXQDA and Miro, and analyzed with Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1996; Strübing, 2014).

The key results focus on two major transformation types: primary (direct transformations of visually formed concepts to music) and reflective (retrospective connections of music to painting), in which – alongside previously learned musical concepts – language (Fodor, 1998) and intermodal analogies (Haverkamp, 2009) are posited central. Additionally, the study draws on theories from cognitive sciences (Margolis & Laurence, 1999) and neuropsychology (Nikolić, 2016) to extract and describe these transformations in detail, providing a deeper understanding of how visual stimuli support composition and the related perceptual and cognitive processes.

The results provide valuable insights into age-appropriate, language- and cognition-based, instrument-specific, and educational approaches to composing, which can enhance creative and instrumental teaching. This is important because composition is often underrepresented in instrumental lessons, leaving creative potential untapped.

In recent decades, music education has shifted towards innovative models that transform traditional practices. Among these, a sound-based approach stands out, emphasizing timbral exploration, creativity, and a departure from conventional tonal parameters (Landy, 2007). Similarly, a new trend advocates for contextualizing activities within interdisciplinary projects that integrate diverse languages and areas of knowledge (Murillo et al., 2024).

Petit Luthiers is a project designed to promote reflection on contemporary creative processes and encourage a cross-disciplinary perspective. It was implemented over three months in 5th grade with weekly four-hour sessions, involving 25 students, 7 teachers, and an artist-researcher. The methodology adopted a multidisciplinary, sound-based music creation approach (Landy, 2007), combining play and experimentation to explore contemporary artistic language (Murillo et al., 2024). The project’s final output was the sound design of a story, with activities including sound exploration, analog-digital experimentation, movement, and creative word games. The classroom was transformed into a laboratory for interdisciplinary artistic experimentation, fostering collaborative co-creation.

Students reflected on the creative process, noting how they developed a personal outcome from sound. They emphasized that music enabled them to imagine, create, and enjoy, with teamwork seen as essential to the experience. While teachers recognized the project’s pedagogical potential, some highlighted challenges related to its slow pace, abstraction, and a lack of motivation to continue. Both perspectives stressed the importance of teachers experiencing the process firsthand to effectively convey it and challenge stereotypes of contemporary art in education.

Landy, L. (2007). Understanding the Art of Sound Organization. The MIT Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7472.001.0001

Murillo A., Mateu-Luján B., Tejada J. y Gonzalez-Zamora A. (2024). Activistas del sonido: niños y artistas como co-creadores en experiencias multidisciplinares con música electroacústica en un centro de alta complejidad. Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, 36(1), 169-181. https://doi.org/10.5209/aris.90246

The interaction between the arts, according to a multimodal approach, is one of the challenges of art education. It is based on the assumption that sounds can be perceived by sight and suggest imagery and energy, stimulating a cross-modal interaction (Zimmerman & Lahav, 2012). At the same time, the translation process among different domains, such as visual and sound, may enhance the expressive nuances and creativity in the arts involved. This assumption was one of the standpoints of the Italian pedagogue Bruno Munari to develop children's artistic creativity.

The pedagogical projects I will describe have been conducted with pre-service teachers of an Italian music conservatoire and with children beginner players. The first free improvisation model is based on the musical interpretation of the features of abstract paintings converted into digital motion paintings. After observing and analysing movements, colour, time, space, line thickness, and signs of an abstract painting, players are prompted to discover a musical transposition according to their instrument's or voice's expressive nuances. The second model is a musical and visual improvisation realised in real time between two children in the role of drawer and a player. The drawer interprets the sounds into a painting, and the player improvises the marks of the picture into music.

The primary purpose of this kind of free improvisation is to lead beginners and experts to explore the different qualities of the sound in a meaningful way; these qualities include variations in dynamic, articulation (legato and staccato), tempo, melodic profile, and expressive gestures while they search for a transposition from signs to sounds.

Accordingly, although each language has its own semantic and structural idioms, a multimodal approach involving visual and musical domains can provide interesting insights into children’s creativity development.