Original Article | Vol. 1, No. 1, 2020, pp.

132–150 | ISSN: 2703-8041

Developing reflection-
in-musicking in
creative practices
Tine Grieg Viig
Affiliation: Faculty of Education, Arts and Sports, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, The Grieg Academy, Faculty of
Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway
Contact corresponding author: tine.viig@hvl.no

Abstract
This article examines the development of reflection-in-musicking in a Write an Opera project at a
Norwegian upper secondary school. As part of a PhD project, this case study focuses on a group
of seven participants collaborating to create music for an opera with a professional composer
facilitating the process. Interviews, observations and video-recordings make up the body of the
empirical material. Theories of musicking (Small, 1998) and reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983, 1987),
and a sociocultural perspective, have been central to understanding the creative practices examined
in this study. Learning features found build on socially and culturally co-constructed repertoires of
experience, knowledge and skills. Three modes of reflection-in-musicking are identified from the
empirical data: aesthetic, artistic and structural.

Keywords: creative practices, creative music making, reflection-in-action, musicking, facilitation

Introduction
The sound of a single bass trombone breaks the silence. The instrument gleams
in the light while the trombone player splits the tone in a multiphonic technique,
slowly sliding up to a D with her voice while the instrument tone still lingers on a
Bb. An electric bass, piano, synth, guitar and trumpet blend in; the drums quietly
descend a roll on cymbals. White fabric flickers in the air above the orchestra, il-
luminated by scattering blue, green and red spotlights, visually resembling north-
ern lights in a black sky. The open, lingering chords in the ensemble shift slowly

©2020 Tine Grieg Viig. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Citation: Viig, T. G. (2020). Developing reflection-in-musicking in creative practices. Nordic Research in Music Education,
1(1), 132–150. https://doi.org/10.23865/nrme.v1.2633
 Developing reflection-in-musicking in creative practices

embellished by spread arpeggio movements in the treble octave on the grand piano,
played in an improvised manner. The seven participants in the orchestra, who are
also the creators of the musical material for this opera, maintain an intense focus on
the music-making event. A girl in a white laboratory-coat approaches the stage, and
along with the sound of the orchestra, engages in a speech about the Aurora borealis
phenomenon.

Even though there has been increasing interest in compositional processes and products
in music, as well as creative thinking and practice in music education, our knowledge
about teaching and learning in composition is still limited (Barrett, 2006, p. 196; Smith
& Kaschub, 2013). Further, there is a need for research about learning experiences in
creative partnerships involving professional artists (Burnard & Swann, 2010). Recent
research in music education shows that when pupils collaborate with peers and/or pro-
fessional artists to create new musical material, the features of learning are based on
socially constructed knowledge, dialogue and interaction (Barrett, 2006, 2014; Barrett
et al., 2014; Partti, 2014; Gaunt & Westerlund, 2013; Muhonen, 2014; Partti & Wester-
lund, 2013; Sawyer, 2008; Wallerstedt, 2013; Wiggins, 2011). Examining these creative
practices can provide important insights into the facilitation and learning processes
involved.
The case study explored in the following is a project based on the Write an Opera-
method in a Norwegian upper secondary school. This method has its roots back to the
1980’s when interdisciplinary projects were developed at The Metropolitan Opera Guild
in New York. Participants form an opera-company responsible for all parts of the dynamic
and creative production of an opera (Fretheim, 2014). The empirical data for this study was
generated through observations and interviews with a music composition group of seven
pupils and a professional composer who facilitated the process. The music composition
group was responsible for creating, arranging and playing in the orchestra in the proj-
ect’s newly established opera company. The purpose of this article is to explore features of
learning processes in their creative practice. As the article will show, the study’s findings
implicate that learning took place in complex sets of relationships and actions/interactions,
understood in the context of the concept musicking (Small, 1998) and reflection-in-action
(Schön, 1983, 1987).
In this article, I begin by outlining a theoretical framework where creative practices
are understood from a sociocultural perspective and examined through the concepts of
musicking and reflection-in-action. Following this, I elaborate on three central modes of
critical reflection-in-musicking in creative practices: aesthetic, artistic and structural. These
modes are interwoven, but also build on distinctive learning features that are facilitated and
supported in the creative practice. In the results section, I also examine the facilitator’s role
in relation to the learning features in these modes. Finally, reflection-in-musicking modes
are discussed as complex and multifaceted forms of learning.

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Learning through reflection-in-musicking in

creative practices
The study draws on a sociocultural perspective (Bruner, 1990, 1996; Rogoff 1990; Vygotsky,
1978, 2004). From this perspective, the individual’s learning is understood as embedded
in social interaction and collaboration (Sawyer, 2008). Learning is neither a wholly sub-
jective individual experience nor does it happen solely through social interaction, but is
“a process of becoming a member of a sustained community of practice” (Lave, 1991, p. 65).
By participating in such communities of practice, each participant develops and builds a
personal inner musical library (Folkestad, 1996, 2012) that constitutes a repertoire from
which to develop new musical material. Contemporary views of creative, collaborative
practices challenge discourses of creativity as merely individual achievements (Burnard,
2012a, b, c; John-Steiner, 2000; Negus & Pickering, 2004) based on a traditional view of
composition (Burnard, 2012a). A sociocultural approach to creativity can be understood as
based on a non-dualist ontology where learning and development take place through par-
ticipation in a community in cultural and historical contexts (Packer & Goicoechea, 2000).
Theories of the different evolving stages of the creative process, originally introduced
by Wallas ([1926] 1945), have been discussed and developed further by many researchers
in previous empirical studies (e.g., Bennett, 1976; 2005; Katz & Gardner, 2012; Lubart,
2000–2001). Burnard and Younker (2002) use stage theories and theories of creative think-
ing when they analyse students’ compositional pathways. Webster (1987, 1990, 2009, 2012)
discusses creativity as a process of creative thinking where convergent and divergent think-
ing develop the important skills of aptitude, conceptual understandings, craftsmanship,
and aesthetic sensitivity. System theories in creativity have provided important insight into
social and cultural factors with which the individual interacts, in relation to the particular
domain they operate within (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Wiggins & Espeland, 2012). Further,
creative processes have also been described as problem-solving (Burnard & Younker 2004;
McAdams 2004; Wiggins, 1999). Central theories in arts education, many of which are
anchored in the works of John Dewey ([1934] 2005), define aesthetic experience and sen-
sitivity to artistic expression as core features of the development of creative knowledge and
competence. When creative practices are viewed as expressions of experience and knowl-
edge, the actual music produced (the musical discourse) can be a source for understanding
the actions and interactions of young composers (Barrett, 1996, p. 43).
Swanwick’s model of musical development in the form of a helix, developed in collabo-
ration with Tillman, shows how the concepts of intuition and analysis apply to an under-
standing of musical knowledge (Swanwick, 1994). A distinction between aesthetic and
artistic is found in their developmental model, where aesthetic understanding is connected
to intuition, and artistic understanding to analysis. The dynamic relationship between artis-
tic and aesthetic understanding generates knowledge, but it requires meaningful activities

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with musical sounds (Swanwick, 1994). Artist and composer Kruse (2016) creates a similar
model where he describes a dualism between “intuitive action” and “cognitive awareness”
that leads to creative energy and action. He also points out that learners should develop the
art of reflection (Kruse, 2016, p. 11). The composer Stravinsky (1959, p. 25), on the other
hand, writes about intuition as opposed to conscious knowing, in line with a common sense
perception of intuition often referred to as understanding “immediately, without the need
for conscious reasoning or study” (Hornby, 1989, p. 660).
The complexity of social meanings when people take part in actions and relationships
of doing music, for example singing, listening, playing, improvising and composing, is cru-
cial for the examination of a musicking practice. Musicking, a concept developed by Small,
stems from the verb to music, which describes an all-inclusive and dynamic participation
in musical performance (Small, 1998, p. 9). Schön (1987, p. 28), conceptualises practice
as reflection-in-action with a critical function, realising the knowledge, skills and experi-
ence engaged when working (Schön, 1983) and learning (Schön, 1987). Reflection-in-action
describes the kind of processes often recognised as “intuitive” and formed by a characteristic
“feel for it” (Schön, 1983, p. 55) that can occur when doing and thinking become comple-
mentary (p. 280). This study develops its theoretical scope from the idea that reflection in
and through musicking is at the heart of learning in creative practices, in a conjoined concept
of reflection-in-musicking. Following Small’s (1998) question: “What is really going on here?”
(p. 17), the focus of this study is on human and sonic relationships. From this standpoint, the
analysis of the empirical data in this case study leads to an understanding of reflection-in-
musicking as aesthetic as well as artistic and structural modes of creative practice.

Case description
The pupils in this case study were 16–17 years old, and attended an upper secondary school
study programme leading to a specialisation in music, dance or drama. They created a
theme for the opera on the phenomenon Aurora borealis (Northern lights) and a parallel
love story of the beautiful Aurora who was admired by the scientists Carl Størmer, Kristian
Birkeland and Lars Vegard (developed as fictional characters in this opera, but based on
three Norwegian scientists who made important contributions to today’s knowledge about
the Aurora borealis). The participants formed a temporary opera company for the project,
with several different groups responsible for everything from writing the libretto to stage
design, PR and performing in the opera. I followed a music composition group consisting
of seven pupils and a professional composer, who composed the music for the opera and
functioned as musicians in the opera orchestra at the performance.
The participants in the music composition group applied for their positions in the
opera company either as musicians or composers, originally set up as two conjoined groups

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in the beginning of the process. Four of the pupils in the music composition group and the
professional composer are referred to specifically in this article. Robert played the electric
bass and was the appointed leader of the music composition group. Linn played the trum-
pet and originally only wanted to play in the orchestra, not compose the music for the
opera. Maria played the piano, and Markus was the appointed orchestra conductor. They
had all received instrument training, but explained in the interviews that they had little
formal experience with composition, although several had tried composing either alone or
in collaboration with a band. Philip was the professional composer facilitating their work.
The project venue was situated in the upper secondary school, which had a relatively
new building for the music, dance and drama programme. Early in the process, the entire
opera company worked in a spacious ‘black box’, while the music composition group I
followed occupied a band room. This room had a drum set, sound equipment such as
amplifiers and loudspeakers, electric keyboards, an upright piano, a grand piano, a large
white board, and smaller group rooms available close by. The project period was intensive
and lasted for eight days with workshops, usually starting with a warm-up at 8:15 am and
the day ending at 5 pm. This period culminated in a public performance in the evening of
the eighth day of the project period and a second performance early in the morning of the
ninth day for teachers and fellow pupils at the school.

Collecting and analysing empirical data for the study

This research was designed as an open, inquiry-based case study (Stake, 1995, 2013), and
the data was collected primarily through interviews and video-recorded observations from
the intensive eight-day project period and the final performance on the ninth day. A focus
group consisting of four pupils from the music composition group I was following were
interviewed twice as a group, and twice individually. The interviews, which could be called
a kind of reflection-on-action situation, were conducted during and after the creative pro-
cess. The professional composer was interviewed four times: before, during, and right after
the project period ended. In addition, I conducted a follow-up interview with the com-
poser a year and a half later. The study is developed within the frame set by the ethical
committees of Norwegian universities and university colleges: The Data Protection Official
for Research (NSD). All participants have been anonymised and given fictitious names due
to ethical considerations.
The analysis developed from the empirical data rather than from a predetermined
theoretical focus, which can be described as an inductive process (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
I began by examining the development of musical material and how contributions from
the participants supported the process. Analytical tools were derived from previous stud-
ies of creative processes (Hickey & Webster, 2001; Rhodes 1961; Wallas, [1926] 1945). The

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video-recordings made it possible to examine the material retrospectively. This way, it was
possible to identify episodes which showed choices and development consequential for
the final performance. Through a dialectic and continuous reading and re-reading of the
transcribed interviews and observation notes, I carried out a thematic analysis (Braun &
Clarke, 2006).
The shaping of categories and identification of patterns in the material emerged on
many different levels in the analysis process, with features of learning and reflection in
focus. In particular, one utterance from an interview with the professional composer
inspired definitions for the final categories in the analysis process:

Philip: … it’s about seeing, or using your intuition, to say this can work, do they
think it can work? What are we going to do with this? Is it good enough? ‘Yes,
it is good enough’, or ‘No, it isn’t’. What can get better? So, you use your sense,
or the aesthetic or artistic or structural or … evaluation in the project.

As the composer mentions, there seems to be a kind of competence displayed in these

practices built on ‘intuition’, ‘seeing’; a ‘sense’ leading to a critical evaluation of the musi-
cal material under development. Three keywords can be seen as central at the end of this
quote: aesthetic, artistic and structural. Re-reading the material and attempting to concep-
tualise these terms led to a revision of the theoretical frame of the project. Further devel-
opment of the analysis was based on an emerging understanding of the aesthetic, artistic
and structural as modes of reflection-in-musicking in creative practices. The second aim of
this article is to understand and discuss this ‘sense’ or ‘intuition’ the composer describes as
important in relation to the features of learning in reflective musicking practices.

Three modes of reflection-in-musicking

An excerpt from an interview with Maria, one of the pupil participants, shows how the
three modes of reflection derived from the keywords in the quotation from Philip above
are found to integrate fluently in musicking interactions in the project. Maria emphasised
how collaborating in creating the musical material had a positive impact on how the ideas
of the group could be initiated and developed:

Maria: There is, sort of, other things you think about; when you play alone it is just
you and the piano that counts, but when you play with people, […] that’s not
what counts at all. What counts then is just to come up with good ideas and
sort of build it right and do what makes the music itself become good, not
necessarily in a challenging way, but that the music and everything becomes
combined in a way. That’s the most important part.

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The social and musical relationships described by Maria illustrate how situated learning
in this case can be understood as (i) aesthetic reflection-in-musicking: to come up with
‘good ideas’, and build it ‘right’, so it ‘becomes good’; (ii) artistic reflection-in-musicking:
about producing the sounds, ‘play with people’ and ‘do what makes the music itself become
good’; and (iii) structural reflection-in-musicking: ‘building’ and ‘combining’ ‘the music
and everything’.
In the following, I elaborate on these three modes of reflection-in-musicking from
the analysis of the empirical data. First, I give an example of how we can understand the
aesthetic mode involving perception, interpretation and the expansion of a personal rep-
ertoire. Second, I focus on the artistic mode, producing sound and understanding how to
use different cultural and compositional tools in the production of musical material. Third,
I describe the structural mode, examining how the participants gain a micro- and meta-
perspective on the musical material. Finally, I include a section focusing on the facilitator’s
role in developing these three reflection-in-musicking modes.

Developing aesthetic reflection-in-musicking

The participants perceived and interpreted qualities in aesthetic experiences relating to the
creative practices they were going through. They used their aesthetical sensitivity, under-
standing and judgement when they developed, tested and revised ideas for the opera. As
Kruse (2016, p. 29) writes, aesthetic dimensions of experience are contextually dependent
and based on learned standards. Perception, experience and interpretation are, in this arti-
cle, understood as resources that comprise a socioculturally constructed personal inner
musical library (Folkestad, 1996, 2012). How did Maria and the other pupil participants
know what could be ‘good’ and ‘right’ for this particular context?
Two examples from the data are used to illustrate the development of the mode of
aesthetic reflection-in-musicking. The first example describes a situation from the obser-
vations where the professional composer Philip played an excerpt of the prelude from Das
Rheingold by Wagner. Initiating the task, he proposed an aim for the listening activity:

Philip: Not because [the new opera] is going to be written like this, or that this is
meant to be an example of how it should sound, but it is more about: listen to
the structure here. Listen to how it breaks up, more like: What does it mean?
What is the mood, what kind of situation are we in? … Try to close your eyes
and picture the situation the music describes.

The musicking relationship Philip addressed was personal in terms of what the pupils were
asked to do — close their eyes and experience the music individually. At the same time, a
co-creative ‘schema’ for interpretation was established, describing certain qualities such as
a particular mood and situation, that could be perceived and interpreted in the listening

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experience. Establishing such musicking relationships could make the aesthetic experi-
ence more meaningful, for example, by imagining possible moods and situations expressed
through different compositional and structural tools in the music.
The second example is collected from the end of one of the early music composition
group sessions while the group was packing up. A pupil from the group who played the bass
trombone, practiced a multiphonic technique by sliding a vocal tone up and down paral-
lel to playing on her instrument. Philip and Robert discovered her playing and stopped to
listen attentively. In a session later in the week, Philip asked the trombone player to dem-
onstrate the technique for the rest of the group. As she started, he followed her tones on the
piano by accompanying her playing, creating layers of arpeggio chords that complemented
the sound of the trombone. Then he encouraged the pupils to create similar, open improvi-
satory soundscapes, which resembled central features and compositional techniques used
in Das Rheingold. The result of this process was the Northern lights music-theme, described
in the introductory vignette of this article.
In these two examples, the pupils used aesthetic reflection-in-musicking to build a
shared ‘sense’ of quality concerning what they considered as appropriate, or ‘right’ and ‘good’
for the musical material they were working with. The aesthetic reflection-in-musicking
in creative musicking, therefore, seemed to develop from an expanding array of aesthetic
knowledge and experience which, in a learning context, can help the participants perceive,
recognise, create and appreciate new contributions suitable for the emerging musicking
process.

Developing artistic reflection-in-musicking

Artistic reflection-in-musicking was based on the collaborative production of musical
material, closely intertwined with, and interdependent on, the mode of aesthetic reflec-
tion-in-musicking. Learning artistic reflection-in-musicking was also about appropriating
cultural tools (Bruner, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). For instance, when Philip introduced new
compositional strategies to the group, such as modal and natural scales, tempo changes,
and musical expression in relation to the musical material under development, he encour-
aged the pupils to try these tools on their instruments. Sound experimentation and what
could be described as “stop and think” reflection (Schön, 1984) in the development of the
music were not only addressed, but also comprised the foundation for the continuation
of musicking relationships in jam sessions. “Stop and think” reflection may help the par-
ticipants “become aware of the on-line experimentation and reflection in which they have
been engaging and the tacit assumptions and strategies they have been employing” (Schön,
1984, p. 8).
An example of how the artistic reflection-in-musicking mode functioned is the devel-
opment of a rap song. Robert had created a rhythmical groove loop using Garageband.
Encouraged by the rest of the music composition group, he rapped a short text from the

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libretto framing the opera. Markus, intently listening to the groove, started to play some
chord progressions on his synth. The rhythm in his playing seemed to indicate a relation-
ship with rhythms from the groove, and the improvisation evolved into a repeated chord
motif. Maria participated on the piano, trying out a melodic response in the treble octave.
Through testing several different, but similar, ideas, she seemed to reach a decision about
how this response should sound. Their ideas were solidified and rehearsed, and the rest of
the group joined in. Next, Robert took the initiative to a full bar break in the rhythm loop
where only the melodic response of the piano was played before they all started playing
again.
The pupils employed a range of compositional tools in and through the music making.
For example, when they developed the rap song in a creative flux, their responses built on
a repertoire of contexts and actions from their experience. This description coheres with
Donald Schön’s (1987) descriptions of the teaching and learning of reflection-in-action.
This emergent reflection-in-musicking can be described as embodied or musically experi-
ential learning through interaction between the musical material that was developed and
the participants. They listened, composed, played, revised and arranged the new material
in-action as a reflective ‘conversation’. Schön (1987, p. 31) uses experienced jazz musicians’
improvisations as an example similar to the session described above:

Out of musical materials or themes of talk, they make a piece of music or a conver-
sation, an artefact with its own meaning and coherence. Their reflection-in-action is
a reflective conversation with the materials of a situation – ‘conversation’, now, in a
metaphorical sense. Each person carries out his own evolving role in the collective
performance, ‘listens’ to the surprises – or, as I shall say, ‘back talk’ – that results from
earlier moves, and responds through on-line production of new moves that give new
meanings and directions to the development of the artefact.

Here, Schön uses the idea of a unique situated ‘conversation’, but does not go deeper
into how it reflects and responds to the wider social and cultural context. However, the
empirical data in the present study reveals how reflection-in-musicking can be under-
stood as conversations within a complex web of artistic knowing in development, in
line with Small’s view of musicking being included in the social and cultural practices of
creative music making.

Developing structural reflection-in-musicking

On the fifth day of the intensive project period, Philip began the music composition group
session by exclaiming that from then on, the project was in a ‘deadline modus’. This was
an important turning point in the process, Philip explained in an interview the same day.
He urged the pupils to create overviews and structures relating to the whole opera and
review their musical material in the context of the storyline, and wanted them to take

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responsibility for the musical material in the project by defining their own goals for the
continued work. The participants continued musicking, but subsequent jam sessions were
mostly built around the structures of the musical material they had already developed. The
musical material also needed to be communicated to the other participants in the opera
project.
This revision process was not only encountered through verbal communication, but
through experiencing what worked or did not work musically. When the opera company
moved to the stage in the final days, they began by rehearsing the opera in its entirety.
Philip played an important role here by encouraging the pupils to a “stop and think” reflec-
tion. This kind of interaction meant that instead of just playing things through over and
over again, he encouraged them to be critical in the music-making process, to stop, find
out what to focus on, for example text pronunciation, musical expression or the sound of
the ensemble; and try again.
In order to develop a structural understanding of reflection-in-musicking, critical
inquiries into well-known musical material supported the gaining of a meta-perspective
on the musical product and process. Maria, Robert and Markus were the main contribu-
tors of musical support structures. They participated actively in the jam sessions from the
beginning and took responsibility for developing and structuring musical material in rela-
tion to the storyline of the libretto. Linn had a different approach. She explained in one of
the individual interviews that at first she felt uncomfortable with the jam sessions and the
improvisation process. But later, she took charge of creating charts and a visually written
overview of the musical material in relation to the storyline. From the overviews she had
created, the music composition group found gaps in the musical material and unclear pas-
sages between the songs.
Attaining this critical meta-perspective on the musical material thus required the
engagement and development of both an aesthetic and an artistic reflection-in-action. In
addition, the pupils developed an understanding of how different parts of music needed
to be structured and revised in order to appear meaningful, both to the performers and
the audience. Structural reflection-in-musicking can be understood as a relational way of
learning where all participants take part in creating different types of “scaffolds”, which are
defined in this context as both social and musical support structures in the revision process
(Wiggins, 2005). An important agent in facilitating the creation of these support structures
was the professional composer, Philip.

Facilitating learning through reflection-in-musicking

Philip had an interactive, question-based approach to facilitating the pupils’ work with the
musical material. He explained in the second interview that the purpose was to provide

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and expand the array of opportunities for reflection and further work. The responses to
his questions often took shape as musical experimentations within the music composition
group. The group was encouraged to lead the flow of ideas and think in sound, a process
that can function as an empowering experience (Randles & Sullivan, 2013, p. 56).
In the final individual interview, Robert elaborated on his perception of the question-
based interaction with Philip: “He did it for us to become critical ourselves, because if we
are critical, we are able to make good music”. As Maria also explained in an individual
interview:

Maria: [Philip] is the critical sense that I just suppress myself, in a way. That is, I can
hear it too, but I refuse to realise it … In a way, it is easier when he points
out those things that you really know, but ignore, like you need to make that
song more varied, you must play it more like that, perhaps, and have some
structure; then it is like, I know, I just can’t bother doing anything about it.
So, it is a little annoying, but very, very; I’ve learnt a lot from it.

The pupils seemed to perceive the facilitator’s role in this process as central to the devel-
opment of musical material, in terms of evoking their ‘critical sense’. In this relationship,
Philip was always urging them to reconsider and critically evaluate the choices they made
while composing. Such learning processes can be understood as both musical and social,
and they can be seen as being what Espeland (2007) calls a “vehicle for artistic and per-
sonal expression” (p. 204). Wiggins and Espeland (2012) also describe how the “learner’s
capacity to initiate and develop ideas in both learning and creating is deeply rooted in their
feelings of personal agency in the situation” (p. 347). This resembles the impression the
students gave in their final interviews, where they talked with pride of their performance
and showed a strong sense of ownership of their music. For example, Linn says:

Linn: [Philip] wanted the songs to be ours … he just wanted to guide us. So I feel
really that I made that, I feel that those songs, that music, what I was standing
there with at the premiere, that was really ours. Yes, it was our ideas. I felt
that way.

Philip’s role was, nevertheless, crucial both to the development of the musical material and
in creating a learning context supporting different modes of reflection-in-musicking. A
co-creative relationship like this can be understood in terms of what Small (1998) calls a
social act, which builds on social and sonic relationships. These relationships can also be
understood as a form of collaborative learning, where all participants contribute with their
unique competencies in the creative practice. As Luce (2001) writes: “Collaborative learn-
ing is addressing individual differences, bridging cultural barriers, and uniting teachers
and students in the pursuit and construction of knowledge” (p. 24).

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Summary and Discussion

The project Write an Opera involving two classes at an upper secondary school in Norway
was organized during an eight-day-long intensive project period with different group and
individual contributions. The participants involved in the music composition group, led
by a professional composer, were responsible for developing the musical material for the
opera. The group collaboration process was crucial for the development of the material,
from idea gathering to structuring musical material into a clear form, to refining and revis-
ing the musical material to fulfil the aim of creating a full 30-minute musical performance.
This article examines features of learning in these creative music-making practices. This
type of learning happens through collaborative creation where the actual doing becomes
the learning process (Folkestad, 2012). Requisite to this kind of creative collaboration is,
according to Sawyer and Dezutter (2009), that everyone contributes equally. As seen in
this study, the contributions of the participants were equally important, but also different
depending on the focus and type of their participation.
The relationship between the different modes of reflection-in-musicking described in
the results section requires further examination. These modes seemed to permeate the cre-
ative practice. The participants collaboratively combined artistic production techniques,
such as the trombone multiphonic technique, with aesthetic knowing derived from their
shared experience to create Northern lights music, illustrated in the vignette in the intro-
duction of this article. By describing how these modes interact, we can draw parallels to
Dewey’s understanding of knowledge as fundamental to the creation of art. Johnson (2011)
cites Dewey thus:

It is not just enough to say that artistic making is more a knowing how than it is a
knowing that. The reason this is not enough is that, as Dewey argued, all knowing is
a form of knowing how, insofar as it is a matter of reconfiguring experience for the
deepening of meaning. (p. 150)

When the pupil participants tested out possible chords for an arrangement by playing them,
they related to aesthetic knowledge in flux with artistic knowledge about how these chords
could be combined. Experiential learning is, in this study, also about developing an under-
standing of how such qualities could be produced. The pupils structured the emerging
musical material in order to propose something that appeared meaningful to them in that
particular context. It was knowledge rooted in experience, embedded in the participants’
relationships with the musical material, their newly established community of practice, and
the development of reflection-in-musicking.
Their reflection linked existing knowledge and listening skills with the ability to rec-
ognise particular cues in the musical material. This stretched the participants’ knowledge
to include new ways of creating musical material. In musicking activities, they interacted

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 Tine Grieg Viig

with the new musical material through what Schön (1987, p. 40) calls reflective conversa-
tions. ‘Composition’ is thus seen as a complex and relational activity. Replacing reflection-
in-action with reflection-in-musicking derived from Small’s (1998) term musicking, the
modes of reflection-in-musicking function as “multi-levelled set of dynamic relationships
situated in sonic, social and physical spaces” (Odendaal et al., 2014, p. 165). According to
Small (1998, p. 55), there is a relationship between the knower and the known, and in terms
of reflection-in-musicking, this relationship constitutes what appears as meaningful for
the participants. Values are situated in our relationships with a cultural community, as, for
example, in expressions of self-identity (Bruner, 1990, p. 29). Led by a more knowledgeable
other (Vygotsky, 1978), the participants were exposed to and immersed in (Schön, 1987,
p. 38) a culture of existing musical material, techniques, and ways of thinking providing
“bridges between familiar skills or information and those needed to solve new problems”
(Rogoff 1990, p. 66).
The second aim of the article is to understand a kind of ‘intuition’ or ‘sense’ that seems
to support the development of musical material. The shaping of structure and form in
the new musical material was earlier defined as development of reflection-in-musicking
involving a relationship to the listening sample from Das Rheingold described above.
However, in a stimulated recall session in the final focus group interview a few weeks
after the project, the pupils expressed surprise over these resemblances when they lis-
tened to their own music. This leads toward questions about how learning and reflection-
in-musicking is related to intuitive action. The important attributes of the reflection-
in-action that Schön (1987) identifies build on categories of knowing-in-action. When
we encounter surprising experiences requiring on-the-spot experimentation, we start to
critically question assumptions stemming from our repertoire of knowledge. Following
Schön (1983, 1987) and Small (1998), we could regard intuitive responses to a situation
as engaging in a learning process of reflection-in-musicking. When the participants col-
laborate in musicking interactions; responding to and creating new musical material, as
described in the observations and interviews of this study, they also engage in a reflec-
tion process where thought and action intertwine. The ‘feeling’ of doing the right thing,
which could be characterized as an ‘intuitive sense’ supporting the creative practice, is
a form of reflection-in-musicking where previous knowledge, skills and experience are
engaged simultaneously.
The creation of musical material relates to different types of structures. For example,
the product intention (Webster, 1990) in this project was defined both by external and
internal agents. The different aims and preferences of the social, cultural, institutional, and
even political levels of influence had an impact on decisions made in the project. Meth-
odological choices made by the initiators of the project, such as the idea of connecting
science and arts, led to the theme of the opera, Aurora borealis. The musical style and
genre selected, ‘opera’, built expectations for the product as a culturally situated term. It also

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 Developing reflection-in-musicking in creative practices

raised questions among the participants of how the musical material could and should be
shaped to meet the aesthetic standards of an ‘opera’, which built a relationship to a genre
they did not normally meet in their everyday music experiences.
At the same time, there is evidence that the multiple frames of this project concurred
to establish an environment that allowed each participant to feel that they were able to
promote, learn and develop personal agency as musicking co-constructors in the cre-
ative practice. The processes of invention, contextualisation and revision also represent
reflection-in-musicking on an individual level. Recognising and appreciating the qualities
of good design were an important part of the learning process (Schön, 1987, p. 102). But it
is clear that such judgements, as reflection-in-musicking, happened within what Burnard
(2012c) describes as a particular socio-historical field. Each participant related individually
to a culturally situated social and contextual understanding of genre qualities; they devel-
oped and expanded their repertoire (Schön, 1983) or personal inner musical library (Fol-
kestad, 1996, 2012) when they participated in a community of ‘musickers’. Consequently,
this illustrates how complex and multifaceted internalised reflection-in-musicking build-
ing on a repertoire of experience and knowing can be. When it is not reflected on, the tacit
dimension of aesthetic reflection-in-musicking could be seen as evident in the musical
discourse, in the forms and structures of the music produced, as Barrett (1996) found in
her research.
My role as an interviewing researcher may have caused a change in the reflection-
on-musicking. Distinguishing reflection-in-action from reflection-on­-action has episte-
mological implications in Schön’s (1983, 1987) theories. Would the recognition of the
professional composer’s role as a critical voice have been so explicitly reflected upon by
the music composition group members if this had not been discussed in the interviews?
It is likely that the interviews spurred a verbalisation of certain aspects of reflection-
in-action that may have influenced the practices observed. This could form a potential
departure point for further discussion in future research on reflection-in-musicking in
creative practices.

Concluding remarks
Developing reflection-in-musicking in creative practices is about each individual contrib-
uting with their socially and culturally constituted knowledge and experience. An impor-
tant feature in this process is to be able to critically revise your own and your collaborators’
ideas through aesthetic, artistic and structural evaluations of the creative material under
development throughout the process. Facilitating this aesthetic, artistic and structural
reflection-in-musicking can, as a consequence of this study, be considered an important
pedagogical tool in creative practice.

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 Tine Grieg Viig

About the author

Tine Grieg Viig is an associate professor in music education at the Department of Arts
Education; Faculty of Education, Arts and Sports, at the Western Norway University of
Applied Sciences, currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Music Teacher Educa-
tion for the Future (FUTURED) project. Her background is from the field of music educa-
tion. In addition to her employment in higher education, she has worked as a composer,
choir conductor, and arranger. This article reports from her PhD thesis (2018) entitled The
Dynamics of Creative Music Making: A Sociocultural Perspective on Learning in Creative
Musicking Practices. The PhD-study was developed at the Centre for Arts, Culture and
Communication, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and the University of
Bergen PhD programme, The Grieg Academy and Grieg Research School in Interdisciplin-
ary Music Studies.

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