Developing Musical Creativity in the Social World

Marilyn Zimmerman's pioneering work on the applications of Piagetian theory to the study of children's musical development has had a profound impact, and has stimulated a body of empirical research which is still growing. In this paper I should like to make an appraisal of Zimmerman's contribution some 40 years after her original studies, and to look at some current and future developments. It falls into three main parts. First, I shall briefly review Zimmerman's pioneering work on "music conservation," and describe a recent original study which investigates the effects of changing the mode of stimulus transformation on children's performance. This leads to a more general consideration of the current status of the Piagetian model in explaining musical development, and two issues in particular: the implications of the sociocultural perspective, and the study of musical creativity. The final section focuses on the latter, and develops the concept of improvisational thinking as a key source of everyday creativity. This is illustrated and "unpacked" by means of a detailed analysis of a short collaborative blues improvisation by a musician (myself) and my two preschool children.