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This article describes one strand of a study of self-initiated improvisation among three- and four-year-olds attending nursery education in London which aimed to understand some fundamental, generative processes. Early in the study differences had been noted between children's music play with an adult in comparison with play alone. Rather than seek to abstract the sound of children's music from all contextual features, as other studies of children's creativity have done, this study took as one of its main foci, the nature of children's improvisation when playing with an adult partner.

For the purposes of the study, young children's play on an Orff xylophone was continuously recorded on video-tape. A transcription of the video data focused initially on the close observation and identification of small units of behaviour. The children's visible music play behaviours were analysed as situated systems of interaction between the child's movements, the structure of the xylophone and social interactions with an attendant adult. The study had three successive phases, each undertaken in a new nursery with a new sample of children. In total, 95 children took part across the three phases. The evolving nature of this phased study allowed salient aspects of children's play to emerge from a process of constant comparison and revaluation of the video data.

It is proposed that the social interactive processes of play are one generative source of the child's musical ideas. These ideas are understood, first, as arising from the child's movement vocabulary and the play potentials of the instrument itself. Then, with a participatory adult, the child's play with the instrument is further structured by the intention to communicate. With reciprocating and “attuned” adult partners, the children began to play in spontaneously well-balanced, phrased exchanges, they created accumulative sequences, linked and transformed musical ideas and played with expressively varied dynamics.

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The Interpersonal Dimension: A Potential Source of Musical Creativity for Young Children?

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