Composing has been a statutory part of the English National Curriculum for music since 1988, and writers and researchers feel that ‘composing supports musical learning as it enables young people to actively engage with and understand how music works from the inside out’. (Devaney & Nicklin, Reference DEVANEY, NICKLIN, ANDERSON, COOKE, KINSELLA and MACGREGOR2026: 220). It is, however, often cited as the part of the music curriculum teachers struggle the most with (Berkley, Reference BERKLEY2001; Devaney, Reference DEVANEY2023; Ofsted, 2021) and supporting young people to become better at composing was ‘the weakest aspect of the curriculum’ according to Ofsted’s music report Striking the Right Note (2023).
Christopher Tarrant and Natalie Wild’s composition handbook The Composer’s Toolkit aims to tackle this issue; to ‘dismantle the barriers’ (5) of teaching composing in schools by outlining an approach and techniques based on the eighteenth-century tradition of using schemata – ‘commonly used basic ideas in the European tradition’ (12) – as a basis for creating a musical work. The authors draw on both their experience in secondary schools and Robert O. Gjerdingen’s Music in the Galant Style (Reference GJERDINGEN2007) to demystify composing for A Level and undergraduate music students, challenging the common conception that ‘composition relies on unpredictable bursts of inspiration’ (4). For teachers, they outline their approach as ‘accessible and aspirational, enabling teachers to integrate composition into a comprehensive and well-rounded music curriculum rooted in a solid understanding of musical fundamentals’. (5)
The book is organised into three sections, dividing the compositional process into Musical Materials, Musical Form and Elaboration. These are supported by appendices of ‘schematic pathways’ (ways of ordering multiple schemata to produce a full composition) and a section on responding to a composition brief. Each section also features worked examples of the toolkit, alongside tasks for students to try out ideas and explanatory boxes for concepts such as figured bass, modulation and textural terms. Part 1, Musical Materials, introduces three of the most common schemata and a way of connecting them to produce a simple piece of music in binary form. The authors here also introduce the idea of a composition checklist which initially includes elements of a good melody and a supporting bassline, a coherent structure and ‘convincing musical progression’ (26). This last element is the focus of Part 2, Musical Form, which looks at recognised ways of organising musical material in order to build a longer composition using ‘schematic pathways’. In this section they add to their checklist the necessity for musical ideas to develop through techniques such as ‘standing still’ and deferring cadences. Part 3, Elaboration, introduces the final element of a good composition: demonstration of control of musical elements. This section outlines arpeggiation, rhythmic and scalic elaboration as ways of elaborating a melody, in addition to considering different ways of elaborating texture.
As well as a resource for Key Stage 5 and higher education students, this toolkit would be useful for any secondary school music teacher looking for methodical routes into composing or structures for improvisation: the authors make clear the role of improvising throughout the composing process, taking schemata as the starting point and a notated composition as ‘a snapshot of an improvisation’ (9). This toolkit is, however, firmly rooted in Western classical music traditions, using the provenance of the schemata to legitimise this method of composing. Although the authors are careful to show how schemata have been used in pop, rock, film, jazz, folk and video game music, this book does not challenge the ‘historical and cultural baggage’ (Ziegenmeyer & Devaney, Reference ZIEGENMEYER, DEVANEY, DEVANEY, FAUTLEY, GROW and ZIEGENMEYER2024: 49) inherent in much of composing pedagogy (Devaney, Reference DEVANEY2023). There is also scope for greater diversity of representation: the printed music examples feature only Corelli, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, and whilst the Spotify playlist of all referenced musical examples (accessible by QR code) includes a broader selection of composers and genres, there are no examples of contemporary Western classical music nor suggestions of how music technology might be incorporated.
This book presents one method of teaching and learning to compose in schools and universities, with this narrowness perhaps both a strength and weakness: whilst following the steps outlined will undoubtedly enable students to meet assessment criteria for their composition given the dominance of Western classical music in school music assessment frameworks (Devaney et al., Reference DEVANEY, FAUTLEY, GROW and ZIEGENMEYER2024), its lack of cross-cultural relevance, although understandable given the provenance of schemata, may impact students’ musical agency (Karlsen, Reference KARLSEN2011). Additionally, over-reliance on this toolkit may potentially limit development of a range of approaches to composition. Teachers and lecturers might, therefore, wish to consider how this method fits within existing curricula and what might be necessary to also support the development of more flexible, creative approaches to composing.
