Author(s)
Jurijs SPIGINS
Abstract
To address the problem of organizing music material for improvisation and its
structuring are compulsory requirements at optimizing students’ educational process at
higher education institutions. The paper is concerned with the analysis of psychology of
the development of students’ improvisational thinking, based on the method of
structuring the music material (Smith, 1964: Сапонов, 1982, 1989, 1996; Гнилов, 1992;
Волнянский, 2012).
The aptitude for structural combinatorics of different music materials was encouraged
and developed in the 18th century. This skill is based on the reconstruction of the
structure of music material belonging to different styles and trends. But the limits of
what is possible in the development of students’ improvisational thinking depend on
their abilities. On the one hand, the principal individual-psychological factors of
effectiveness are the basic or general musical abilities. Contemporary science considers
that the basic musical abilities are: musical hearing, sense of musical rhythm, musical
memory, musical thinking and musical imagination. On the other hand, today’s scientific
literature offers a lot of data on correlations between the speed of the reaction of choice
and indicators of intelligence tests: the higher intelligence is, the quicker many choice
reactions take place.
The case study research revealed a number of simplifications the students had made in
creative assignments at modelling their improvisations, and namely: students had
ignored issues of structuring the music material for improvisation, but to address the
problem of organizing music material of improvisation, and its structuring are
compulsory requirements for optimizing the educational process at higher education
institutions.
Keywords: musical improvisation, psychology of learning, structural combinatorics,
decorative-processing approach, principal specific individual-psychological factors of
effectiveness, didactic model, content analysis of improviser’s activity.