Developing Students’ Readiness for Musical Improvisation in the Context of Selected Assumptions of Edwin E. Gordon’s Music Learning Theory

The article is an attempt to highlight selected assumptions of Edwin E. Gordon’s music learning theory in the context of developing readiness for music improvisation at school and outside school. Improvisation is, in this case, understood as one of the instruments of interpersonal communication, which can be developed through musical dialogue using tonal and rhythm patterns. The article is also a subjective presentation of the values inherent in the theory of music learning in the context of developing the above-mentioned readiness for music improvisation in students of different ages. Developing readiness for musical improvisation involves assimilating tonal and rhythm patterns into the students’ musical vocabulary so that they can participate in musical dialogue with others. This happens thanks to students’ active experience of music in an individual and social context. In developing readiness for musical improvisation, the student begins by actively listening, repeating and assimilating musical motifs, which, in music, are the starting point for complex mental operations related to musical audiation, which, to a musician, is what thinking is to language. The effect of applying the concept of improvisation suggested in the theory of music learning will be to increase the creative, expressive and improvisational activity of students in the process of music education and to develop the tonal, rhythm and melodic vocabulary necessary to independently undertake creative and improvisational activity with full awareness, taking into account the processes of musical audiation.