ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the assessment of creative practice in the context of an undergraduate ‘contemporary music ensemble’ course at the University of Glasgow. The ensemble is tasked with realizing graphic and instructional scores, improvising and otherwise devising its own material, and it attempts to nurture students’ experience of music as sensory, spatial and social. This activity is analyzed in relation to conceptions of space and place in phenomenology, as formulated by Morris (2004) and others, proposing the notion of ‘generative practice’ as a way to describe music-making that addresses some problematic aspects of the term ‘creativity’. An approach to formulating and interpreting learning outcomes and assessment criteria is discussed which simultaneously challenges and synthesizes conventions adopted in other composition and performance activities. The arguments stem from the author’s reflection on teaching practice at the University of Glasgow and on formative experiences gained as a student at the University of York in the early 1990s.
