Tonal Structures of Children's Early Songs

Abstract

This report presents findings from a longitudinal study of nine preschool children. Evidence shows that the children's grasp of tonal materials can be characterized as a set of stable and increasingly prominent tonal structures, contour schemes. The characteristics of contour schemes are the interval that serves as the top and bottom boundaries of the tonal space of a phrase, the way in which the boundary notes are connected, and the direction of the contour. During the age period studied, the space of contour schemes expands from an interval of a third to nearly an octave.