The aim of this licentiate thesis is to explore the sociomaterial relationality of music composition education with digital hardware/software and its outcomes. Two studies were conducted interleaved as original articles in the thesis. Article 1 explores learning in creational processes involving digital actants and two composers of contemporary art music. The posthumanist concept of the cyborg is enacted as a signifier for learning and becoming in relation with material actants. An interview with a composer and music application creator is analysed through a constructed posthumanist narrative entangled with the researcher’s narrative of a music creation process involving the app. Also, the app’s meaning-making capacities are entangled in the narrative. Results show that alignments between human and nonhuman actants constitute a part of learning in music composing practices. Artefacts move from being evident and present to becoming transparent and in a background relation during a learning process. In article 2 a composing assignment conducted in four year 9 classes in a Swedish compulsory school is explored. Employing the posthumanist concept compositionism as a research approach, educational activities are composed into assemblages of actants performing the outcomes of the activities. Results bring the human/nonhuman actants as hybrid originators of outcomes to the fore. Learning with digital actants also showed to be hardware/software specific when past experiences of music composing were limited, with the risk of reducing pupils to intermediaries of information between functions in the digital software. In the summarising parts of this compilation thesis, a background of the research field of didaktik and subject didaktik is delineated. Also, the distinction between didactics and didaktik is discussed and the reason for employing the Swedish/German spelling is explicated. Furthermore, a background of composing and music creation as subject matter in the Swedish school system is drawn. Theoretical and methodological approaches are further developed in the summarising parts. Posthumanism as theoretical onset has a profound impact on understandings of relationality within educational activities and on how materiality is affecting learning. Methodological approaches are actuated in relation to the research material to find new meanings of sociomaterial relationality in music education. As one outcome of reading the results from the studies through posthumanism, the tentative term postdidaktik is proposed and discussed. Following the ontological turn of posthumanism that re-entangles human with nature and matter, postdidaktik becomes an implication for understanding learning in sociomaterial relationality. This also affects an understanding of didaktik as lesson planning, enactment, and analysis. The practical employment of postdidaktik is thus further delineated and proposed for further research.

Creativity is not a hierarchical, but an intertextual, rhizomic process, pulling from a vast array of interests, experiences, and influences. These feed into each other, to inform and motivate artists as creating persons in an ongoing process we call the creative act. Anytime an artist sets out to make something, they are experiencing a dynamic yet concentrated moment of energy in the chaotic cloud of creativity. To demonstrate this, I explore several ideas that inform my piece, Codex Symphonia, including musical influences, but also visual art, film, literature, philosophy, social theory, and politics. In this document, I show that the act of creating a musical work is a deeply personal process that relies heavily on the experiences and vast network of influences on the composer. With this document I look to the contextual structure(s) that point to the possibilities that a work might exist. That is to say that the composition Codex Symphonia is a specific result of an extensive network of ideas and influences not coming from a single origin—it is, in fact all of them together at the same time in a metamodernist act of reconciliation.

Metaphor and Mimesis in an Animal Soundscape serves as a supplementary document for two pieces of contemporary concert music; HOWL, for viola, saxophone and fixed media, and Pastorale for viola and fixed media. Both works quote the second movement of Antonio Vivaldi's violin concerto, La Primavera. This quotation is used to support a musical program which explores the larger topic of metaphor in music. In addition, both pieces play with contemporary trends in music including, but not limited to, acoustic ecology and spectralism.

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The way in which one perceives a temporal sense of time while listening to or interacting with music is heavily influenced by the way the composer presents their musical or visual materials. This dissertation discusses concepts and technical approaches regarding timelessness in relation to my piece, In einem Augienblick, and the ways in which I explore a displaced approach to interactivity between audio, video, and performance for clarinet and live interactive electronics and video. By referencing the writings of Johnathan Kramer and using models of references from other composers, most notably György Kurtág, this document contemplates and synthesizes a variety of different methodologies and their practical applications to discuss the approach of timelessness, temporal change, and shifts in musical time taken in In einem Augienblick. In my piece, multiple elements of visual and sonic material are utilized in conjunction with each other to create this stagnant but shifting musical world, which will be discussed by presenting examples from the score, video, and electronics to show how each of these elements work together to create moments of timelessness in the piece.

For film music composers, effective communication with others, understanding the story, recognition of emotional changes in the character, and the ability to connect and express these things through one's own music are crucial. Typically, composers convey their emotions and thoughts through the music they compose, deeply engaging with their inner selves in this creative process. Building on the works of Paul Ekman, Robert Plutchik, John D. Mayer, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, this paper explores the basic and complex emotions experienced by humans, focusing on the emotional and behavioral changes that occur during the grieving process. This thesis delves into how to overcome depression in personal grief experiences and transition into a healing process that accepts death through emotional intelligence. Additionally, the process of transforming personal grief experiences into music that expresses each emotion is described in detail. This process of confronting and expressing emotional changes through music serves as a healing journey for individual composers, offering insights on finding comfort through music for those who have shared similar experiences. Moreover, this thesis proposes that the awareness and in-depth management of one's feelings can serve as a vital tool for film music composers to understand and empathize with the emotions of others.