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Abstract: During improvisations and compositions activity children are often asked to create a piece that has a beginning, a middle and an end. Is it really necessary to ask children to use this structure or do children use it spontaneously? The purpose of this research is to investigate children''''s ability to use musical formal structure. We chose to work with children aged 9-10 and studied only the procedures involved in the beginning and ending. The following hypotheses were posed: (a) children aged 9-10 are able to provide a beginning and an end to their own compositions, and (b) these compositions make use of certain specific ways of beginning and ending which incorporate structural features present in the classical and popular repertory found in their environment. The results suggest that the number of children who used particular ways of beginning and ending several times is high enough to confirm our hypotheses. Since these children had not received any musical education and moreover came from a medium-low socio-economic background, it seems possible to conclude that such structures may be assimilated from the environment, from the most common musical repertory to which they are exposed and by means ofhomologies with other cultural systems already experienced.
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