The art of music is a unique field where creativity can manifest itself freely, dynamically and openly. Especially composers feed the ecosystem of music art with their compositions. It is seen that there is a gap in the literature regarding the composition of educational music, which is a type of composition, and how it is perceived from the perspective of prospective composers. The findings to be obtained from studies to be conducted on this subject can shed light on the new educational music composers to be trained. The aim of this study is to examine music teacher candidates' perceptions of educational music composition through metaphor analysis. The study group of the research consists of 61 graduated and currently studying music teacher candidates who have taken the course of educational music composition techniques at Necmettin Erbakan University AKEF Music Education Department in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. The participants were asked to complete the sentences "Composing educational music is like ... Because ..." sentences were asked to complete. In the analysis of the collected data, 42 metaphors and 6 categories emerged by grouping these metaphors according to their common characteristics. As a result of the research, it was determined that the participants associated the composer of educational music and his/her compositions with the concepts of being used in the education of children, showing the way to the truth and the good, giving happiness and peace, fun, vital, protective and protective, emphasizing creativity and being a means of transferring various emotions.

Keywords: Music education, composing educational music, metaphor analysis, music teacher candidate