Ethnomusicology of the Creative Process

This chapter provides a critical history of ethnomusicology of the creative process, from the first works on oral-tradition societies and their “instinct of variation” to the most recent reflections on transcultural music and digital audio production. It shows that the question of creative process extends throughout the history of ethnomusicology and reflects the vitality of debate within the discipline. The chapter includes references from different ethnomusicological currents or schools of thought, both English- and French-speaking, from countries of the North as well as countries of the South. All these references are situated within the major social science research paradigms that have nourished ethnomusicology throughout its history.

Creative Process as Labor

This chapter synthesizes a large body of sociological research dedicated to artistic creation as a labor-intensive activity. Questioning the nineteenth-century expressivist ideal of self-actualization, contemporary ontologies—whether defined by artists, scholars, or various professional assessors—function within two opposing regimes: elite egalitarianism and competing differentiation. Adopting a processual perspective, the chapter first turns to creation as a sequence of choices and tests realized under strict uncertainty of results, with an extreme discrepancy between accumulated efforts and reputational as well as monetary outcomes. Second, the chapter follows the downstream production of aesthetic value, turning to scores and performances and the reallocation of creative roles they rest upon. Third, the chapter sketches a genealogy of finishedness, from Romantic idealization to modern relativization, with a special focus on the completion of uncompleted works. Finally, the chapter outlines several caveats regarding the study of the creative process and their consequence for the sociology of labor, work, and innovation.

Borrowing in Music

This text examines the idea and practice of musical borrowing in the composition of art music in two distinct historical contexts: the age of music conceived as oration (ca. 1600–1800) and the age of the strong work concept (ca. 1800 to the present). It shows that the idea of musical borrowing is an evolving, historical concept that needs to be examined contextually in order to understand what it meant in the period within which the music in question was composed, as well as for the specific composer. The text also briefly examines related topics: authorship, plagiarism, imitation vs. emulation, music conceived as oration, and the strong work concept.

Musical Creativity and Well-Being

Participating in musical activities involves an immersive spectrum of psychological and social engagement. Connections between musical participation and health have been discussed for centuries, and relationships between the processes of music making and well-being outcomes have garnered considerable research interest. This chapter reviews studies investigating such associations to identify how creative aspects of musical engagement in particular can be understood to enhance health. The chapter begins by offering some suggestions about why these processes may have beneficial effects. Three key contexts for beneficial musical engagement (music education, music therapy, and community music) are examined: an organization (Limelight) that delivers music activities for individuals from disadvantaged groups; group improvisation music therapy sessions for individuals with cancer; and songwriting sessions for individuals following spinal injury. The relative contributions of creative process and creative product are considered, and psychological concepts such as identity, flow, agency, and scaffolding are suggested as important. The discussion extrapolates wider implications of this work to include general music making beyond clinical, educational, and community contexts.

Pedagogies of Creativity in Music

This chapter explores the notion of pedagogies of creativity and creative pedagogies in music composition. Drawing on Amabile’s categorization of “domain-relevant” and “creativity-relevant” skills, the chapter uses historical and contemporary examples to indicate the interrelated nature of these skill sets, specifically through a historical case study of the pedagogy of Nadia Boulanger. The chapter presents the notion of composition pedagogy as a “signature pedagogy” that operates as a series of collaborative apprenticeships undertaken in spaces and places of professional practice that promote the cognitive, practical, and moral aspects of composition as a professional practice. In a world where the notion of music creativities is ever expanding, the interdialogic relationship of pedagogies of creativity and creative pedagogies provides a way forward for composition learning and teaching.

On Composers and Computers

The chapter describes the manifold interactions between composers and computers in the creative process. Over time, this dialogue dating back to the 1950s has transcended the paradigm of the traditional compositional process and lead to a number of interesting implications and side effects in the context of current trends in algorithmic composition, generative music, and computational creativity. It is not just the computer but also the choice of software and a specific view on the musical material that are the decisive factors in generative and analytical approaches (which are often interlinked), where strategies of musical representation and the choice of a particular mapping are of crucial importance. Finally, the chapter examines how creativity can be defined and located in this interaction between human and machine.

“Study, practice, and a reasonable working method”

This article presents the first step toward a hitherto unwritten history of creative process pedagogy in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire between 1500 and 1850. In answering the question of how musical creativity was taught and learned beyond the obvious theoretical aspects of composition such as counterpoint, harmony, and instrumentation, it analyzes a plethora of treatises, composer’s sketches, and study manuscripts to identify and describe important pedagogical trends and methodologies. These include, for example, the use of principles from classical Latin rhetoric and, as a derivative technique, the study and use of loci or musical commonplaces. Musical “shorthand” notation such as partimento and figured bass are investigated as basis for the sketches and drafts by composers of the Classical period which, in 19th-century treatises, became the foundation for creative process pedagogy themselves.

On Genre, History, and Invention in the Analysis of Creative Processes in Music

The chapter opens by reviewing recent directions in analyzing the creative process in music: research focused on the performer as creative actor, the contributions of nonhuman actors, the conditions within which the composer works, and the creative process as underdetermined and emergent. The chapter assesses the explanatory power of these directions and the extent to which they can be integrated, arguing that such approaches are necessary but not sufficient. Instead, the chapter proposes the need for anti-reductionist, explanatory accounts that probe the historicity of the creative process, the temporalities in which it is entangled, and how these relate to both the complexities of aesthetic identification and disidentification and the institutional conditions within which creativity proceeds—the last two issues highlighted by theories of genre. Thinking of the creative process in music in relation to genre highlights its profoundly social and temporal nature and how it cannot be reduced to individual creators and their actions.

Freedom and Spontaneity in the Creative Process: Lessons from Experimental Music

This chapter focuses on composers who explored freedom and spontaneity in the creative process as alternatives to compositional systems with various formal rules and constraints. John Cage used chance operations and indeterminacy to compose music that allowed listeners unlimited interpretative freedom. Pauline Oliveros designed human/machine interfaces that created feedback resembling human intuitive and spontaneous interactivity. David Tudor created “live” electronic music in its most literal sense with idiosyncratic sound systems that produced sounds that took on a “life of their own.” Frederic Rzewski viewed spontaneous music as a transcendent and transformative creative process available to both musicians and non-musicians. Roscoe Mitchell developed composition/improvisation hybrids that challenge traditionally held assumptions about musical works in the Western canon. Embracing freedom and spontaneity as aesthetic values made it possible for these composers to challenge the dominant political ideology and its social conventions.

Creating with Constraints

Musicians have long framed their creative activity within constraints, whether imposed externally or consciously chosen. As noted by Leonard Meyer, any style can be viewed as an ensemble of constraints, requiring the features of the artwork to conform with accepted norms. Such received stylistic constraints may be complemented by additional, voluntary limitations: for example, using only a limited palette of pitches or sounds, setting rules to govern repetition or transformation, controlling the formal layout and proportions of the work, or limiting the variety of operations involved in its creation. This chapter proposes a fourfold classification of the limits most often encountered in music creation into material (absolute and relative), formal, style/genre, and process constraints. The role of constraints as a spur and guide to musical creativity is explored in the domains of composition, improvisation, performance, and even listening, with examples drawn from contemporary composers including György Ligeti, George Aperghis, and James Tenney. Such musical constraints are comparable to self-imposed limitations in other art forms, from film (the Dogme 95 Manifesto) and visual art (Robert Morris’s Blind Time Drawings) to the writings of authors associated with the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) such as Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau.