Musical imagination: Perception and production, beauty and creativity

Abstract

In our recently-published book Musical Imaginations (Hargreaves, Miell, & MacDonald, 2012), I suggest that the creative aspects of music listening have been neglected, and that putting these at the centre of musical creativity (which is usually seen as being manifested in the activities of composition, improvisation and performance) can lead to a more fundamental view of imagination as the cognitive basis of musical activity. I consider different approaches to the concept of musical beauty in experimental aesthetics and neuroscience, and also different views of the concept of imagination, which declined in psychology in favour of studies of creativity. I propose that we should redress this balance by orienting the study of musical activity around the musical imagination, such that the concept of musical creativity can be seen to be much more restricted in scope. I suggest that musical imagination involves different networks of association, and consider the existence of a creative general executive function for music. This leads to a revised and simplified reciprocal-feedback model of music processing, which exists at the core of both musical perception and musical production.