Abstract
In a qualitative study, we explored the range of reflections and experiences involved in the composition of score-based music by administering a 15-item, open-ended, questionnaire to seven professional composers from Europe and North America. Adopting a grounded theory approach, we organized six different codes emerging from our data into two higher-order categories (the act of composing and establishing relationships). Our content analysis, inspired by the theoretical resources of 4E cognitive science, points to three overlapping characteristics of creative cognition in music composition: it is largely exploratory, it is grounded in bodily experience, and it emerges from the recursive dialogue of agents and their environment. More generally, such preliminary findings suggest that musical creativity may be advantageously understood as a process of constant adaptation – one in which composers enact their musical styles and identities by exploring novel interactivities hidden in their contingent and historical milieux.
Highlights
The present contribution offers an account of creative cognition in music composition that is grounded on exploration, bodily experience, and interaction
The qualitative study reported picks up a related thread within the discourse of 4E music cognition research to examine how our body shapes the creative reach of the composer in a number of ways
Our study suggests that creative cognition in score-based composition involves three overlapping characteristics: it is exploratory, it is grounded in bodily experience, and it emerges from the recursive dialogue of agents with their social, cultural, and physical environments
Summary
The present contribution offers an account of creative cognition in music composition that is grounded on exploration, bodily experience, and interaction We base such insights on the results of an original qualitative study with Western music composers, and on the conceptual tools of 4E cognitive science, a school of thought that sees mental life as an Embodied, Embedded, Extended, and Enactive phenomenon (Newen et al, 2018). In other words, is embedded: the patterns of sensorimotor activity we adopt to engage with our environment derive from, and help develop, our cultural and social presence (see Malafouris, 2013; 2015) On both evolutionary and ontogenetic time-scales, many contributions point to the co-dependencies of living systems and their niches (e.g., Oyama, 2000), leading to a novel understanding of the interplay between subjects and their world. Compositional practices often involve a fluid integration of internal and external resources, including those provided by tools such as pencil and paper, or computers, as well as musical instruments and their associated techniques
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