Wk 11 - Creativity Flashcards
(21 cards)
what was the traditional creativity in music and what about now?
the score was the creative object for composers - Beethoven
now it’s the recordings - studio became place of creativity (record as creative object)
what is the swan song phenomenon
best work declines with age
composing your best piece whilst on death bed/end of your life (Mozart creating requiem)
what is Snowden et al’s (2015) dual process model
Type 1 - sensory knowledge, unconscious, providing ‘flashes of insight’
Type 2 - conscious, methodical thinking
what are both types of processing necessary for
divergent and convergent thinking
what are other types of creativity in music
- improv (jazz, blues, folk)
- expression variations in performance
- listening?
The originality test (Simonton, 1980)
Analysed melodic originality of 10 major composers (mostly pre-1900)
Most famous themes had the most unusual combinations of notes (i.e. original)
‘Biological stress’ associated with originality: emotional situations in music (heartbreak)
Concert/instrumental themes more famous than vocal/chamber/choral
- chamber/choral more original
Originality tailed off in later works (‘backwards-J curve)
research against swan song phenomenon
Porter & Suedfeld (1981): Novelists’ letters showed decline in ‘integrative complexity’ (originality) in last 5 years despite broad age-related increase: the opposite of swan song
Simonton (1989): similar finding with composers’ final works - sharp drop in originality after linear trend
- ‘more an expression of resignation, even contentment, than despair or tragedy’ (p. 45)
originality in popular music
since 1960 (used to be reproducing: Elvis with a bunch of songwriters
- Beatles to Beyonce: performers becoming composers
but the cover version is an important phenomenon
- tribute bans: authenticity of reproduction
- reinterpretation: remix, cross-genre adaptation
but how original does creative music need to be?
- Plagarism cases: Blurred Lines & Got to give it up Marvin Gaye (recreated the atmosphere - wasn’t necessarily the same)
- Stairway To Heaven and band called spirit - chord structure (a structure you find in music) very similar but case not awarded
what is Guildford (1962): divergent thinking
generating ideas with many possible solutions
Brick test: what can you do with this brick that doesn’t use its typical function (candle holder, piece of music)
Sloboda (1985): The compositional process
4 methods of enquiry
1. Archival (sketchbooks etc)
2. Accounts: interviews, letters, biographies
3. Observation (rare)
4. Improvisation (largely jazz)
compared Beethoven (methodical) with Mozart (inspiration), but ink analysis casts doubt on latter
Restoration: evidence he went over, corrected and changed, not as unmethodological as said in biographies: Type 2 thinking can still come into play
Unconscious (inspiration, instinctively know what you can do) and Conscious (idea) theory: very similar to pauls dual theory
how important is expertise to creativity?
Ericsson et al (1993): importance of practice (10,000 hour theory)
Simonton (2000) examined 911 operas from 59 composers (139 in current rep)
Found that ‘domain expertise’ explained 14-20% of variance in ‘quality’ still being performed
However, those who wrote more operas experienced later decline
Sternberg (2018): Triangular Theory
need to consider context in which creative work produced
important function of defiance
- against ‘crowd’ (friends, family, fans)
- against self (avoid becoming ‘one-idea person)
- against zeitgeist
Still focus on creativity as property of ‘lone genius’ though?
systems model of creativity
Csikzenmihalyi (1988): individual creator always part of broader system
Bourdieu: fields, capital, habitus
McIntyre (2008): songwriters ‘immersed’ in musical history: they have ‘acquired the habitus of songwriting’
Media (playlists, A&R, reviews) all regulate extent to which songwriters operate
The creation of a classic song
Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ (1965)
- based on a tune dreamt by McCartney (type 1 creativity)
- research suggests there’s bits of other songs in these dreams of music so not that original
Hammond (2002): clear antecedents from Ray Charles (‘Georgia on my mind’) itself a re-interpretation
- lyrics also had long developmental trajectory
McIntyre (2006): McCartney’s own family background and Beatles’ intense & eclectic repertoire create unique ‘habitus’ for creative output
Other forms of musical creativity
improvisation: some constraints, but fewer than formal composition
- typical jazz harmonies, progressions: need to ‘return home’ after solo
- primary jazz forms (12/32 bar structures)
Much based around repertoire of motifs - Charlie Parker had over 100 (Sawyer, 2006)
- dipping into own repertoire of themes but seems spontaneous
creative performance
Classical musicians mostly confined to ‘repertoire’: reproduction of formal scores, with ‘expressive’ variation
Chaffin et al (2007) studied 7 repeats of Bach’s Italian Concerto by same pianist
- Performer claimed they were all very similar, but analysis revealed “non-random and structurally-related changes” to each
Conscious and unconscious elements combine to produce ‘magic’ third performance of work (Clarke, 2011)
Music creativity around the world
Blacking (1973): Venda (S. Africa) ‘fill out a song with counter-melodies’ and improvise harmonically
Seeger (1987): Suya (Brazil) songs inspired by foreigners or ancestral spirits (fish, bees, trees)
Conima (Peru): communal songs through ‘brainstorming’ motifs and variations until full agreement
ancestral spirits - type 1
brainstorming - type 2
Collective creativity
Assumption that group improvisation based on ‘central controller’ that guides others (Sawyer, 2006)
But 15% of orchestral musicians claim not to look at conductor (Malhotra, 1981)
Wells (1990) string quartet study: ‘collaborative manoeuvres’ when performer makes a mistake - find a way to patch things up to save performance
Popular music: the creative process
demands of recording involve more than just performance and composition
sound engineers, producers, etc. play vital creative rols
Audience can be involved in creative process through online ‘open studio’ (Shrayne, 2010)
Soundcloud: Online musical creativity
Reed (2017): Online platform for creators to share compositions/recordings
Comments posted by creators but also by other users, building up layers, or ‘lamination of performance’
Other digital media have enabled new genres of music to evolve (Born & Haworth, 2017)
creative listening
Folkestad (1996): personal ‘inner musical library’ – mental representation of all music heard
- New music evaluated against this
Allows us to listen in certain ways, pick out certain features – guess the artist/composer, identify style etc (Hargreaves et al, 2011)
Mito (2007) compared experts and novices on Japanese pop, but superiority disappeared with other genres
