Act of Musical Composition

The study of musical composition has been marked by a didactic technique-based approach focusing on the understanding of musical language and grammar -harmony counterpoint orchestration and arrangement - or on generic and stylistic categories. In the field of the psychology of music the study of musical composition even in the twenty-first century remains a poor cousin to the literature which relates to musical perception music performance musical preferences musical memory and so on. Our understanding of the compositional process has in the main been informed by anecdotal after-the-event accounts or post hoc analyses of composition. The Act of Musical Composition: Studies in the Creative Process presents the first coherent exploration around this unique aspect of human creative activity. The central threads or key themes - compositional process creative thinking and problem-solving - are integrated by the combination of theoretical understandings of creativity with innovative empirical work.