656995

editorial2016
MSX0010.1177/1029864916656995Musicae ScientiaeDonin and Traube

Editorial

Musicae Scientiae

Tracking the creative process in

2016, Vol. 20(3) 283­–286
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1029864916656995
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Nicolas Donin
IRCAM-CNRS-UPMC, France

Caroline Traube
Université de Montréal, Canada

A rapidly transforming field

Not long ago, the creative process in music seemed perfectly clear: the act of composing was the
creative process. Its study was divided into two distinct domains: on the one hand, musicolo-
gists with a background in music history and analysis handled sketch studies; on the other,
psychologists and education science scholars undertook empirical studies of creativity. Sketch
studies scholars would usually focus on white male western composers from the late 18th-
century to the 20th-century avant-garde, sometimes devoting their entire life to the transcrip-
tion and interpretation of working documents from one single composer. Empirical researchers
would look for basic compositional skills in cohorts of [white, male] music students, or [white]
children practicing music at school, and tackle issues of creativity, learning, and social skills by
using creativity ratings and coding patterns of behavior. This landscape has changed dramati-
cally in the short space of a decade.
First, we have moved beyond former theoretical and disciplinary frameworks. Several
sketch studies scholars have called for an epistemological reworking of their domain, prompted
by their interdisciplinary dialog with the “genetic criticism” of literary works, as well as with
the social and cognitive sciences (Donin, Grésillon, & Lebrave, 2015; Kinderman & Jones,
2009). From the psychological perspective, the Introduction to Deliège and Wiggins’ collec-
tion on musical creativity claimed that it was time to “get rid of creativity and look at creative
acts” (Deliège & Richelle, 2006, p. 2: emphasis in original), in order to bridge the gap between
creativity as measured in a lab and real-life creative activities. One editor of the present issue
has proposed to “cross-fertilize” empirical and historical musicologies based on his work on
contemporary compositional processes (Donin, 2012).
Second, new research objects have emerged. The study of musical performance has become
one of the most rapidly growing subfields in music studies, with strong institutional support
and visibility thanks to two successive UK-funded Research Centers: the Centre for the History
and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM, 2004–2009), and the Centre for Musical Performance

Corresponding author:
Nicolas Donin, IRCAM, 1, place Igor-Stravinsky, 75004 PARIS, France.
Email: nicolas.donin@ircam.fr
284 Musicae Scientiae 20(3)

as Creative Practice (CMPCP, 2009–2014). The art of record production is another vibrant
area, at the edge of popular music studies and sound engineering theory and practice (Frith &
Zagorski-Thomas, 2012). Lying somewhere in-between, the analysis of the creative process in
improvisation has also been investigated (see, e.g., Solis & Nettl, 2009). Although they do not
think of themselves as scholars of the creative process or creativity per se, specialists in these
growing research areas have obviously been facing crucial issues in the analysis of the creative
process, from the need for ecological validation of data collection to the challenges of compar-
ing successive versions (or takes) of a piece (or song, or performance).
An increasingly complex image of the creative process in music has thus emerged.
Composition remains, of course, a major part of the study of the creative process, but equally
performance, improvisation, sound engineering, as well as many other areas and roles, are key
to its understanding. Creativity is not just the stuff of western art music: virtually any genre or
culture can be rich terrain for its study. We also need to investigate the psychology of musical
creativities instead of thinking of creativity as a monolithic category (Hargreaves, Miell, &
MacDonald, 2011). Moreover, the boundaries between disciplines, objects, and methodologies
have been blurred. For example, does the case study by Clarke, Doffman, and Lim (2013) per-
tain to the field of psychology, anthropology, [real-time] historical musicology, or research in
composition? To situate it under just one category would be misleading.

The TCPM conference: An interdisciplinary forum

Over the past five years, all these changes have been traced and discussed on a biennial basis in
the international conference Tracking the Creative Process in Music (henceforth TCPM). TCPM
serves as a forum for the best research on creative processes, as well as a tool for fostering inter-
disciplinary dialog within and beyond musicology. The first edition of TCPM was held in Lille,
France, 2011, co-organized by Nicolas Donin and Vincent Tiffon.1 The second edition was held
in Montreal, Canada, 2013, co-organized by Nicolas Donin, Michel Duchesneau, Jonathan
Goldman, Catherine Guastavino, and Caroline Traube.2 The third and most recent edition was
held in Paris, 2015, co-organized by Nicolas Donin, Hyacinthe Ravet, and Jean-François
Trubert.3 The fourth edition will take place in Huddersfield, UK, in September 2017.
The present issue is intended to reflect, at least partially, on how the aforementioned changes,
especially current developments in the study of performance as and in the creative process,
affect the very definition of our objects and methods. It draws on empirical research presented
at the 2nd TCPM conference and is published jointly with a collection focused on music history
and analysis of 19th- and 20th-century repertoire (Goldman, 2016), also derived from the
conference.
The TCPM’s 2013 edition was held jointly at the Faculty of Music, Université de Montréal,
and the Schulich School of Music, McGill University. It was organized with support from the
Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM), the Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), and Canada’s Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC/CRSH).
The scientific committee comprised the following scholars: Joseph Auner, Rémy Campos,
Pascal Decroupet, François Delalande, Irène Deliège, Michel Duchesneau, Daniel Ferrer,
Jonathan Goldman, Philip Gossett, Catherine Guastavino, Antoine Hennion, Martin
Kaltenecker, William Kinderman, Serge Lacasse, Jerrold Levinson, Eric Lewis, Felix Meyer,
Ingrid Monson, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Christoph Neidhöfer, Emmanuelle Olivier, John Rink,
Friedemann Sallis, Jacques Theureau, Vincent Tiffon, Elena Ungeheuer, and Philippe
Vendrix.
Donin and Traube 285

The themes covered included a wide range of disciplines (history, music analysis, philosophy,
psychology, cognitive science, information science, music technology, sociology, ethnomusicol-
ogy, and anthropology) as reflected in the titles of the session themes: computer-assisted analy-
sis, journey to the end of the sketch, distributed creativity, composing (with/in the) tradition,
revealing the compositional system, compositional strategies, cognitive processes, historicity
and temporality, transformative technologies, and conservation of electroacoustic and mixed-
media work.

Creativity in performance, composition, and more…

The present MS special issue includes seven papers presented at the TCPM 2013 conference,
with one additional paper by Andreas C. Lehmann, suggested by the editor-in-chief. A striking
feature of this collection is that creativity is no longer reserved exclusively for composers.
Consistent with this new trend, the issue opens with five papers devoted to the study of creative
processes in musical performance. Different aspects and dimensions of the phenomenon are
studied along with different disciplinary approaches. Hyacinthe Ravet presents sociological
models for cooperation between conductors and performers, pointing toward shared creativity.
Isabelle Héroux and Emily Payne, in their respective papers, explore the way expert musicians
shape their performances. Andreas C. Lehmann completes this first section, focused on instru-
mental performance, by looking at the case of jazz improvisation. Then we move to Guillaume
Boutard’s qualitative enquiry into timbre and gesture from the performer’s perspective, reveal-
ing a process of co-construction of expertise and appropriation of live electronics.
Two papers investigate creative strategies in composition. However, the authors do not fully
embrace the classical view of composition as a purely solitary activity that excludes direct
observation or interactive data collection; rather, they raise issues of cooperation and perfor-
mance, as well as of the close monitoring of cognitive activity over the creative process. The
first paper, by Amanda Bayley and Nicole Lizée, examines the creative layers and continuities
within the composition and rehearsal processes of Lizée’s Golden Age of the Radiophonic
Workshop, written for the Kronos Quartet. The second paper, by Hans Roels, highlights the
individuality of compositional strategies, through a field study involving eight composers with
different aesthetic visions, research concepts, data collection, and analysis methods.
The last paper, by Laura Zattra and Nicolas Donin, sheds light on the professional profile
and expertise of the Computer Music Designer (CMD), a sorely overlooked and misunderstood
partner of the composer.
To close this issue, we invited François Delalande to reflect on the articles from his perspec-
tive as member and principal coordinator of scientific research of the Groupe de recherches
musicales (GRM, Paris) for more than three decades. Delalande was a pioneer in empirical
musicology well before the name was coined. His and his colleagues’ work inspired both of us
in many ways, and we are proud he agreed in turn to offer some thoughts on the creative pro-
cess. His piece completes the circle by highlighting the complexity of artistic cooperation as put
forward by the first paper of this issue – this time among composers, instrumentalists, scien-
tists, technical and computer assistants, as well as instrument makers.

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to Kymberly White for her careful proofreading and language edit-
ing, Kurt Lueders for translating the afterword, and an outstanding team of anonymous reviewers. Our
thanks also go to Reinhard Kopiez, editor-in-chief of Musicæ Scientiæ, for his precious help at all stages of
producing this special issue and for trusting us in our desire to widen the spectrum of methodological
286 Musicae Scientiae 20(3)

approaches, necessary to increase our “understanding of how music is perceived, represented, and gener-
ated” (as Musicæ Scientiæ itself defines its goal). Last but not least, we thank Irène Deliège for suggesting
this project and sharing her enthusiasm.

Notes
1. See http://tcpm2011.meshs.fr/?lang=en
2. See http://tcpm2013.oicrm.org/?lang=en
3. See http://tcpm2015.ircam.fr

References
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