Together in music

This project combines qualitative, quantitative, and theoretical approaches in a new framework for musical creativity research. While traditional perspectives on musical creativity have tended to focus on the lone individual and his or her ability to generate novel ideas or products via internal mental operations, less is known about how resources from the body and the environment participate in driving creative processes. The proposed investigation aims to fill this gap, and generate new scientific knowledge at the crossroads of music, education, psychology, and performance sciences. Inspired by recent work in embodied cognition, in which mental processes are assumed to be distributed across the body and the physical and social world, it is hypothesised that musical creativity is enhanced and best explained through bodily-based and participatory practices, rather than individual reasoning. To test this hypothesis, an interdisciplinary research team comprising PI, a PhD student, two senior collaborators, and three international research partners will work together and conduct a total of six empirical studies. These will explore if and how settings where bodily- based interactions are prioritized can (i) help optimize the experience and fruition of music performance, (ii) improve learning and teaching experiences, and (iii) provide composers with novel tools to enhance their creative potential. These results will add to the emerging body of work on the embodied and collaborative roots of human musicality, setting new directions for creativity research in music and beyond.

The project "Together in Music" explored musical creativity through the lens of embodied cognition, challenging traditional views that focus solely on the individual's internal mental processes. Instead, it emphasized the role of the body and environment in fostering creative processes, suggesting that mental processes are distributed across both the physical and social worlds. Across three key areas, we investigated how musical creativity is rooted in bodily-based and participatory practices, rather than solely in individual reasoning: 1) Music Education: In response to the COVID19 pandemic, which forced music schools to close, we developed remote instrumental music courses. Our findings underscore that developing musical skills in this context encouraged students to form novel and meaningful relationships with their peers, highlighting the inherently collaborative nature of musical creativity. 2) Music Performance: We focused on how individuals' social attitude affects their creativity in musical group improvisation. Our research revealed that music-induced interpersonal synchronization fosters prosocial attitude towards other group members, which, interestingly, can negatively impact individual creativity. This suggests that musical creativity in group improvisation likely depends on a fine-tuned balance between collaborative group work and individual focus. 3) Music Composition: Our research emphasized that the creative process at the heart of Western music composition is not an isolated or abstract endeavour, but one that unfolds through constant interaction with the sociocultural environment in which each composer is embedded. This insight led to the development of novel methods focusing on the social factors inherent in music composition, culminating in the novel "Processes and Relationships in Composers Scale (PRCS)." questionary. This inventory will enable future research to gain an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the social lives of composers and their musical creativity. The findings of this project contribute to the growing body of research on the embodied and collaborative roots of human musicality. They have the potential to inform and enhance practices in music education and performance science by encouraging students, performers, composers, and teachers to reflect more deeply on how their social lives shape their individual skills and personal styles.