Embodiment of Musical Creativity: The Cognitive and Performative Causality of Musical Composition

Embodiment of Musical Creativity offers an innovative look at the interdisciplinary nature of creativity in musical composition. Using examples from empirical and theoretical research in creativity studies, music theory and cognition, psychology and philosophy, performance and education studies, and the author’s own creative practice, the book examines how the reciprocity of cognition and performativity contributes to our understanding of musical creativity in composition. From the composer’s perspective the book investigates the psychological attributes of creative cognition whose associations become the foundation for an understanding of embodied creativity in musical composition. The book defines the embodiment of musical creativity as a cognitive and performative causality: a relationship between the cause and effect of our experience when composing music. Considering the theoretical, practical, contextual, and pedagogical implications of embodied creative experience, the book redefines aspects of musical composition to reflect the changing ways that musical creativity is understood and evaluated. Embodiment of Musical Creativity provides a comparative study of musical composition, in turn articulating a new perspective on musical creativity.

Zvonimir Nagy is a composer and music scholar. His work extends into interdisciplinary contexts and perspectives on musical creativity and embodied music cognition, forging connections between music composition and theory, psychology and philosophy, and technology and performance. He is an Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.