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Creativity in performance

Article  in  Musicae Scientiae · March 2005

DOI: 10.1177/102986490500900106

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Creativity in Performance
CLARKE E.
University of Sheffield
 Introduction
At the limit, every performance art is necessarily creative, since if the analysis is fine-
grained enough, novel elements will always be found. But such a blanket endorsement is
unhelpful since it collapses together too many different ways in which the term ‘creative’ can
be used: descriptively, simply to indicate that there are features not found in any other
performance; combinatorially, to indicate that while none of the elements of a performance
belong to a new category, they appear in an arrangement not previously encountered; and
more radically, to identify that type of novelty that cannot be explained away in terms of
fortuitous accident or rearrangement. Over twenty years ago Henry Shaffer pointed towards
similar distinctions when he wrote:

“Skilled performance is creative in two ways: first in the sense intended by

Chomsky (1957) for language, that it is based on a generative grammar which
enables the construction of an infinite variety of sentences (sequences,
patterns) using a finite set of rules. And second, that over time the person may
explore the consequences of extending or modifying parts of the grammar.”
(Shaffer, 1981: 1)

In this paper I examine the different ways in which performance can be said to be
creative, discuss the significance of these different varieties of creativity, and explore in a
little more depth some of the varied manifestations of creativity that can be found in
performance.

Expression and creativity

The most intensively studied aspect of performance in the art music tradition, and one
closely related to a consideration of creativity, is expression. It seems uncontroversial to
assert that to play music expressively is to be creative in performance. There are serious
difficulties, however, in finding an appropriate definition of expression in performance:
“deviations from the exact” or “departures from the score”, once regarded as defensible
characterisations of performance expression, have been increasingly challenged as different
musical traditions have been considered, and as a less literal-minded understanding of the
nature of a score has been recognized. Nonetheless, the idea that expression is a
transformation of, or a departure from, some kind norm, still prevails (see e.g. the review
presented in Gabrielsson, 1999).
To what extent, then, can these transformations or departures be regarded as a
manifestation of creativity? Creativity itself is notoriously hard to define (as the opening
paragraph of this paper has already suggested), but most definitions resist the inclusion of
phenomena that are either accidental, or completely determined. Johnson-Laird (1988), for
example, discussing creativity in music from a cognitive perspective, makes use of a
definition of creativity as “mental processes that lead to solutions, ideas, conceptualisations,
artistic forms, theories or products that are unique and novel.” (Reber, 1985, cited in Johnson-
Laird, 1988: 203) What light does this shed on expression in performance? First, a distinction
can be drawn between expressive features of performance which can be regarded as the
unconscious symptoms of underlying cognitive processes, and those which are the result of
deliberate interpretative choices. For example, Sloboda (1983) asked pianists to play two
versions of a melody which differed only in their metrical notation (one was notated as
starting on the first downbeat, the other with an upbeat by virtue of a shift in the position of
the bar lines). None of the pianists in his study noticed that the two melodies were identical
except for this metrical shift, and yet all of them played the two melodies with metrically
related expressive features that distinguished the two melodies in terms of measurable
performance features, and according to the perceptual judgements of a group of listeners who
subsequently heard the performances. It would be hard to argue that these expressive features
are creative components of the performances, since they seem to be an unconscious and
perhaps even involuntary manifestation of the performers’ parsing of the musical structure -
though I would argue that it is still defensible to regard them as expressive features of the
performances (the timing, dynamic and articulatory features of the performances express the
performers’ understanding of the metrical structure).
By contrast, consider the performances of the Prelude in E minor (Op. 28 no. 4) by
Chopin discussed in Clarke (1995). The pianist in this study gave six or seven performances
of the Prelude in the course of an hour or so, of which I analyse two in the chapter. The
performer had not been asked to attempt deliberately different interpretations, nor had he
been asked to adhere to a single view: these were freely given, and spontaneously varying,
performances. Analysis of the two performances demonstrated significant differences
between them, amounting to distinct interpretations of the music. In this case it seems rather
clearer that these distinctions constitute a creative use of expression in performance - though
whether the resulting performances are “unique” (cf. Reber’s definition above) is
questionable. It is worth noting that there was no evidence that the performer was conscious
of trying to articulate these different interpretations, but that this is perfectly consistent with
other evidence for the fluid relationship between creativity and conscious awareness.
Novelty and uniqueness, which Reber (above) takes as defining attributes of
creativity, are central to that powerful Romantic notion of creativity which still dominates our
culture - creativity portrayed as the mysterious appearance of the radically new, apparently
from nowhere. Earlier, and perhaps more recent postmodern notions of creativity were or are
far more ready to incorporate influence and recombination into such a definition, and this has
an interesting bearing on creativity in performance. In a number of studies Bruno Repp has
examined sizeable collections of recorded performances of the same work, and has used these
to explore the relationship between commonality and idiosyncrasy in interpretation. In one
such study (Repp, 1992) examining 28 performances of Schumann’s Träumerei, Repp
demonstrates that the considerable commonalities underlying manifestly diverse
performances by some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated pianists tend to be found at
more global levels of performance, with diversity increasing at lower hierarchical levels. This
might be understood as a reflection of deep-seated general cognitive constraints which
necessarily regulate performance, or as the expression of very general (though arbitrary)
conventions of performance practice. The distinction between these two kinds of explanation
is widespread but nonetheless questionable: how plausible are culture-free cognitive
constraints, and conversely how likely is it that performance conventions could be entirely
arbitrary? The norms of performance must necessarily be subject to the constraints of human
biology as well as being a repository of common cultural practices - just as creativity itself
arises out of the conjunction of either accidental or deliberate novelty with more slowly
evolving norms and traditions. Repp writes lucidly about this mutual dependence in the
context of the Schumann performances, and raises the related matter of the limits within
which performers’ idiosyncrasies are tolerated. Creativity in performance can spill over into
incomprehensibility (for some listeners at least) - as the varied critical responses to pianists
such as Glenn Gould, or from a different perspective Vladimir Horowitz, have shown. Clearly
this is a complex question which depends as much on listeners’ values and sensitivities as it
does on any objective properties of the performances, but there is still almost no research that
has even attempted to address the matter, nor the related question of what it is that leads to a
performance being evaluated as strikingly original.
The converse question - the extent to which performance may be influenced by, or
directly imitative of, other performances - has been the object of small amount of systematic
research. Studies of performers’ abilities to imitate other performances (Clarke, 1993; Repp,
2000) have shown that imitation is more accurate and stable when the expressive profile of
the target performance maintains a conventional relationship with the grouping structure of
the music, and when the target is clearly distinct from the imitator’s own spontaneous
expressive profile for the music. Since imitating performance is used a pedagogic tool (most
strikingly in the early phases of the Suzuki method, but more informally in almost all
instrumental teaching that makes use of practical demonstration), this research may have
implications for the way in which such a method is implemented. More generally, the vast
and readily available body of recorded performances (as well as other live performances)
represents a potentially dramatic influence on performers - as those commentators (e.g.
Keller, 1990) who have bemoaned the modern ‘homogenisation’ of performance have
claimed. It is certainly possible that an overwhelming body of influence might be crushing in
its effects, but the dire warnings often seem to come from a perspective that is steeped in a
conception of creativity based on the Romantic Genius myth. The teacher/apprentice
relationship (which was more or less the only model for instrumental learning prior to the
invention of the conservatoire system, and which persists in numerous musical traditions all
over the world) provides one way to see influence and creative individualism as by no means
incompatible. A rather different way to understand the impact of other performances and
recordings is as a vast and heterogeneous backdrop, or tradition, from which new
interpretations can arise or be inspired.

Improvisation
The domain of performance where creativity is most conspicuously present is
improvisation. The ethnomusicologist John Baily writes that improvisation “implies
intentionality, setting out to create something new in each performance, ‘composition in real
time’ as it is sometimes described’ (Baily, 1999: 208), using this characterisation to point out
that many oral musical traditions are mistakenly assumed to be improvisatory, when they
actually involve none of the creativity that his definition requires. Psychological writing on
improvisation has been largely concerned with suggesting cognitive models for the way in
which this particular manifestation of creativity might be understood (e.g. Clarke, 1988;
Johnson-Laird, 1988; Pressing, 1988). Space precludes a review of that literature, and I will
confine myself to a couple of remarks about some social aspects of the phenomenon.
Although there is a tradition of solo improvisation (from church organists to free
improvisers), the great majority of musical improvisation is an explicitly social activity
involving complex interactions between performers, as well as between performers and
audience. Because of the predominantly cognitive orientation of the psychology of music, this
aspect of performance has only recently begun to be investigated, and only to the most
limited extent in improvisation. Ethnomusicologists have been more keenly aware of the
social dimension, as Monson, in a book on jazz improvisation makes plain:

“Rather than being conceived as foundational or separable from context,

structure is taken to have as one of its central functions the construction of
social context. In other words, there is a mutually defining relationship
between structure and context, rather than one of autonomy. … At issue is the
capacity of aural signs to signify in multiple directions – their ability to
simultaneously constitute structure and a broader field of human relationships
through a communicative discourse…” (Monson, 1996: 186)

Sansom (1997) has carried out a preliminary investigation of this ‘social construction’
within improvisation, in a study that focused creative processes in free improvising duos.
Sansom asked his participants first to play together in free improvisations that lasted from 5
to about 15 minutes, following which he interviewed the participants individually, asking
them while listening to a recording of the improvisation to comment on any aspect of the
music or their interaction. The interviews revealed the central role of personal interactions in
these improvised performances, and the kind of interweaving of social and structural factors
to which Monson draws attention above. The creative impetus in Sansom’s duos is at least as
much to do with the exploration of, and playing with, interpersonal dynamics as it is to do
with a direct confrontation with musical materials.
Different genres of improvisation engage different kinds of creative skills, and elicit
very different kinds of social and musical structures. A distinction is sometimes drawn
between idiomatic and non-idiomatic improvisation, the former referring to improvisation
that is based on or around material that has some particular stylistic identity (examples would
be improvised blues and jazz, or Raga-based improvisation of North Indian classical music).
Non-idiomatic improvisation (sometimes called free improvisation) provides opportunities
for extremely unpredictable and extreme social dynamics to develop, and the music that is
created in these circumstances often seems to be primarily a product of the particular social
context. If composed music seems by virtue of its structures and instrumental forces to
engender certain kinds of social arrangements (the social dynamics of the symphony
orchestra, the string quartet, the solo recitalist, the brass band), free improvisation seems
sometimes to work in the other direction: the music is created by, or is a reflection of, the
social arrangements characteristic of the ensemble.

Conclusions
In this paper I hope to have demonstrated that the psychology of music has made
significant progress in studying creativity in performance, particularly in understanding the
cognitive processes that underlie this highly regarded behaviour. Nonetheless there is still a
great deal more that is not well understood, partly because of the de-socialised way in which
performance has usually been studied. The engagement of cognitive processes with social
factors (performance traditions, socially constructed notions of ‘innovation’ and the limits of
acceptable radicalism, the interactions between narrowly defined musical processes and the
social context of performance) represents a considerable challenge to the psychology of
music, but one which is already being tackled in various ways, and which brings with it the
prospect of a less individualistic and ‘head-bound’ understanding not only of creativity in
music – but also of the human mind more generally.
Address for correspondence:
ERIC CLARKE
Professor of Music
Music Department
University of Sheffield
38 Taptonville Road
Sheffield S10 5BR
UK

E-mail: [email protected]
 References
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