Explaining musical imaginations: Creativity performance and perception

This chapter begins by setting out the purpose of the book, which is to deal with complex musical issues previously regarded as intractably abstract, complex, and difficult to subject to empirical enquiry. The topics of musical imagination and creativity, from the points of view of both musical perception and musical production, involve fundamental concepts of core importance to all aspects of music-making, and psychologists are beginning to make a demonstrable contribution to their understanding and practical application. The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. The second section discusses the conceptual distinctions between creativity and imagination, and also the associated field of imagery. The third section deals with the social, cultural, and musical contexts of musical imagination, which draw on the disciplines of musicology, sociology, and ethnomusicology. The fourth section focuses on the neuroscientific approach, which is probably the most rapidly-growing branch of contemporary music psychology, and the fifth deals with the vitally important yet neglected topic of improvisation, and in particular its widespread use in music therapy. The final section takes a brief and speculative look ahead at what the future might hold.