Rethinking the garret

This second chapter of Music as Creative Practice develops an approach to musical imagination in opposition to the traditional creation myths according to which composers ‘hear’ music in their heads and simply write it down. Drawing an analogy with the creation of perfumes, it shows how imagining music involves representing it in terms of notational and other objects that enable it to be purposefully manipulated in such a way as to bring new sound conceptions into existence. Composition involves a rich ecology in which creators interact with sound images that talk back to them, resulting in an imaginative analogue to the social interaction of real-time musical creativity. The argument proceeds through case studies that range from popular songwriting to concert music, and from sixteenth-century polyphony through Beethoven to contemporary classical composition. The aim is to penetrate through analysis of style to the modes of creative thinking that underlie them.