Music, Creativity, and Human Experience

Abstract

Abstract Traditionally, research on musical creativity and creativity in general has focused on assessing the products and mental processes of individuals. This chapter provides a novel perspective highlighting the experiential and interactive nature of musical creativity. Its approach is rooted in the 4E (embodied, extended, embedded, enacted) framework of cognition and integrates insights from phenomenology and ecological psychology. It describes how human beings navigate and shape their musical environment, balancing phases of stability and instability and thereby pushing the sociocultural boundaries to create novel musical experiences. Empirical studies are reviewed that showcase how creativity emerges through the engagement of the individual with their material and social environment. This perspective provides a future direction for theoretical and empirical work to deepen our understanding of the creative musical experience.