Creative Thinking and Music Listening

Abstract

Can listening to music be considered an act involving creative thinking? This paper explores the notion of creative thinking and music listening by (1) sampling conceptual writings on the subject of creativity and listening to music, (2) articulating ten generalities regarding creative listening, (3) examining empirical research in this area, and (4) describing a preliminary study that presented subjects with a problem-solving listening task requiring them to visually represent (`map') what they heard in a musical excerpt, then examined their visual representations and their verbal responses to the task to see if this approach held promise for future indepth research regarding creative listening. The results of the preliminary study were promising and appeared to confirm certain of the generalities articulated about creative listening.