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Distributed Creativity
Creative practice in music takes place in a distributed and interactive manner embracing the activities of composers, performers and improvisers - despite the sharp division of labour between these roles that traditional concert culture often presents. Two distinctive features of contemporary
music are the role of improvisation and the development of integrated and collaborative working practices between composers and performers. Prominent examples of such collaborations in the twentieth century have brought attention to a state of affairs that is actually much more widespread - indeed
arguably the norm for much of the music of our own time. At the same time, improvisation - once relegated to the margins of musical practice - has found its way back into the concert music of the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a wide variety of forms, from the free improvisation of
groups such as AMM, through the partially improvised practices that accompany the graphic scores of composers such as Cornelius Cardew, to the controlled improvisations that are embedded within the work of many contemporary composers. By blurring the distinction between composition and performance,
improvisation and collaboration provide important perspectives on the distributed creative processes that play a central role in much contemporary music.
Distributed Creativity explores the different ways in which collaboration and improvisation enable and constrain these creative processes. Thirteen chapters and twelve shorter Interventions present a range of perspectives on distributed creativity in music, on composer/performer collaborations, and
on contemporary improvisation practices. The chapters provide substantial discussions of a variety of conceptual frameworks and particular projects, while the Interventions present more informal contributions from a variety of practitioners (performers, composers, improvisers), giving insights into
the pleasures and perils of working creatively in collaborative and improvised ways.
music are the role of improvisation and the development of integrated and collaborative working practices between composers and performers. Prominent examples of such collaborations in the twentieth century have brought attention to a state of affairs that is actually much more widespread - indeed
arguably the norm for much of the music of our own time. At the same time, improvisation - once relegated to the margins of musical practice - has found its way back into the concert music of the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a wide variety of forms, from the free improvisation of
groups such as AMM, through the partially improvised practices that accompany the graphic scores of composers such as Cornelius Cardew, to the controlled improvisations that are embedded within the work of many contemporary composers. By blurring the distinction between composition and performance,
improvisation and collaboration provide important perspectives on the distributed creative processes that play a central role in much contemporary music.
Distributed Creativity explores the different ways in which collaboration and improvisation enable and constrain these creative processes. Thirteen chapters and twelve shorter Interventions present a range of perspectives on distributed creativity in music, on composer/performer collaborations, and
on contemporary improvisation practices. The chapters provide substantial discussions of a variety of conceptual frameworks and particular projects, while the Interventions present more informal contributions from a variety of practitioners (performers, composers, improvisers), giving insights into
the pleasures and perils of working creatively in collaborative and improvised ways.
416 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2016
About the author
Eric Clarke
35 booksEric Clarke is Heather Professor of Music at Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of Wadham College. He has published widely on various issues in the psychology of music, musical meaning, and the analysis of pop music, including Empirical Musicology (OUP 2004, co-edited with Nicholas Cook), Ways of Listening (OUP 2005), The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (CUP 2009, co-edited with Nicholas Cook, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and John Rink) and Music and Mind in Everyday Life (OUP 2010, co-authored with Nicola Dibben and Stephanie Pitts). He was an Associate Director of the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, and is an Associate Director of the successor Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (2009-14). He is on a number of editorial boards, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2010.
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