“Creating Creativity

Whith Music”
(Música research notes)

Dr. Norman M. Weinberger

(University of California)
 Creating Creativity With Music
Copyright © 1998 Norman M. Weinberger
and the Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved.

Creativity, while highly desirable, is popularly regarded as an elusive, subjective

characteristic. Within music, it is reflected largely in compositions. However,
creativity can be measured objectively and its involvement of music is not limited
to composing. Accumulating findings indicate that musical training enhances
intellectual creativity in general.

Mozart is sitting alone in the garden of a country villa on his way from Vienna to
Prague. It is September, 1787. Suddenly, the muse "strikes" and immediately he
has conceived of the peasant's dance that opens the wedding scene in Act I of,
arguably one of the greatest operas ever composed, Don Giovanni. Or so the
story goes. Later that day Mozart enthralls the count and countess of the villa,
recounting how sitting in the garden had elicited a long-forgotten childhood
memory of an afternoon in Italy, and how the two experiences coalesced in his
mind to produce the exact music that he needed for the scene. Or so the story
goes.

How typical of the creative act. How replete with the romantic vision of artistic
insight emanating from a genius for whom creativity was both sublime and
effortless. Or so the story goes -- for this particular episode is indeed a story, part
of an extensive imaginary account of Mozart. It is the creation of Eduard Mörike
whose novella, Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag [Mozart on a trip to Prague],
published in 1855. Highly popular in its time, it also has been influential in
shaping conceptions of Mozart even to our time.(1)

Distinct from the issue of ultimate truths about Mozart's creativity (for which
scholars are not in complete agreement), we have in Mörike's novella a case of
his own creativity. What, if anything, links these two acts of creativity? It is easy
to note differences -- Mozart composed music, Mörike composed literature. Are
there different creativities for every field of endeavor? Indeed, can creativity
even be subject to scientific inquiry? The nature of creativity is a topic of intense
current interest and debate.(2) But it is being studied.

Several approaches to directly measuring creativity have been developed over the
years, and these have been applied successfully in many settings. For example,
Guilford developed an "Unusual Uses" test in which a person is asked to devise
as many uses for a common object as possible; e.g., what are unusual uses for a
brick? Also, his "Unusual Situations" test, which asks, for example, what would
happen if no one had to sleep anymore?(3) The Torrance Test of Creative
Abilities is also widely used; e.g., a child might be asked to sketch as many
objects as possible given a set of blank circles.(4)

This is not to say that all workers agree on which measures are best. Amabile has
argued for and applied assessments of creativity based on the collective
judgments of e.g., a work of art, by individuals who are widely regarded as
experts within the field in question.(5) But even with overall judgments, definite
factors are evaluated. These include novel use of materials, novel ideas and
spontaneity as well as other factors that might be less closely related to the "core"
concept of creativity. This "core" I take to be a new way of thinking or doing
which is not merely different or bizarre but is coherent and perhaps illuminating.

Even in the absence of universal agreement about how best to measure the highly
desirable characteristic of creativity, some workers have sought means to
enhance creative thinking. Among these are attempts to determine whether music
education affects measures of general creativity. Note that the issue is not
whether such education enhances creativity within music itself, which would be
expected, but rather concerns the broader domain of expanding ones' intellectual
boundaries.

There seems to be a widespread belief that the answer is obviously positive. For
example, according to Webster, "For many, this very use for our subject is at the
center of our philosophical justification for music in the schools".(6) There are
many well-reasoned arguments that music truly enhances creativity.(7) And there
are many accounts of creativity in the musical activities of young children,
including composition and invention of their own notation systems.(8) Finally,
there are compelling reports of the beneficial integration of music into the
curriculum.(9)

However, objective controlled studies are required to evaluate such claims.

Naturally, music research has to meet the same standards as exist for all other
issues that are subject to science, whether they relate to smoking and lung cancer
or to exercise and health, both topics of great debate and uncertainty less than a
generation ago. This dawning realization that exhortation and anecdotal reports
are insufficient to settle the issue raises the question of whether adequate studies
have been carried out. For so important a question, there are disappointingly few
such published investigations. However, existing studies do point to a positive
relationship between music education and enhanced creativity.

One of the earliest of these was performed by Simpson in 1969, as his doctoral
dissertation. Unfortunately, it was never published and therefore the findings are
not readily accessible or generally known.(10) Simpson gave 173 high school
music and 45 non-music students tests devised by Guilford (mentioned above).
He reported that music students scored more highly than did non-music students
on several measures of creativity. The findings are correlative, that is they show a
significant relationship between music and creativity. Whether or not music
education caused creativity scores to be enhanced cannot be determined from this
report.

An investigation published soon thereafter indirectly speaks to the issue of what

sort of and how much music-related education is needed to enhance creativity.
Apparently it must be more than twice weekly for three months. Thus, Vaughn
and Myers (1971) gave 4th and 5th graders a special program using this schedule,
which involved showing students the many parallels between various musical
processes and major factors in general creative thinking, such as fluency,
flexibility and originality. However the students learned no technical skills, that
is they did not actually learn to play instruments. Rather, structured listening was
employed. At the end of three months there were no differences compared to a
control class which received no special treatment.(11) So three months of
occasional listening is not enough.

In addition to the question of the necessary duration of music education, one

would also like to know the youngest age at which music can increase creativity.
An unpublished dissertation by Wolff (1979) deals with both issues. This author
studied the effects of 30 minutes of daily music instruction for an entire year, on
first graders. All students were tested at the beginning and end of the year on the
Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and also with the Purdue Perceptual-Motor
Survey. A control class received no music education. Wolff found that the music
students exhibited significant increases in creativity. As it happens, they also
developed a significant increase in perceptual-motor skills.(12) This study
indicates that the creativity of children as young as first graders can be enhanced
by music education, apparently if it is a sustained part of the curriculum rather
than as a periodic addition to the school day for a few months.

Are first-graders the youngest children in which music can increase creative
thinking? Probably not. Magda Kalmar studied the effects of music instruction on
pre-school children of three and four years of age. Working in Budapest,
Hungary, Kalmar obtained test scores both for the Torrance Creativity Test and
the Binet Intelligence Test and also for the Oseretzky Scales of motor
development. The experimental group received singing music lessons and
musical group play twice weekly; the relatively modest amount of music
education was offset by the fact that this treatment was continued for three years.
The author found that the music students scored higher than a non-treatment
control class in creativity. Also, they had higher levels of abstraction and also
showed greater creativity in improvised puppet-play. An additional benefit was
better motor development.(13) There we no differences in IQ, suggesting that
music education has quite specific effects on creativity.(14) The exact age at
which music was effective cannot be determined because no yearly assessments
were reported during the three year period of this study. Benefits might have
developed within one year, that is during the third and fourth year of life. Based
on Wolff findings (above) it is unlikely that effects would require three years.

The last two controlled studies, both by the same group at Kent State University,
studied high school and university students. In the first of these studies, Hamann,
Bourassa and Aderman obtained scores on the Guilford Unusual Consequences
Test for university students who either were or were not music majors.(15) They
found significantly higher creativity scores in music majors. Of course, this is a
purely correlative finding; no causal relationship can be inferred from these data.
However, the authors also determined the relationship between creativity and the
total amount of music education., which was as high as more than 10 years. They
discovered that students with more than 10 years of music education exhibited
significantly greater creativity than those with less than 10 years of experience.
Thus, these authors "tapped into" the "music treatment" that the students had
effectively performed on themselves, which is more feasible than undertaking an
extremely long multi-year experiment. So, these findings are quite consistent
with the idea that creativity increases as a function of the amount of music
education.

In the other study, Hamann et al tested high school students, whose experiences
included theatrical and visual arts.(16) Once again, and perhaps not surprisingly,
the authors found that music students exhibited greater creativity than non-music
students. Theater students also scored significantly higher, but, unexpectedly, no
effects were found for visual arts students in this particular study. Again, the
issue of possible causality was approached by determining the relationship
between length of music education and creativity scores, based on the number of
academic units of music classes. A statistically significant relationship was
observed; the greater the number of units, the greater the creativity scores.

In summary, the findings to date provide solid support for the claim that music
increases creativity. Moreover, it appears that active music making is more
effective than passive music experience. But it must be realized that there is not
nearly enough research on this issue. Detailed and systematic studies of the types
and amount of music education for groups of all ages need to be undertaken. In
addition, a broader range of measures of creativity should be used to fully
explore this critical dimension of the intellect. That creative potential can be
increased is of great importance. That music appears to be an effective means of
accomplishing this goal should be glad tidings for everyone. After all, what is the
greatest source of potential benefit to our planet if not the potential of our
imagination linked to rational and unselfish action?

-- N. M. Weinberger

(1) Watts, R. E. (1992), Eduard Mörike, Alexander Ulïbïshev, and the "Ghost
Scene" in Don Giovanni, in Studies in the History of Music, 3, New York:
Broude Brothers Limited, pp. 31-50.

(2) Boden, M.A. (1994) What is creativity? In: Dimensions of Creativity. M.A
Boden (ed.) Cambridge MA:MIT Press, pp. 75-117.

(3) Guilford, J. P. (1967) The Nature of Human Intelligence, New York:

McGraw-Hill.

(4) Torrance, E. P. (1966) The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: Norms-

Technical Manual, Lexington, MA: Personal Press.

(5) Amabile, T. M. (1996) Creativity in Context, Boulder, Co.: Westview Press.

(6) Webster, P.R. (1990) Creativity as creative thinking. Music Educators

Journal, 6:22-28.

(7) Cleall, C. (1981) Notes toward the clarification of creativity in music

education. Psychol. of Music, 9:44-47; Crowe, B.J. (1987) Stimulating creativity
in the mentally retarded through music experiences. Joint Conference of the
National Coalition of Arts Therapy Associations, NewYork, 1985 Arts in
Psychother. 14: 237-241; Burns, M.T. (1988) Music as a tool for enhancing
creativity. J Creativ. Behav., 22:62-69; Hollander, L. (1988) Music: The creative
process and the path of enlightenment. Music Therapy, 7:8-14.

(8) Doig, D. (1941) Creative music: I. Music composed for a given text. J. of Ed.
Res., 35:263-275; Pond, D. (1981) A composer's study of young children's innate
musicality. Council for Res. in Music Ed. Bull. 68:1-12; Kartomi, M.J. (1991)
Musical improvisations by children at play. The World of Music: J. of the
Internat. Instit. for Trad. Music, 33:53-65; Upitis, R. (1995) Fostering children's
compositions:Activities for the classroom. General Music Today, Spring, 16-19.

(9) Schmidt, D.T. (1958) Living creatively with children and

music. Education, 79:109-114; Upitis, R. (1992) Synthesizing music into activity
-based classroom. Output, January, 14-19.
(10) Simpson, D. J. (1969) The effect of selected musical studies on growth in
general creative potential, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Southern
California, Diss. Abstr., 30:502A-503A, as cited in Cutietta, R., Hamann, D. L.
and Walker, L. M. (1995), Spin-Offs, Elkhart, In: United Musical Instruments,
pg. 27. I have been unable to obtain a copy of this dissertation; hence I do not
know whether the music and non-music students were matched on other factors,
such as grade point average, etc.

(11) Vaughan, M. and Myers, R.E. (1971) An examination of musical processes

as related to creative thinking. J. Res. in Music Ed.,19:337-341.

(12) Wolff, K.L. (1979) The Effects of general music education on the academic
achievement, perceptual-motor development, creative thinking, and school
attendance of first-grade children, Doctoral Dissertation, University of
Michigan, Diss. Abstr., 40:5359A.

(13) Kalmar, M. (1982) The effects of music education based on Kodaly's

directives in nursery school children -- from a Psychologist's point of
view, Psychol of Music, Special Issue, 63-68.

(14) One should be cautious in thinking about IQ scores vs. measures of

creativity, etc. Intelligence test scores are comprised of the scores of several sub-
tests that aim at tapping different aspects of intelligence. It might be more
revealing to know the effects of music education on each of the sub-tests and the
separate factors that each of these sub-tests measures.

(15) Hamann, D. Bourassa, R. and Aderman, M. (1990) Creativity and the

arts, Dialogue in Instrumental Music Ed., 14:59-68.

(16) Hamann, D., Bourassa, R. and Aderman, M. (1991) Arts experiences and
creativity scores of high school students, Contrib. to Music Ed., 14:36-47.

~~~
 Understanding Music's Emotional Power
Copyright © 1998 Norman M. Weinberger
and the Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved.

Music has the enormous power to cause emotions to well-up within us. These
compelling, often overwhelming, feelings, emerging seemingly from nowhere,
color our moods, affect our perceptions, and can alter our behavior. The mystery
of this power of music is yielding to scientific investigation. Recent studies point
to the interaction of two factors through which music operates: how much we like
a piece, which might be expected, and the magnitude of its arousal potential,
which is not.

What is more indisputable about music than its power to evoke emotions? Is
there anyone for whom music is completely emotional neutral? Researchers
doubt that any normal brain is immune to music's ability to rapidly and
seemingly inevitably tap the, still mysterious, deep well of our emotions. Why
and how this is so constitute two central questions about human nature and it
neurological underpinnings. The answers would also greatly illuminate the
special role of music, both as an apparent human need and as a satisfaction of
that need.

But there are some really big potholes on the road to solving these riddles. Some
are technical, such as the need to obtain precise data from all relevant regions of
the human brain during the elicitation of target emotional reactions to an
extensive array of types of music, for an affordable cost. Human brain imaging is
not quite there. But technical problems usually are solved over time. The bigger
obstacles concern implicit assumptions about the relationship between music and
emotion. For example, some workers appear to believe that a given piece of
music will have the same emotional outcome in most, if not all, people. Were this
known to be true, the task of understanding the emotional power of music would
be greatly simplified. One might seek how the brain responds to particular sound
sequences that evoke, e.g., happy feelings, compared to another composition that
produces sadness.

However, music can produce various emotional responses in different individuals

and even different responses in the same person at different times. (For a review
of some relevant findings see "The Coloring of Life: Music and Mood", MRN,
Spring 1996). Moreover, even the general effects of music on behavior are quite
different in different people. For example, one way of characterizing personality
is along the dimension of "extraversion-introversion". We all know extraverts,
highly "outgoing" people, and we all know introverts, those of us who prefer a
quieter existence. Interestingly, the effect to which background music affects
learning and recall depends on this personality dimension. Furnham and Bradley,
of University College, London first assessed this aspect of personality in college
students. They also checked to make certain that the two types had the same IQ
scores, to eliminate the effect of possible differences of intelligence on the
results. Next, subjects read a 400 word passage of text either in silence or in the
presence of a taped radio segment of pop music with the occasional voice of a
disk jockey. Finally, the subjects were asked questions about the reading material
after a six minute period of silence. The introverts remembered significantly less
than did the extraverts.(1) In other words, the extent to which music is a
distracter during learning is not the same for all people but depends upon whether
they are extraverts or introverts. There are at least two implications of this
finding. First, from a practical standpoint, introverts should be cautious about
potential distractions from background music if they want to have the best recall
of what they have read. Second, investigations of the effects of music on
behavior need to take into account individual differences; the hope for a fixed
link between certain sounds and emotional reactions will probably not be
realized.

While the picture would seem to be complicated by personality factors, there is

still much that has been done to understand the processes that determine music's
effects on emotion, Many years ago D.E. Berlyne hypothesized that when we
listen to music, we unconsciously take account of things such as its complexity,
familiarity and novelty. He suggested that these variables affect our preferences
for music by altering basic brain processes that control our general level of
excitability or arousal. In this sense, any piece of music has an "arousal potential"
for an individual. Berlyne's studies revealed that people prefer aesthetic
experiences in general that produce an intermediate level of arousal, neither too
exciting nor too unexciting.(2) Thus, he found a link between the extent to which
people like a piece of music and how much that music excites us. One of the
fascinating aspects of Berlyne's findings is that they are not what we would
expect from a common sense point of view. One might assume that highly
relaxing music might be thought of as highly pleasurable and that really exciting
music might be just as well liked in a situation in which excitement is being
sought. In any event, the theory and findings provided part of the way to predict
which emotions would be most probably evoked by a given piece of music ... by
its level of "psychobiological arousal".

During the intervening years, several follow-up experiments have strongly

supported Berlyne's theory. For example, subjects prefer melodies that are
intermediate in the number of different pitches used.(3) Intermediate levels of
musical complexity are also preferred.(4)
These findings set the stage for a recent particularly important experiment. North
and Hargreaves set about to determine if the emotions evoked by music could be
predicted from a separate knowledge of the combination of the degree of "liking"
and the degree of "arousal potential" of a given composition.(5) They asked
subjects (adults of college and more advanced age across a wide socioeconomic
range) to rate thirty-two musical excerpts according to the degree to which each
piece produced the expression of one of the following emotions: "relaxing",
"peaceful", "exciting", "festive", "unsettling", "disconcerting", "boring", and
"unstimulating". It turned out that these eight were themselves inter-related,
resulting in four major emotional factors: "exciting-festive"; "unsettling-
disconcerting"; "boring-unstimulating"; "relaxing-peaceful".

A completely different group of subjects rated each of these same pieces on the
degree to which they "liked" the music and also the extent to which they found
the music to be "arousing".

The authors then performed statistical correlations between the ratings of the two
independent groups. They found that the emotional ratings could be predicted
from a combination of the "liking" and "arousal" ratings. For example, a piece
that was rated as "exciting-festive" had been rated by the second group as both
well-liked and arousing. Music rated as "boring-unstimulating" was rated as low
both on liking (i.e., was unpleasant) and arousal. "Relaxing-peaceful" had been
rated as well-liked but low on arousal. Finally, music evoking the emotions of
"unsettling-disconcerting" was considered disliked but having high arousal.

A simple summary of the North-Hargreaves study is that music seems to evoke

emotions by doing two different things: (a) it produces a feeling of liking or
disliking; (b) it produces a level of excitement or arousal. Neither of these two
factors is itself sufficient to result in a particular emotion. But somehow they
work together in the brain to yield actual emotions.

Common sense and common experience tell us that our emotional reactions are
prompt and powerful. But neither of these "commons" have access to the
underlying processes, related to "hedonic value" (liking) and brain arousal, which
yield an apparently single, unitary thing, an emotion. This may help explain why
the same music can produce different emotions in the same person at different
times: we may like it to the same extent, but if it arouses us differently, then it
will evoke a different response. The findings may also guide future direct
investigations of the brain substrates of music and emotion. A basic
understanding of this relationship should also benefit future uses of music
therapeutically. The possibilities are many, the prospects are exciting.
-- N. M. Weinberger

(1) Furnham, A. and Bradley, A. (1997). Music while you work: The differential
distraction of background music on the cognitive test performance of introverts
and extraverts. Applied Cog. Psych. 11:445-55

(2) Berlyne, A.E. (1960) Conflict Arousal and Curiosity. New York:McGraw
Hill; Berlyne, D.E (ed)(1974) Studies in the New Experimental Aesthetics: Steps
Towards an Objective Psychology of Aesthetic Appreciation New York: Halstead
Press.

(3) McMullen, P.T. (1974). Influence of number of different pitches and melodic
redundancy on preference responses. J. Res. in Music Ed. 22:189-204.

(4) Steck, L. and Machotka, P. (1975). Preference for musical complexity:

Effects of context. J. Exper. Psych., 104:170-174; Heyduk, R.G. (1975). Rated
preference for musical composition as it relates to complexity and exposure
frequency. Percep. and Psychophys., 17:84-91; Hargreaves ,D.J. (1984). The
effects of repetition on liking for music. J Res in Music Ed., 32:35-37; North,
A.C. and Hargreaves, D.J.(1995). Subjective complexity, familiarity, and liking
for popular music. Psychomusicology, 14:77-93.

(5) North, A.C. and Hargreaves, D.J. (1997). Liking, arousal potential, and the
emotions expressed by music. Scand. J. of Psych., 38:45-53.

~~~
 Briefly Noted
Copyright © 1998 Norman M. Weinberger
and the Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved.

Music Aids Memory Retrieval in Infants Less is known about the cognitive
abilities of infants than for any other age. Yet such knowledge is basic to
understanding subsequent child development. In recent years the study of infants
has increased greatly and the role of music is under investigation as part of this
effort. One important issue concerns the nature of infant memory. What factors
do infants use to recall an event? Fagan, Prigot, Carroll, Pioli, Stein and Franco
of St. John's University and Iona College have addressed the role of music for
infant memory (Child Development, 1997, vol. 68, pgs 1057-1066). Three month
old infants learned to move an overhead crib mobile while one of two musical
selections was played; the mobile's stand was attached to an ankle by a ribbon, so
that every kick produced movement. Infants readily learned the task, indicated by
a significant increase in the number of kicks during music compared to their
spontaneous rate. Memory of this learning was tested one day and seven days
later (by counting kicks/mobile movements) in the presence of either the music
played during the learning or a different selection. Retention was the same after
one day, regardless of the music played. However, after seven days, the infants
remembered that kicking produced mobile movement only when they heard
the same music that was played during learning. Thus, at the age of three
months, infants use musical cues to remember that they could control the mobile.
The authors suggest that the normal forgetting that occurs over time (in this case
seven days) is not really due to a loss of the memory but rather to the lack of
appropriate retrieval cues. Thus, the findings show that infants can use music as a
means to remember, so that music defines or gives meaning to a learning
situation, at least as early as three months.
Bibliografia:
• http://www.musica.uci.edu/mrn/V5I2S98.html#creating (Musica
Research Notes Volume V, Issue 2, Spring 1998)