The act of musical composition: studies in the creative process

The study of musical composition has been marked by a didactic, technique-based approach, focusing on the understanding of musical language and grammar -harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and arrangement - or on generic and stylistic categories.

In the field of the psychology of music, the study of musical composition, even in the twenty-first century, remains a poor cousin to the literature which relates to musical perception, music performance, musical preferences, musical memory and so on.

Our understanding of the compositional process has, in the main, been informed by anecdotal after-the-event accounts or post hoc analyses of composition.