Creativity in critical understanding of music: alexander schubert’s musical practice

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the possibility of a critical music language in contemporary art music scenes through the concept of creativity. Under the light of related literature review, attention will be particularly focused on the diverse creative experiences of Alexander Schubert who managed to transgress normative standards and find his critical voice. By doing that, the paper aims to reveal the epistemological challenges inside academia in which it claims the necessity of an embodied and relational perspective that operates beyond binary oppositions. There has been a rising academic interest in creativity since the 1950s, predominately in sociology, psychology, and education. In the interest of “objective” evidence, cognitive sciences attempted to define and assess creativity by measuring the innovative processes of human minds. In the domain of music research, it has been mostly addressed in fields outside of composition, often connected with music psychology. Yet, the approaches in psychology mostly focused on the measurement of creativity rather than the creative acts of the individuals-failing to report the real-world experience of people-. So, this paper plans to pull this issue to composition and contemporary art music. With the introduction that induces a debate about the definitions and historical roots of creativity, the chronological development of the concept and its interrelations will be discussed. Its expansion from cognitive sciences to humanities and music will be briefly exemplified. After that, its connection with critical composition will be exhibited by the practice of Alexander Schubert, a prominent 21st-century composer and multi-media artist. Readings from cognitive sciences, musi- cology, critical studies, and sound studies will establish a historical gaze and pursuit of a contemporary epistemology that may incorporate a more extensive description and investigation of creativity.