This article reports a qualitative exploratory case study of a composer's compositional inspiration, thinking, and decision-making. The aim was to explore the dynamics and functions of intuitive and reflective modes of thinking, thus expanding the recent trend in composition research, which has given increasing attention to implicit, imaginative, and inspirational aspects of composition. The data of the study were collected in natural settings in the composer's work studio during the compositional process. The data comprised stimulated recall interviews, as well as all of the manuscripts that the composer wrote concerning the process under scrutiny. The findings indicate the saliency of the composer's germinal ideas into the compositional process. The composer elaborated, transcribed, and embodied his multimodal ideas, step-by-step, into musical passages of the evolving score. The process comprised two core procedures. First, compositional thinking was manifested as concrete representations, i.e., the manuscripts. Second, intuitive aspirations entered the conscious mind and subsequently opened themselves up for reflective processes. Two dilemmas were identified in defining the composer's uncertain and complex working circumstances. The strategic and ontological dimensions of compositional decision-making were identified. The study produced a thick description of what is probably the most complicated phenomenon of musical behaviour: composing outside the confines of a laboratory environment. It explicated compositional thinking as continuous and appropriate fluctuations of intuitive and reflective ideation, monitored by metacognitive function. It also presented a detailed analysis of the dynamics of problem accumulation, i.e., the way the composer decided not to decide, which originated from the composer's ill-defined working circumstances and his ethos of seeking coherence and employing constructionist aesthetics.

This case study investigated the transformation of intuitive and reflective thinking during a composer's compositional process. The qualitative data comprised stimulated recall interviews conducted in the composer's studio during the compositional process and the entire manuscript corpus that the composer created during that process. The results showed the qualitative change in the composer's intuitive and reflective thinking in the course of the process; within intuitive compositional acts, imagination changed into experimentation and incubation into restructuring, whereas within reflective compositional acts, rule-based reasoning changed into contemplating alternatives. Further, intuitive metacognition decreased while reflective metacognition increased. These changes were explained by concurrent procedures of grounding and rationalisation. In the grounding procedure, the composer substantiated the fuzzy construction of his original ideas (called the Identity Idea by the composer) into aesthetically coherent musical structures that gradually limited the compositional problem space. The rationalisation procedure involved the composer becoming increasingly proficient in the way in which he operated on his musical ideas and materials. After a critical moment, the composer adopted a situation-specific cognitive device called 'rational intuition'. This 'rational intuition' was the composer's way of creating aesthetic coherence when working fluently, albeit retaining rationality, in an insecure and complex working situation of a creative process. The prerequisites of 'rational intuition' were (1) the guidance of a goaldriven cue (i.e. the Identity Idea) as a key determinant and motivational energy for the process; (2) the selection of intuitive and reflective compositional acts to match compositional situations; (3) an expert ability to learn implicitly; and (4) resilience to abeyance.

Purpose-The aim of the present article is to demonstrate an actual compositional process that entails a diversity of music information modes and describe the way these modes contribute to the creative aspirations of a composer. Design/methodology/approach-The music information typology proposed by Rousi, Savolainen and Vakkari is used as a point of departure for defining the different modes of music-related information. First, relevant music information modes are identified from the composer-informant's verbal description of a compositional process. Then, their proportions and dynamics are examined. Findings-The findings suggest that the music information typology may be applied within the context of musical composition, that is, all of its five modes of music information could be identified from the composer's verbal description of the compositional process. However, two additional significant information modes were identified: shaping music as the third mode of enactive representations and genuine iconic representations. Originality/value-This study introduces a new mode of music information indicative of the artistic capacity of expressiveness: shaping musical structures as the third mode of enactive representations was the means whereby the composer made musical structures work for himself and hence created performative power in his music. Limitations-The purpose of this case study is not to claim that the results regarding the significance of individual music information modes apply to all compositional processes within diverse genres of music.

The purpose of this study was to theorise on a composer’s corporeality from the point of view of the embodied, enacted, embedded, and extended cognition paradigm, in the light of empirical data that cover the compositional process of creating one particular piece of music. The data include related manuscripts and the composer’s verbal account of those manuscripts. Composition is seen as an interactive coping behaviour and an adaptive process of knowledge acquisition and production in a sonic environment. In this epistemic process, the composer begins working with various kinds of ideas: sounds, timbres, musical structures, experiences, philosophical thoughts. They explicate these intuitive or reflective embodied representations through different kinds of externalisations, such as musical gestures, narratives, visualisation, and finally, musical notation. This study substantiates the way in which embodied, extrabodily, embedded, and enactive processes constitute the cognitive acts of a composer, usually considered as almost purely mental. It shows how musical composition may not only be grounded but also depend on embodied knowledge that the score only partly conveys. In addition to helping composers and performers communicate in real life, the findings may be useful for identifying the different cognitive premises and circumstances that can result in discrepancies between the ways in which they interpret musical notation.

This exploratory case study investigated the grounds of the material and physical aspects of compositional thinking, viewing musical composing as organizing the world of sounds. The data tracks one compositional process, including the full body of the manuscripts and verbal data accounting those manuscripts. The results present a composer, who wishes to create music that has performative power, that is, expressivities that have the capacity to move the mind of the listener. The composer is inspired by the materiality of sound and musical instruments, but on the other hand constrained and challenged by the corporal affordances of performers and their instruments as well as by the (im)practicalities and intelligibility of notational practices. Five different aspects of materiality were identified: (1) visual images and representations, (2) the score as the material object of composition, (3) the material and physical affordances of musical instruments, performers that play them, and sounds that are produced by them, (4) physical reactions entailing embodied intuitive knowledge of the composer, and (5) metaphoric processes, where the composer, when shaping timbres and musical structures, “pushes,” even “forces” sounds to “move” and sound in a way that is meaningful and transpires to the listener as music that moves the mind.