Extended musicking, extended mind, extended agency. Notes on the third wave

Abstract

The conceptual resources of '4E' music cognitioni.e. the embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive paradigmshave offered a rich set of tools to explore the nature of musical experience. Among these four approaches, the extended mind perspective has heretofore received less overall attention. In this paper we focus on further developing the musically extended mind -especially in regards to musical performance -drawing on recent third wave developments. After exploring the main tenets of first wave (parity between internal and external components), second wave (complementarity between internal and external components), and third wave (dynamically changing internal and external components, as well as extended and decentralized agency) accounts of the extended mind, we turn to introducing existent first and second wave positions on music cognition. While they offer important insights, we suggest that elements of the third wave, especially focused on decentralized agency, are needed to capture the complexities of musical performance. We apply the third wave tools to the case of music performance in order to show, first, the specific limitations of the first two waves focus on parity and complementarity and, second, how a third wave account may be developed by applying it within this particular context.

Dimensions of Musical Creativity

“…The recognition of a continuous integration of individual, collective, domain-general, and domain-specific creative factors that emerges from our hybrid account can open up fascinating possibilities for future experimental and theoretical work, helping formulate precise empirical questions and fostering interdisciplinary analyses. For an example, we may consider how, in order to produce various compensatory actions to keep their musicking “alive” and pulsating, musicians often decenter their agency, producing patterns of reciprocal exchanges that stabilize and destabilize their activity on the spot (see Ryan and Schiavio, 2019 ). Here, openings and constraints functional to creative activity are shared between individuals, groups, and ecological variabilities, suggesting that each performer must always negotiate singular and plural dynamics and continuously (re-)generate a range of novel couplings with his or her niche.…”

Processes and Experiences of Creative Cognition in Seven Western Classical Composers

“…The focus on interpersonal relationships is particularly interesting when considering how Western classical music has been long seen as "the epitome of solo creativity" (Cook, 2018, p. 10), instantiated in individual geniuses. As we saw in the Introduction, this common view has been significantly challenged by novel research and theory that conceives of musical creativity as a social, collaborative phenomenon (e.g., Sawyer, 2006;van der Schyff et al, 2018), reflecting a more general shift in the cognitive sciences. In what follows, we highlight the importance of exploration, bodily experience and interaction by engaging with the different codes and categories described in the previous section.…”

“…The latter, as Cook has argued, "is a defining tradition of western 'art' musical culture, the very tradition that Sawyer called 'the one remaining bastion of the solitary lone genius myth'" (Cook, 2018, p. 65). Indeed, while we can offer many examples of studies specifically focused on collaborative creativity in performance and music improvisation (e.g., Bailey, 1993;Burrows, 2004;Canonne & Garnier, 2015;Linson & Clarke, 2017;Sawyer, 2006;Toop, 2016;Walton et al, 2014), less is known about the kinds of collaborations and interactions involved in musical composition. The "cultural significance often attributed to individual [composers]" (Bennett, 2012, p. 146) may well have discouraged, until recently, the application of this socially curious approach to expert compositional practice.…”

Optimizing Performative Skills in Social Interaction: Insights From Embodied Cognition, Music Education, and Sport Psychology

“…In these contexts, (musical) meanings are recursively and collaboratively transformed, giving rise to creative outcomes that do not involve prescriptive rules to be followed or mind-reading mechanisms (see van der Schyff et al, 2016). Similarly, Ryan and Schiavio (2019), among others, advanced the hypothesis that music-making is inherently extended , suggesting how cultural, social, and physical resources (internal and external to the agent) are fluidly integrated and constitutive of the performance outcome. By this view, even categories like “agency” can become distributed across individuals, giving rise to a complex network of collective experiences that can contribute to individual practice.…”