Assumption regarding the relationship between creativity and mental disturbances has attracted academic and public interest from antiquity. Research performed in recent years, support these associations and show a disproportionately high rate of mental illnesses, especially bipolar disorder, in creative individuals. In this article, we give…

Creativity involves generating novel concepts and products that are valued by the creator as well as by the public. In this paper, we argue that risk-taking in songwriting increases the likelihood of any individual's product being valued as creative. By reviewing the case histories of several successful songwriters, we show that heightened…

Speech made before a group of students on the subject of creativity based on author's own experiences as an entertainer, poet, songwriter. (CB)

Discussed are sources of creative inspiration noted by composers such as Wagner, Strauss, and Puccini; and charted are discrete steps in creativity common to composers seen as producing works of genius. (IM)

The author considers the manner in which children develop awareness of varieties of sound, pitch, and rhythm, and provides an outline for use in a class project in musical composition. (IM)

Creative musical experiences appropriate to children's cognitive and psychomotor development should begin in kindergarten. Structured creativity through the process of musical composition can be used at grade 4 and above. Lesson plans using Haiku poetry, penatonic scales, rhythmic durations, and melodic contour to create a song are provided. (VW)

Fifty-eight figure skating trainers from fifteen different countries acted as volunteers in this study on choreography styles. The styles were based on reports of artistic-creative strategies in composing music, drawing, writing poems or novels, and in making dances. The prevalence of the Mozartian (at the onset the choreographer already has a…

Twenty-two second grade children created musical compositions on an Orff xylophone during an eight-week period and produced accompanying written scores. Analysis showed that, over the period, children improved pattern recognition and increased use of melodic motives, and that writing the score did not inhibit the creative process. (JDD)

Thirty-two high school students were categorized by creativity style (adaptor or innovator) and completed two musical composition problems involving two different degrees of problem-finding behaviors: an open, and a closed, problem. No significant differences due to problem type, creativity style, or the interaction of the two factors was found.…

A study involving 261 composers, 108 inventors, 392 NFL wide receivers, and 112 eminent inventors found that eminent individuals exhibit a greater rate of creative outputs and that the production of outputs deviates from randomness no more than would be expected from chance fluctuation alone, except for some eminent individuals. (Contains…