Why Do People Compose?

The question of “why do people compose?” cannot be answered from a single perspective or even a single discipline. In this section, I review various perspectives from anthropology and psychology.

Perspectives from Anthropology.The earliest human creations in dance, painting, sculpture, and music almost surely had their roots in the imitation of the natural world and the human form. The prehistoric animal paintings found in French and Spanish caves and the Cro-Magnon stone figurines from Austria and New Guinea provide evidence to support the human desire to re-create the forms of life in their earliest visual art. It is also likely that the first dances borrowed movements from animals and that the first music derived from the sounds of nature. The Kwakiutl, a First Nations indigenous people who lived along the Pacific coast from present-day Alaska to northern California, tell ancient stories of songcatchers, who composed songs based on the sounds of running water, wind, birds, and animals (Ackerman, 1999). Performance of the songs infused those who heard them with the spirit of the natural world (Hawthorn, 1988). It is unknown whether this early artistic creativity was intended to connect to the natural world, chronicle the natural world, or impose mastery over the natural world.

Numerous theories have been postulated regarding the role and value of music in the evolution of early homo sapiens (Wallin, Marker, & Brown, 2000). These theories range from mother-infant bonding, to sexual attraction and selection, to communication of danger, to creation of altered states of consciousness. Ellen Dissanayake (1980 & 1982) provides evidence that over the last 250,000 years humans have responded to aesthetic qualities in their environment and have created products (e.g., paintings, songs, dances) using those qualities, a process she calls “the propensity for making special” (1982, p. 148). It is in the making of art, Dissanayake believes, that the behaviors of “making special” (e.g., curiosity, dexterity, pattern-making, imagining) become highly developed. These more highly developed skills gradually pass on to the population, strengthening it and making it more likely to succeed.

At the present point in human evolution, it may be unlikely that the creation of new music still contributes to the survival of the species. But the “propensity of making special” through the creation of music may be reflective of the quality of human existence. The extent to which humans value beauty and imagination in the musical sounds they surround themselves with may well be indicative of the cultural health of the population.

Perspectives from Psychology.The three classic schools of psychology—psychoanalytic, behavioral, and humanist— each offer unique reasons to explain the human desire to create music and art. According to Sigmund Freud (1908/1959), the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, artistic creativity is a product of the self’s coping mechanism for managing unfulfilled desires and tensions. In childhood one is able to escape an unpleasant reality through daydreams or fantasy, but in later life that becomes less feasible. The adult artist, said Freud, has the ability to transform that fantasy into a work of art, something that can be shared with others, and in so doing, the artist is able to release the inner tensions. Creation of an artistic work, then, can be seen as a form of therapy to combat emotional distress. Without the release provided by artistic creation, the artist could descend into neurosis or psychosis.

According to this position, the borderline between artistry and mental illness is a thin one. As a theory to explain why humans compose, the psychoanalytic view falls short, though, because it requires that in all cases a composer must first be dissatisfied, needing to escape unpleasantness through the creative process.

The behaviorist view of artistic creativity is exemplified by B. F. Skinner’s essay, “A Lecture on ‘Having’ a Poem” (1972). The title of Skinner’s essay makes reference to Samuel Butler: “A poet writes a poem as a hen lays an egg, and both of them feel better afterwards.” Skinner posits that it is the environment acting on an individual that leads one to create particular works of art in inevitable ways. Neither free will nor personal desire enter into the creative process. The unconscious mind rearranges the psychic remnants of previous experiences, and the result appears to be a newly created work of art. But in reality, behaviorists believe, the composer has no choice but to apply and recombine learned knowledge in this way. The previously learned musical aspects (e.g., patterns, timbres, textures) are recombined rather than created afresh. Hence, a composer will “have” a composition rather than “create” a composition.

Undeniably, humans are products of their environment. The music that one composer or songwriter creates is certainly influenced by the vast ongoing musical cultures created by others. But to say that humans are no more than the sum of their experiences is to deny not only free will but also innovation and change. The difficulty with behav- iorist view of artistic creativity is that it cannot explain breakthroughs for which no previous experience prepared the creator. As examples, Beethoven’s use of sonata form in his Third Symphony, Stravinsky’s use of rhythm in Rite of Spring, and John Coltrane’s seemingly illogical chord changes with an inner symmetry in “Giant Steps” had no precedents. Composition does include but is not limited to merely reassembling previously heard patterns.

In both psychoanalytic and behavioral psychologies, the composer has little choice but to respond to the demands of influences, either internal (psychoanalytic) or external (behavioral), beyond the composer’s control. The psychoanalytic view is that artistic creativity is a casting off or avoidance of internal strife, and the behavioral view is that it is an inevitable response to lived experience. Neither position accounts for the anthropological views of composition, which was that artistic creation was seen as a seeking out or attraction to the outside world.

Gestalt psychologist Ernest Schachtel’s (1959) writings exemplify the humanist view of artistic creativity. Schachtel wrote that the primary motivation for creativity is the desire to relate to the world outside of the self. He believed that artistic creativity can be observed in a young child’s play and in an “artist’s lifelong effort to grasp and render something which he has envisaged in his encounter with the world” (p. 245). Both the child and the artist display an openness to the qualities of things around them, and this openness provides for a richer, more complex life. The humanist view is that creativity is not an avoidance of emotional distress nor a response to environmental influences, but an active seeking out of a greater engagement with the world.

One can see echoes of Schachtel’s ideas in Abraham Maslow’s concept of selfactualization (1968), Howard Gardner’s theory of arts and human development (1973), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal idea of flow (1990), and Ken Robinson’s TED talk, “Do schools kill creativity?” (2006). The humanist view of creativity is also reinforced by Dissanayake’s (1982) position that art-making stems from humans’ “propensity for making special.”

Each of the three psychological schools provide suggestions for the teaching of composition. According to the psychoanalytic school, the act of music creation serves to release pent up emotion. Music composition, primarily through songwriting, as used in some forms of music therapy and with at-risk populations, is designed to function in this way. Teaching adolescents to compose could be one way to provide students with a positive creative outlet to negotiate the emotional transition from childhood to adulthood.

From this author’s own experience as a collegiate songwriting teacher, he often observed students singing original songs about such personal issues as sexual abuse, the death of a loved one, and mental illness. Their music-making helped them work through their internal tensions.

An application of behavioral views would suggest that student compositions reflect their learned understanding of how music functions and is structured in various styles. Providing students with syntactic knowledge of music (e.g., tonality, meter, form, texture, timbre) through performing, listening, and creating activities could enhance their ability to implement those characteristics in their own compositions. Students’ compositions could be used as windows to the students’ syntactic understanding of music. Student projects could include composing “in the style of . . ” or could be structured to focus on certain musical characteristics (e.g., “compose using only so-mi-la” “compose a song with the verse in triple meter and the chorus in duple meter.”

The teaching implications from the humanist position of composing are more diffuse than from the other two schools of psychology. What the humanist position does provide teachers is a rationale for teaching composition, in that the process of being open to one’s environment and acting upon it can lead students to a richer, more fulfilling life. In the psychoanalytic and behavioral positions, the student composer is simply creating in accordance with internal emotional needs or external environmental stimuli. The student composer’s satisfaction in creating something new is limited, because it is either an escape from strife (psychoanalytic) or an imitation of something created by others (behavioral).

The humanist position takes into consideration the personality and lived experience of the student, as well as the desire of the student to reach out to connect with others. These two quotations from high school students in a “School of Rock” class illustrate the humanist view.

I am so sick of hearing songs that are about having sex and partying all the time. I’ve been through a lot of rough stuff in my life, and I want to use those things as inspiration to write songs that will help others. I want people to be able to reach for my songs for comfort when they are in distress.

I want to write songs that inspire and motivate people. I want to be the voice for those who can’t be heard, and I want to expose the injustices in the world.

None of the anthropological or psychological studies are relevant if school-aged children are incapable of authentic composition. In the following section, the scholarship on children’s composition is reviewed, with an emphasis on the earliest known research.