Study of songwriters' involuntary musical imagery - musical epiphany as a cognitive phenomenon

The goal of this project was to test whether spontaneous musical creativity occurs among songwriters. In the current thesis the term musical epiphany is proposed. It is defined as a cognitive episode of sudden appearance of innovative ideas in a form of internalized music. The phenomenon occurs spontaneously in circumstances unrelated to composing; the internal music consists of element(s) of a song that are new and original according to the person who experiences it. Thematic analysis was performed in Study 1, Study 2a and Study 2b. Study 1 consisted of the analysis of interviews by songwriter Paul Zollo (2003) with 68 songwriters - experiences that can be interpreted as musical epiphanies were present in 46% of the interviews. In Study 2a semi-structured interviews with 49 songwriters were conducted in English, French and Polish. Sixty-three percent of the participants described experiences of spontaneous musical creativity. The results were coherent: episodes of spontaneous creativity appear before falling asleep, after waking up, and during repetitive activities were confirmed. Moreover, the characteristics of “inspiration type” (Bahle, 1936) were not confirmed collectively as a type, but found confirmation separately. Sixteen participants took part in Study 2b devoted to songwriting under the influence of psychoactive substances. The findings did not confirm higher declared frequency of spontaneous musical ideas after substance use. Study 3 was a testing of Experience Sampling Method used for tracking musical epiphanies. The qualitative data presented in the thesis support the inclusion of musical epiphany in the models of the creative process in music.