ABSTRACT

This paper attempts to define `musical thinking` from various view points, to examine the characteristics of musical thinking, and to introduce the related theories. An effort is also made to categorize musical thinking based upon convergent and divergent thinking. Lastly, musical thinking is examined in terms of the creative cognitive skill. Musical thinking involves problem-solving, concerning tonal-rhythmic relationships that occurrs temporally. A musical judgment is made in temrs of a series of distinctive mental functions such as expectation, comparison, prediction, and evaluation. These functions occur nonlinearlly and continually while the listener is engaged in the music. Musical thinking has three important characteristics; 1) music cognition is a construction process, not a copy process; 2) music cognition is about detecting, identifying, recalling, discriminating patterns and realizing their functions in large compositional context, i.e., it concerns perception of tonal-rhythmic patterns rather than isolated tones; 3) Some musical problems are related to the generic (cross-cultural or panstylistic) aspects of music and others to the idiomatic or style-specific elements of music. As a part of reviewing theoretical models of musical thinking, Davidson and Scripp`s classification of the ways of knowing music is examined in detail. The concept of convergent and divergent thinking may be useful in classifying musical thinking. Divergent musical thinking involves generating many possible solutions to a given problem, whereas convergent musical thinking involves weighting several possibilities and converging on one best answer. Imagination is an important part of divergent thinking which varies on its depth depending on the individual`s conceptual understanding of the material. Divergent thinking, however, must be filtered by convergent thinking in order to reach a final solution. Thus the interaction of both thinking skills are important. Among musical abilities, craftsmanship and aesthetic sensitivity are connected to convergent musical thinking, while composing, improvising, and creative listening abilities are examples of divergent musical behaviors. Additionally, the results of the related research indicate several interesting paints concerning divergent musical thinking skills; 1) divergent musical thinking skills are not significantly related to the traditional measures of musical aptitude; 2) musical achievement does affect divergent musical thinking skills; 3) intelligence, academic achievement, gender are not positively related to divergent musical thinking skills. Lastly, concerning musical thinking as a creative cognitive skill, one`s creativity has been researched on the basis of the nature of the product, the process of the creation, and the characteristics of the person. Generally, creative behaviors are characterized by their originality, appropriateness and relevancy, fluency, and flexibility. In the music field creative thinking is often examined in the process of improvisation, analysis, composition. According to Wallas, there are four distinctly different stages in creative process, i.e., preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. The stages may move back and forth among them rather than following the sequence from the first to the last. During the development process of child`s creative musical thinking the importance of environmental influence cannot be overemphasized. In order to unlock creative potentials of children in music, psychological safety and psychological freedom must be guaranteed.