The creative personality: composers of music, their inspirations and working methods

Abstract

The stereotypical image that many people would picture when they think of a composer is that of the classical musician like Beethoven who was reportedly an introvert, moody and angst-ridden. However, findings in relation to personality traits that correlate with creativity amongst composers of music, paint a much blurrier picture. This paper reports the result of a study in which 40 current students of composition completed a survey about their preferred working methods and several personality measures. Results indicate that high scores in creativity amongst the composers in our sample was associated with valuing individuality, being highly motivated and gaining great satisfaction from seeing compositions performed. Creative composers tended to take inspiration from non-auditory stimuli such as pictures and to have several works in progress at a time. In addition, correlations were also found between creativity and Extraversion on both its sub-facets of Enthusiasm and Assertiveness.