Musicae Scientiae 2016, Vol. 20(3) 283–286 © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1029864916656995 msx.sagepub.com Tracking the creative process in music: New issues, new methods Nicolas Donin IRCAM-CNRS-UPMC, France Caroline Traube Université de Montréal, Canada A rapidly transforming field Not long ago, the creative process in music seemed perfectly clear: the act of composing was the creative process. Its study was divided into two distinct domains: on the one hand, musicolo- gists with a background in music history and analysis handled sketch studies; on the other, psychologists and education science scholars undertook empirical studies of creativity. Sketch studies scholars would usually focus on white male western composers from the late 18th- century to the 20th-century avant-garde, sometimes devoting their entire life to the transcrip- tion and interpretation of working documents from one single composer. Empirical researchers would look for basic compositional skills in cohorts of [white, male] music students, or [white] children practicing music at school, and tackle issues of creativity, learning, and social skills by using creativity ratings and coding patterns of behavior. This landscape has changed dramati- cally in the short space of a decade. First, we have moved beyond former theoretical and disciplinary frameworks. Several sketch studies scholars have called for an epistemological reworking of their domain, prompted by their interdisciplinary dialog with the “genetic criticism” of literary works, as well as with the social and cognitive sciences (Donin, Grésillon, & Lebrave, 2015; Kinderman & Jones, 2009). From the psychological perspective, the Introduction to Deliège and Wiggins’ collec- tion on musical creativity claimed that it was time to “get rid of creativity and look at creative acts” (Deliège & Richelle, 2006, p. 2: emphasis in original), in order to bridge the gap between creativity as measured in a lab and real-life creative activities. One editor of the present issue has proposed to “cross-fertilize” empirical and historical musicologies based on his work on contemporary compositional processes (Donin, 2012). Second, new research objects have emerged. The study of musical performance has become one of the most rapidly growing subfields in music studies, with strong institutional support and visibility thanks to two successive UK-funded Research Centers: the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM, 2004–2009), and the Centre for Musical Performance Corresponding author: Nicolas Donin, IRCAM, 1, place Igor-Stravinsky, 75004 PARIS, France. Email: nicolas.donin@ircam.fr 656995MSX 0 0 10.1177/1029864916656995Musicae ScientiaeDonin and Traube editorial 2016 Editorial