ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the musical imagery in its relationship to musical imagination. It provides an overview of the creative functions of musical imagery, with a particular focus on the musical imagery of composers. The chapter analyzes how it is that musical imagery can at once liberate and constrain, and how models of 'imagination imagery'. It presents the musical imagery to be the conscious experience of the qualia of music; it is inevitably underpinned by unconscious processes. It argues that dynamic change is a fundamental aspect of the imaginative process, with fluidity a primary property. This chapter considers the imagination to be the inventive manipulation of musical imagery, which shares many of the constraining properties of perception. It explores the study of the role of mental imagery in musical creativity share with studies in visual creativity their origin in anecdote; however, vision researchers have made considerable progress towards assembling empirical evidence in support of such anecdotes.
