Contemporary Music Review, 2016

Vol. 35, No. 6, 562–578, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2016.1288316

‘Collaboration’ in Contemporary Music:

A Theoretical View
Alan Taylor

Contemporary composers frequently find themselves working with other artists in

composing. The paper presents a framework which aims to provide a better
understanding of the working relationships found in such situations, and the factors
which affect the type of working relationships which develop. A distinction is drawn
between dialogic creative activity—the universal situation of creating in a context—and
creating with others actually present. Four different types of relationship which develop
when working directly with others are defined. This typology can help in the better
understanding of the relationships which composers establish and can act as a stimulus
to the review and further development of compositional practice. The relationship
between the language of an art form and the language used for communication between
creative partners is identified as a key factor in affecting the type of working
relationships which develop between artists.

Keywords: Collaboration; Composition; Contemporary Music; Dialogic; Co-operation;

Consultation

Shared Working in Contemporary Composition

Shared working in artistic creation is embedded in many contemporary arts, particu-
larly performance arts such as modern dance and theatre. It is fundamental to group
musical improvization. It is not prominent in the art of musical composition. It may be
questioned whether sharing the process of writing notated music is possible, and cer-
tainly it would be difficult unless the scope for invention was severely circumscribed.
Nevertheless, many contemporary composers find themselves taking up opportu-
nities to work with other artists during the compositional process. Opportunities avail-
able to composers commonly involve working with other artists. An example is
Making Music’s Adopt-a-Composer scheme (2014), through which the federal body
for community music ensembles pairs emerging composers with its member ensem-
bles. A further example is the project run by New Dots (2014), which gave the

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

 Contemporary Music Review 563
opportunity to emerging composers to work with film makers in creating a new jointly
created film with music.
In view of the development of shared working in the writing of contemporary music,
this paper presents a way of understanding and analysing the nature of such working
relationships. I have found this approach valuable in reviewing and developing my
own practice. Other composers may also find it a stimulus to the review of their practice.
It might be asked whether the fact that composers commonly work with others
while writing is simply a necessity in certain forms such as opera, dance or film,
and a result of a present-day priority which funding bodies apply across all the
arts. The Arts Council England, for instance, in its key strategic document, refers to
its ‘ … focus on long-term collaborative action … ’ (2013, p. 10).
Nevertheless, the stereotype of the compositional process remains one of lone
invention. Barrett (2006) comments on, and questions, this, writing that:

The image of the composer as a lone seeker of creative inspiration is embedded in

popular views of the creative artist. This isolationist view ignores the ‘thought
communities’ on which composers draw in their development as musicians …
(Barrett, 2006, p. 195)

Certainly, the view of the composer as a sovereign artist, creating music from their
imagination alone, remains powerful. It is reflected in the concept of the musical
work, identified (Goehr, 1992, p. x) as emerging in the late eighteenth century.
Before then written music was regarded less as a fixed set of unique works and
more as material produced for particular circumstances or performers, capable of
being re-used, borrowed, and stolen (Goehr, 1992, pp. 176–204). A piece of music
was not generally conceived of as having a permanent existence independent of
particular circumstances or performers.
The concept of the musical work still affects thinking today. It is reflected in the
attitude of many contemporary composers, and can be an impediment to working
with others. As Hayden and Windsor (2007) point out:

… it seems as if the issue of collaboration is a potentially problematic domain for the

composer. However motivated to enter into collaborations he or she may be, there
may be tacit or explicit resistance to the idea of giving up creative control. (p. 31)

This individualistic view of the process of composing music is at variance with the view
of artistic creation taking place in dialogue with previous work and external influences.
I will describe that view as dialogic artistic creation. It originated in the early twentieth
century with Bakhtin (1981). It was reinforced by the contemporaneous development
of a view of the learning and creative processes as taking place through communication
and interaction with others and, therefore, social in their nature. Commenting on
learning in children, Vygotsky (1978) writes that:
… human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which chil-
dren grow into the intellectual life of those around them. (p. 88)
564 A. Taylor
The creative act is therefore seen as a process of learning and invention and therefore,
following these writers, is seen as a social process, embedded in the society within
which it takes place. It is not the purpose of this paper to analyse the nature of the crea-
tive process further, though this background is important to the discussion which
follows.
Rather, given that contemporary composers often work with others when writing, I
wish to examine the nature of the working relationships which composers establish. In
particular, I will argue that the term ‘collaboration’ is used indiscriminately to describe
a great variety of different working relationships, and that this wide usage can act as an
impediment to the better understanding of the nature of the relationships which com-
posers develop.
In the first part of this paper, I examine two problems in the usage of the term ‘col-
laboration’ in the context of contemporary composition. One is its usage as synon-
ymous with ‘influenced by’. I suggest that the term should not be used unless there
is more than one person directly involved in the creative work. The second is its
usage as synonymous with ‘working together’, where I suggest that it would be
better to distinguish a number of forms of working relationship and so to establish
a more precise terminology for, and better understanding of, the different forms
which such relationships can take.
I then go on to examine the nature of the working relationships which particular
composers have established with other artists, including examples from my own prac-
tice. I examine the different stages of the compositional process, and the nature of the
working relationships which can develop at each stage. I identify the important effect
of the relationship of the language used for communication between working partners
and the language used in the art concerned or the stage of the compositional process. I
suggest that this affects the type of working relationship which develops.

The First Problem—All Artistic Activity Said to Be Collaborative

Miell and Littleton (2004) refer to and argue in favour of their view of ‘ … the essen-
tially collaborative nature of all creative endeavour’ (p. 2). I would suggest that this is a
misapplication of the term collaboration to a concept better described as dialogic artis-
tic creation, originating with Bakhtin (1981). He argues that all artistic creation takes
place in dialogue with an artist’s previous work and the previous work of all other
artists.
The creative artist exists in a world of ideas drawn from many sources, including
their own personal experience, their knowledge of their own and other art, and
their wider cultural and social–political context. The argument is therefore that it is
misleading to identify them as a creator of art solely through their own imagination.
This idea that artists do not create alone has been set out in some detail by
Fontaine and Hunter (2006), who argue that the idea of the writer writing alone is a
‘ … romantic representation of the [process of] production of canonical literature,
music … ’ (p. xxiii).
 Contemporary Music Review 565
An example of the dialogic relationships which underlie artistic creation is the way
in which artists of the Romantic era in Germany worked together in loosely organized
groups outside established structures (Littlejohns, 2006, pp. 51–60). Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and their colleagues are another example. These groups acted as an alterna-
tive to the certitudes of eighteenth-century rationalism by embodying a dialectical
method of thought and discourse.
On the basis of this view that artistic creation is unavoidably dialogic, a number of
authors follow Miell and Littleton (2004) in arguing that there is no fundamental
difference between creating alone in dialogue with many influences, and taking part
in a creative process in which more than one person is an active participant. Fontaine
and Hunter (2006), for instance, write that:

… for dialogic collaboration emerges from a genuine belief that all writing is, by its
very nature, a collaborative activity, that it is social and naturally includes other
people and other writers. (Fontaine & Hunter, 2006, p. 31)

To give an example of this usage of the term collaboration, Ivinson (2004) writes that:
… the art student sitting silently in the still life examination is in collaboration with:
the community of artists who developed the conventions of still life drawing in the
past; with the school through her recognition of what counts as legitimate subject
practice and with her family as she tries to fulfill their expectations through her per-
formance. (p. 96)

I would argue against this all-encompassing usage of the term collaboration. When
creating alone, the creative artist does not have to interact with the sets of influences
and ideas brought into the process by another person. While they may think of other
people while creating, for instance, a composer thinking of the intended performers,
they are not faced with other people present and participating in the creative work.
They only respond to their own knowledge, experiences and environment at the
time of creating.
To describe both lone and shared creative work as collaborative is therefore to
obscure important differences. When artists create together, there are three potential
effects on their work which will not be experienced when an artist creates alone,
which are:

(1) That their work may be limited by the need to find areas of overlap or agree-
ment between their different ranges of knowledge and influences. This may
lead to a process of negotiation to establish areas of common ground, and
to the exclusion of ideas or approaches which are not acceptable to all the
between the partners.
(2) That new ideas, which none of the participants would have developed
alone, may emerge. For instance, Fontaine and Hunter (2006) refer to the
collaborative process as leading to ‘ … the shared creation of new meanings
… ’ (p. xxv). I suggest that this meaning creation through sharing or
566 A. Taylor
inter-action is distinct from creating alone, and that it is likely to result in
different outcomes. It is different in nature from the process by which one
artist creates meaning in dialogue only with their own knowledge and
experience.
(3) That the resulting art will to some extent at least be authored by more than one
person. When a number of people participate in the creative process, questions
may arise concerning how to specify who is the author of the art, since the
ideas it contains and develops would have come from more than one person.

I suggest that the introduction of other people into the creative process makes practical
and conceptual differences. When artists actually work together, rather than just being
influenced by one another, I would argue that this is a special case of dialogic artistic
creation to which additional considerations apply. I therefore suggest that the term col-
laboration should not be used unless there is more than one artist directly involved in
the creative work.

The Second Problem—Different Types of Relationship Described as

Collaborative
The term collaboration has been used to describe a wide variety of types of working
relationship in shared artistic creation. I will argue that it might be more productive
in academic study to distinguish different types of relationship from one another
and to use different terms to describe them. It will then easier to examine the different
working relationships and their effect on the nature of the art which results.
Collaboration is seen in positive terms among artistic creators. As Dillenbourg
(1999) explains ‘When a word becomes fashionable—as it is the case with “collabor-
ation”—it is often used abusively for more or less anything’ (p. 1).
Dobson (2009, p. 6) gives some examples of the range of activities to which the term
collaboration has been applied:

When discussing collaboration we could be talking about anything from indepen-

dent parallel working, characterised most extremely by Cage and Cunningham’s
work, by cooperation where each member of a group performs a distinct role inde-
pendently, or a much more involved approach perhaps seen when musicians impro-
vise and perform Jazz. (p. 6)

I suggest that this wide usage of the term collaboration is an impediment to research on
the subject. It can make it difficult, at times, to understand precisely what kind of
working relationship a writer is describing, since different forms of working relation-
ship are described using this same all-encompassing term.
In the attempt to analyse exactly how two or more people create together, and what
the relationship between them is, it would seem best to begin by looking at the differ-
ent forms which working together can take. We can then see if there are a variety of
forms of relationship and of terms to describe them.
 Contemporary Music Review 567
The first question concerns the process of artistic invention, or imaginative input.
The imaginative contributions made by separate participants may relate to separate
tasks or separate parts of a combined artwork. Alternatively, they may all contribute
to the whole of the artwork or may all contribute to the same part.
John-Steiner (1997) distinguishes co-operative relationships in which ‘ … each
make specific contributions to a shared task … ’ (p. 12) from collaborative relation-
ships where ‘ … participants see themselves engaged in a joint task … ’ (p. 13).
The presence or absence of a separation of tasks, or a division of labour, in the ima-
ginative work can therefore be seen as a basis for distinguishing different types of crea-
tive relationship, with some relationships involving the sharing of a task or tasks and
the others involving a division of tasks. Following John-Steiner (1997), I would suggest
that the term collaboration should be limited to cases where the imaginative tasks are
shared rather than divided between participants.
The other important consideration is the decision-making process, and the presence
or absence of hierarchy between the participants in relation to decision-making. Par-
ticipants may take decisions together, agreeing between them on the imaginative ideas
contributed. Alternatively, one or more people may decide on the contributions made
by others.
For example, Hayden and Windsor (2007), who were studying shared working in
composition, identified three different composer/performer relationships:

(1) Directive: in which there is a hierarchy and the composer instructs the
performers.
(2) Interactive: in which there is negotiation between the partners, ‘ … but ulti-
mately, the composer is still the author’.
(3) Collaborative: in which ‘ … the development of the music is achieved by a
group through a collective decision-making process.’ (p. 33)

They drew these distinctions after analysing a series of case studies of their own work.
In the first two types of relationship, there is a decision-making hierarchy, with the
composer making the decisions. The difference between the two is that in the
second, interactive or consultative, type the performers put forward creative ideas
for the composer to consider.
Hayden and Windsor’s analysis of their case studies suggests that the presence or
absence of hierarchy in decision-making in artistic joint-working is a separate aspect
of the working relationship from the question of the division of labour in artistic
invention.
In cases of their collaborative type, all participants make imaginative inputs, and the
decision-making is shared. Again, following these authors, I would argue that the use
of the term collaboration should be limited to the description of relationships where
decision-making is shared. This points to a way forward in establishing a means of ana-
lysing the different types of working relationship established between artists when they
work together.
568 A. Taylor
A Way Forward. Two Activities to Which the Artistic Imagination Is Applied
My experience is that my creative imagination is applied in two different ways when
composing. They are as follows:

(1) The imagination of ideas, which simply occur to me.

(2) The decision-making or editing of them, on the basis of whether they ‘feel
right’.

This corresponds with the identification of the sharing of imaginative tasks by John-
Steiner (1997, p. 13) and the question of decision-making identified by Hayden and
Windsor (2007, p. 33). I will quote examples of composers, and of a poet, who experi-
ence this same distinction in their work. There will be artists who experience their
process differently. However, I have encountered enough compatible accounts by
artists to have confidence in the identification of these two applications of the artistic
imagination.
John Taverner, for example, describes how ideas simply occur to him (Taverner, 1999,
p. 132) and then separately describes his experience of whether they feel right (p. 145).
McCutchan (1999), in her interviews of a large number of US-based composers on their
creative processes, records many comments which point to the way that creative ideas
appear to arise from the subconscious, and how composers experience a sense of how
and whether they wish to use them. Sloboda, drawing on his own experience as a com-
poser, refers to musical ideas coming ‘ … unbidden … ’ to composers, and that ‘ …
those that please … ’ are retained and used (1985, pp. 107–108). In another field, the
poet Ruth Padel describes her experience of writing in a similar way. She writes:

Writing poems happens in two stages, which I think correspond to using two sides of
the brain. It’s like sculpting: first the imagination, then the chisel. (Padel, 2016, p. 7)

There are likely to be other artists who create with a confidence and rapidity which
leads to these two activities being experienced by them as simultaneous. Most of my
compositional work has taken place when working with other artists, and I find that
the attempt to share slows the imaginative process due to the need to communicate
ideas.
If this distinction between these two activities, the imagination and the editing of
ideas, is accepted as applicable to shared artistic creation at least then the question
will be how each of these imaginative activities can be shared between artists. The
attempt to answer this question points to the existence of two underlying dimensions
which shape and constrain the form taken by shared working relationships in the arts,
or indeed any shared working. They are as follows:

(1) Whether there is sharing or a separation of tasks in the activity of imagination.

(2) Whether there is equality or a hierarchy in the activity of decision-making or
editing.
 Contemporary Music Review 569
A Way of Defining Collaboration
Using these two dimensions—hierarchy in decision-making and division of labour in
artistic imaginative input—the following four types of working relationship can be
distinguished.
This framework can be used as a basis for the critical interrogation of accounts of
working together. I have found that many of the activities described as collaborative
by writers would be better described as examples of one of the other forms of
working together. In particular, many relationships are described as collaborative
when they might be better described as co-operative or consultative.
These latter two terms are well-known concepts with established meanings, that in
one case only the decision-making is shared, and the other case that only the process of
making imaginative inputs or suggestions is shared. When there are well established
and understood terms such as these available for use, I would suggest that we could
avoid the over-wide use of the term collaboration and the potential obscuring of differ-
ences between shared creative processes which may result.
It is important to emphasize that no value judgements are being suggested. To ques-
tion whether a working relationship is collaborative, and to suggest that it might be, for
instance, co-operative, is not to suggest that it is of lower value, but to suggest that it is
different and that it might be better described by a different term.
I suggest that consultative and co-operative relationships are common forms of
working together in the arts, and may be the most common. I also suggest that co-
operative relationships may take two different forms:

(1) Where there is an agreed framework or scenario, perhaps produced collabora-

tively, and then the partners make their contributions separately. I will call this
pre-planned co-operation.
(2) Where the partners work together in making their separate contributions,
sharing decisions on the contributions as they develop. I will call inter-
active co-operation.

One question is whether there might be intermediate states between these four types of
working together. There will certainly be cases where the participants move between
the different types of working relationship as they carry out different phases of the
project on which they are working. For instance, the conception of a combined
artwork may be shared, but the creation of the distinct parts may be carried out
separately.
Also, there might be situations in which a group of people are working in one of the
ways described above, but pressures develop in the process of working, and so the
relationship changes. For instance, a composer may seek a performer’s comments
on a draft piece of music, and may be deciding whether to accept them or not—con-
sultative working. However, their working may become closer and they may begin to
discuss and agree on possible changes to the draft piece. The hierarchy therefore dis-
solves and they may begin to work collaboratively.
570 A. Taylor
Table 1 Forms of working relationship.
Hierarchy in decision-making
Yes No
Division of labour Yes Hierarchical working Co-operative working
(separation of Tasks are divided between the Tasks are divided between
tasks) in participants. One or more the participants, but
imaginative participants decide on the decisions-making is shared.
input. contributions made.
No Consultative working Collaborative working
The participants contribute to The participants share both
the same task or tasks. One or the tasks themselves and the
more people decide on the decisions on the
contributions. contributions.

In my own work, I have found myself in situations in which I was consulting others,
as a composer working with musical performers. While notational decisions were left
to me, I did not always feel entirely free to take decisions on the suggestions made by
performers since to reject them would have seemed like consulting in bad faith. The
question is whether this was a form of working intermediate between consultation
or collaboration, or whether hierarchy had dissolved and we had begun to collaborate,
therefore moving from one form of relationship to another.
Ultimately, however, had the performers made suggestions which I found unaccep-
table, I would have rejected them. There was still the ability to resort to hierarchy in
decision-making, and so the relationship did not really become collaborative.
I suggest that composers may find the framework in Table 1, a valuable basis for
reviewing the working relationships which they develop with other artists when they
are writing. In my own practice, this better understanding of the nature of working
relationships has led me to experiment in the form of such relationship, exploring pos-
sibilities which I would not otherwise have examined. This has resulted in music which
I differ in positive ways from that which I would otherwise have written.

The Language of Communication

I have encountered very few accounts of composers sharing the process of notating
music with others, and those I have found can be said to relate to special circum-
stances. This conclusions follows an extensive survey of the literature of case
studies, interviews which I have conducted with other composers on their projects,
and an examination of my own practice when working with other artists.
Perhaps, then, collaboration in the sense defined here is not possible in composition.
However, the work of notating a complete score is not the only stage of the process.
Composers may spend time developing a concept for a piece, and in generating specific
musical material. They may carry out these tasks prior to producing a fully notated
score. Whereas it may be difficult to share imaginative work and decision-making in
 Contemporary Music Review 571
the process of detailed notation, it may be easier to share one or both of these during
the preparatory stages of composing.
The key factor which appears to me to influence the nature of the relationship which
develops is whether the same language is used in the activity or art form concerned and
in communication between the people working together.
A necessary condition for the development of collaborative relationships is the
ability to share thinking in a way, and in a language, which permits the participants
to share the imaginative tasks involved in ‘ … the shared creation of new meanings
… ’ (Fontaine & Hunter, 2006, p. xxv) and to share them as equals. Moran and
John-Steiner (2004) comment that:

Because collaborators must communicate with each other, collaborators’ inner

speech—their condensed stream of thought that generates creative associations
… must be shared. (p. 15)

Such sharing depends on there being a medium common to the participants in which
the inner speech can be expressed and mutually understood. I suggest that a difference
between the language of the art and that used in discussion will be an impediment to
collaboration. If the languages differ, then it will be necessary to ‘translate’ thoughts
and ideas into a shared language such as speech in order to communicate, and
much will be lost in the translation.
By contrast, jazz improvisers communicate through the same medium as that in
which they are creating, through hearing and improvizing material in a musical
idiom with which they are familiar. Dancers can communicate in the shared develop-
ment of a dance through making movements. Literary writers can discuss their shared
work in words, or speak possible alternative phrases to one another before writing
them down.
A documented example in literary writing is recounted by Saunders (2006), who
describes the working relationship between novelists Ford Maddox Ford and Joseph
Conrad. They wrote stories jointly, and in a reported conversation:

… [Ford Maddox Ford] recalls Conrad interrupting him as he’s reading their [joint]
work aloud: ‘By Jove’ he [Conrad] said, ‘it’s a third person who is writing’. (Saun-
ders, 2006, p. 96)

As a result of their ability fully to share the creative process, the story was identifiably
by a person other than either of the two individual authors.
In the case of jazz, dance, and literary writing, the language used in the art form, and
that used for communication between participants, can be the same. This is not the
case in many art forms and is certainly not the case in the notational stage of
musical compositional.
An example in composition is described by Dillon (2004), who examined school
pupils’ use of music editing software to compose. She considers that this type of soft-
ware enabled pairs of pupils to engage in:
572 A. Taylor
… an ongoing process of production, evaluation and redesigning, from which the
young people were continuously communicating, evolving their ideas and defining
their tasks. (Dillon, 2004, pp. 154–155)

They had the ability to compose and adjust the sound in the act, in effect, of perform-
ing their sound files to themselves through the playback facility in the software, and to
edit them as they listened together. This meant, in her view, that they were able to
develop jointly composed music. They were able to listen together and make adjust-
ments as they worked in a way which would be hard to envisage if they had been com-
posing by writing notes.
In composition through notation, communication with partners must largely rely
on speech, and it would be a slow and difficult process subject to considerable infor-
mation loss. As a result, it may be hard to establish a collaborative relationship, in the
sense defined here, during the stage of detailed notation of the music.

Examples of Working Relationship in Composition

To explore these questions, I will examine a number of examples of composers
working with other artists. I will seek to interpret the relationships which developed
in terms of the typology of relationships as shown in Table 1, noting the factors
which affected the type of relationship which developed.

Example 1. For their work on Appalachian Spring, Aaron Copland and Martha
Graham produced a scenario together. Graham proposed the subject, and the draft
scenario was sent back and forth between them until it was agreed (Robertson,
1991, p. 8). Copland then wrote the music. Graham subsequently produced the chor-
eography. Another account of their work is given by Bentley (1983).
They concluded the process of scenario writing when they were both happy with it,
and there was no hierarchy in the decision-making. The work on the scenario can be
described as collaborative. The language of communication, and that of the scenario,
were written words, and they were able to participate in its productions as equals. To
produce the notation and choreography, they made their contributions separately
within the context of the agreed scenario. I would describe this as pre-planned co-
operative working.

Example 2. Hastings (1983) describes the working relationship between Hindemith

and Massine on the Ballet St Francis, which began with their visiting a church in
Assisi together. He records that:

After viewing these moving frescos together, the composer and the choreographer
selected episodes that seemed appropriate for the ballet they began to plan.
Massine described his vision of each scene, and Hindemith made notes and then
began to play the piano … (Hastings, 1983, p. 120)
 Contemporary Music Review 573
The process of producing the scenario was therefore collaborative. Hindemith then
improvised music in response to a verbal description of the dramatic and choreo-
graphic action. This was a process of inter-active co-operation. While there was a div-
ision of labour, they were stimulated by one another’s ideas and, it must be assumed,
consulted one another on the imaginative ideas developed. The subsequent production
of the full score and the choreography followed, another example of pre-planned co-
operation in the context of an agreed framework.

Example 3. Heisler (2009) describes the work of Richard Strauss on the ballet The
Legend of Joseph. This was produced for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe in 1914.
The working relationship was not good. Strauss was unhappy with the religiosity of
the main character, and sought to subvert this in his music (p. 50). Heisler goes on
to report that:

Massine’s [as Joseph] dancing undermined the collaborator’s initial vision of Joseph
as set down by Hofmannsthal and Kessler [the writers of the scenario]; at the same
time, Massine’s performance was complicated by Strauss’s music for Joseph, and
vice versa. (2009, p. 52)

The writers appear to have produced the scenario and vision for the project without
the involvement of Hindemith and Massine. As a result the composer and choreogra-
pher then developed different views of the piece. The ballet was not regarded as a
success (p. 65). The lack of a collaborative opening phase involving all the partners
appears to have prevented them from working on their separate contributions co-
operatively subsequently.

Example 4. Hayden and Windsor (2007) report on several examples of their own
compositional projects and conclude that the greater the extent to which they
shared the compositional process with performers, the more the resulting score
became a framework for improvization rather than being notated in detail (p. 39).
In other words, the attempt to work collaboratively led them away from a process of
composition through precise notation, and towards a process of improvizing together
to develop an agreed structure which could be followed in performance. They moved
in this direction under the pressure of the need to communicate with the performers
about the music being created. They could share decisions-making on developing the
structure verbally. It would have been hard to share the process of producing precise
notation in this way.

Example 5. A well-established form of collaborative composition is found in the

writing of pop songs, which have often been the work of pairs of song-writers. They
have commonly been long-term collaborators. Bennett (2012) describes this process
in detail. He notes that the writers usually develop lyrics and setting by improvizing
together, in a way that qualifies as collaborative in the sense used here. He notes
574 A. Taylor
thirteen precise characteristics (pp. 142–143) which are shared by the great majority of
pop songs, such as being in one key, the title being part of the lyrics, and the song
subject concerning personal relationships.
The genre is tightly circumscribed and the options available are very limited com-
pared to those in the composition of contemporary music. The main characteristics
of a song are both clear in advance of starting work and are well-known by the
working partners. As a result they are able to share both the process of invention
and the decision-making in full, that is, to collaborate. The lyrics, as words, can be
shared by speaking or singing them. The motivic material is normally
repetitive, and so the improvization of a limited number of motifs and chords can
be fully shared.

Example 6. A significant number of earlier operas are the work of more than one
composer (Hugill, 2012). Pupils or colleagues often wrote sections of operas, and
some well-established operas or versions are the result or completions or rewrites
by composers other than the named authors. Often the composers wrote separate sec-
tions of the operas concerned. For instance, a pupil of Mozart wrote the recitatives for
one of Mozart’s operas since he was short of time (Hugill, 2012). The composers con-
cerned shared a musical language and a deep familiarity with the genre.
I would describe their relationship as co-operative, although in the case of pupils
writing sections of an opera it was probably consultative, with the master making
decisions on the pupil’s work. The composers often shared decision-making on the
music to be written by dividing the work between them. They worked within a
shared concept of the whole opera, but they made their imaginative inputs separately.

Example 7. Turning to my own practice, the work on a piece for a flute, cello and
piano group, the Marsyas Trio, began with attending a rehearsal of theirs, and
asking them for suggestions. They put forward several. I developed a way of combining
three of these and wrote a short piece. On playing this through, they began to invent a
scenario for the action which the music might be said to represent, and suggested that
it felt like a prelude. I wrote a contrasting middle section, drawing on their reactions to
the draft they had played, and followed it by a return to the opening material. The
process of conceptualising the piece was therefore one of suggestions being put to
me, my accepting or responding to them, and then my finding a way of expressing
them in notation.
We carried out the process of notation, workshopping the draft, revisions to the
notation, and then interpretation and performance, as a process of pre-planned co-
operation. We made our separate contributions to create a piece of music within a
concept which we had developed between us through an iterative process, with
ideas put forward and responded to.
The fact that we were working together meant that both notation and interpretation
were affected by the presence of the other participants in the process. I suggest that this
relationship differed conceptually from one where a composer writes without inter-
 Contemporary Music Review 575
action with the players, or the players interpret notation without having interacted
with the composer during its writing.

Example 8. Some years ago, I took part in writing a jointly composed opera, To The
Edge (Taylor, 2004). We began with a team of five composers, reduced to three after a
dispute. We invented procedures for generating characters, a plot, and a libretto. Our
communication was verbal, and the outcomes were written. This permitted a degree of
collaborative working. Even so, one team member worked alone to shape the plot into
a coherent form, and each team member took responsibility for one character and
made decisions on their dialogue.
We did not share imagining or notating the musical setting. We agreed a procedure
whereby one team member would draft a scene, another would revise it, and that we
would assess its success by performing it in a workshop. It was the process of revising
one another’s draft scenes which led to the dispute.
The process was of a degree of collaboration in the production of the plot and
libretto, but of pre-planned co-operation in writing the notation. Each composer
drafted scenes, or revised them on a pre-agreed basis, working with respect to the
overall plan and, when revising, working with the greatest respect to the composer’s
notation.

Example 9. I worked with a librettist on a chamber opera. The subject is the 1381
Peasants’ Revolt. This subject, and the presentation from the point of view of
peasant participants, were my suggestions. She responded by inventing a scenario of
three Acts covering the key stages of the Revolt, and four peasant characters. She con-
sulted me about these, and I made comments which led to the elaboration of the scen-
ario and the fleshing-out of the characters.
She began to write dialogue, and I suggested a number of musical idioms. We
reached the point where I needed to start setting the text, but there was not yet a suffi-
ciently continuous or agreed libretto. I rewrote the text and set it. We discussed the
textual revisions and the setting, and she reworked the text several times, consulting
me as she worked. I also suggested changes to the text.
The process of generating and revising the text was therefore initially consultative,
with each of us producing versions and consulting the other. As time passed
however we began to work together in revising it, that is, collaborating.
The setting of the text was done using musical idioms we had discussed and in the
context of much discussion of the characters and of the drama of the piece. I consulted
her on the setting. We listened to the computer playback, and she made a few sugges-
tions for changes. Then we organized a sing-through, after which we both suggested
changes.
A difference therefore developed between the process of writing the libretto and the
process of setting it. As we became used to working together, the libretto writing
became collaborative, and we communicated through speech. With the musical
setting, it was always left to me to revise the music in the light of comments and
576 A. Taylor
suggestions made. The relationship was always consultative, with the writer making
suggestions for me to consider on listening to the played-through notation.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that shared artistic creation is a special case of the universal
process of dialogic artistic creation. I have then presented a framework drawing on the-
ories about collaboration which provides a basis for distinguishing different types of
working relationship in shared artistic creation. I suggest that this framework can be
used in describing and analysing the processes of joint artistic working. I suggest
that it provides a way of avoiding the potential ambiguities in research which may
result from the over-wide use of the term collaboration to describe a range of different
types of relationship.
The analysis has implications for the way the compositional process is viewed. Com-
posers almost always work alone when producing detailed notation, inventing
material, and making decisions on its development. They do so in the context of,
and with reference to, the people they are working with, and of course within their
general aesthetic and social context.
In some cases, composers work within an agreed scenario, produced collaboratively,
and in this sense they can be said to be co-operating with another artist who makes
their own separate contribution such as choreography. The relationship between com-
posers and performers can also follow this pattern. They may have collaborated in
developing the concept for the piece, and then carried out their separate tasks of nota-
tion and interpretation in order to produce music as a form of pre-planned co-
operation.
Alternatively, composers may consult their partners on the notation written and
may make amendments. However, the barrier represented by the difficulty in commu-
nicating with one another in the language of the art in order to share in the process of
notating music means that they are generally unable to collaborate in this part of the
process. The few exceptions to this concern genres which are tightly pre-defined,
greatly limiting the number of options available and so permitting a collaborative
approach.
The stage of the conceptualization of a piece of music may however be shared more
closely, and collaboration at this stage is possible. The language of communication is
commonly verbal, but can extend to the generation of small fragments of music which
can be discussed and agreed. Equally, composers may collaborate in the development
of a scenario for a combined artwork or in the writing of a libretto.
I suggest that the analytical framework presented here is helpful in illuminating the
nature of the working relationships found in different stages of the compositional
process. I have found it helpful in reflecting on my own working relationships in com-
posing, and in provoking me to develop forms of relationship which I might not other-
wise have attempted. It may help other composers to develop their current practice and
try new ways of working with others. Through offering a guide to approaches which
 Contemporary Music Review 577
are likely to work, and the constraints which affect the type of working relationships
which develop, it provides a basis for both reviewing past relationships and experi-
menting in the development of new ones.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Paul Barker and Dr Zachary Dunbar, for comments
on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Alan Taylor http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1014-7228

References
Arts Council England. (2013). Great arts and culture for everyone: 10 Strategic Framework: 2010-2020
(2nd ed.). Revised 2013. Retrieved June 8, 2014, from http://issuu.com/artscouncilengland/
docs/ac_10year_strategy_text_aw_for__pdf/1?e=9197550/5397621
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Barrett, M. (2006). ‘Creative collaboration’: An ‘eminence’ study of teaching and learning in music
composition. Psychology of Music, 34, 195–218. doi:10.1177/0305735606061852
Bennett, J. (2012). Constraint, collaboration and creativity in popular songwriting teams. In
D. Collins (Ed.), The act of musical composition (pp. 139–169). Farnham, VT: Ashgate.
Bentley, E. (1983). Martha Graham’s journey. In R. Copeland & M. Cohen (Eds.), What is dance?
Readings in theory and criticism (pp. 197–202). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dillenbourg, P. (1999). Introduction; What do you mean by ‘Collaborative Learning’?
In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative learning: Cognitive and computational approaches
(pp. 1–19). Amsterdam: Pergamon.
Dillon, T. (2004). It’s in the mix baby: Exploring how meaning is created within music technology
collaborations. In D. Miell & K. Littleton (Eds.), Collaborative creativity: Contemporary
perspectives (pp. 144–157). London: Free Association Books.
Dobson, E. (2009). Serious misunderstandings: Challenging the educational and creative value of col-
laboration for music technology undergraduates. Forum for Innovation in Music Technology,
Leeds College of Music.
Fontaine, S. I., & Hunter, S. M. (2006). Collaborative writing in composition studies. Boston, MA:
Thomson Wadsworth.
Goehr, L. (1992). The imaginary museum of musical works: An essay in the philosophy of music. Oxford,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Hastings, B. (1983). Choreographer and composer. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers.
Hayden, S., & Windsor, L. (2007). Collaboration and the composer: Case studies from the end of the
20th century. Tempo, 61, 28–39. doi:10.1017/S0040298207000113
Heisler, Jr., W. (2009). The ballet collaborations of Richard Strauss. Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press.
Hugill, R. (2012). Collaborative opera. Retrieved March 1, 2013, from http://hugill.blogspot.co.uk/
2012/09/collaborative-opera.html?spref=tw
578 A. Taylor
Ivinson, G. (2004). The social consequences of classroom art: Collaboration, social identities and
social representations. In D. Miell & K. Littleton (Eds.), Collaborative creativity:
Contemporary perspectives (pp. 96–109). London: Free Association Books.
John-Steiner, V. (1997). Notebooks of the mind: Explorations of thinking. Oxford, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Littlejohns, R. (2006). Collaboration as ideology: The theory and practice of ‘sociability’ in German
Romanticism. In S. Bigliazzi & S. Wood (Eds.), Collaboration in the arts from the middle ages to
the present (pp. 51–60). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Making Music. (2014). Adopt a composer. Retrieved September 12, 2014, from http://www.
makingmusic.org.uk/our-work/projects/adopt-a-composer
McCutchan, A. (1999). The muse that sings: Composers speak about the creative process. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Miell, D., & Littleton, K. (2004). Collaborative creativity: Contemporary perspectives. London: Free
Association Books.
Moran, S., & John-Steiner, V. (2004). How collaboration in creative work impacts identity and
motivation. In D. Miell & K. Littleton (Eds.), Collaborative creativity: Contemporary perspec-
tives (pp. 11–25). London: Free Association Books.
New Dots. (2014). New Dots: Our composers & film-makers. Retrieved November 7, 2014, from http://
www.newdots.org.uk/composers.aspx
Padel, R. (2016, November 19). My working day. The Guardian Review, p. 7.
Robertson, M. (1991). Musical and choreographic integration in Copland’s and Graham’s
Appalachian spring. The Musical Quarterly, 83, 2–27.
Saunders, M. (2006). Secret agencies. Ford, conrad, collaboration and conspiracy. In S. Bigliazzi & S.
Wood (Eds.), Collaboration in the arts from the middle ages to the present (pp. 91–101).
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Sloboda, J. (1985). The musical mind: The cognitive psychology of music. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Taverner, J. (1999). The music of silence: A composer’s testament. London: Faber & Faber Ltd.
Taylor, A. (2004). To the edge. Retrieved June 3, 2016, from http://at.orpheusweb.co.uk/opera/
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Copyright of Contemporary Music Review is the property of Routledge and its content may
not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.