Unveiling artistic minds: case studies of creativity

Research on musical creativity and expertise principally relies on cross-sectional or longitudinal experiments comparing groups of subjects (e.g. musicians vs. non-musicians, professional vs. amateur musicians). While this is vital, case studies of individuals may provide valuable insight into the variability underlying real-world creative musical performance and improvisation. We survey recent case study experiments on musical disorders, musical savants, and unique musical abilities as well as exploratory experiments that have studied renowned musicians as single data points. Using these, we build the argument that future research should utilize case studies to gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of creative musical processes, particularly in world-class musicians whose distinctive talent may reveal unknown information about artistic creativity.