Divergent Production Abilities as Constructs of Musical Creativity

The investigation concerned the construction of a test of musical creativity that would assess the hypothesized divergent production abilities of music fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, and quality in school instrumental music students. The developed test, Measures of Musical Divergent Production (MMDP), was based on models of Guilford and Torrance. Tests were scored for the number of improvised phrases produced, shifts of musical content, varied use of musical content, rarely used content, and music appeal. Evidence for content validity was provided by expert opinion. The multiple correlation of the five ability scores with teacher ratings of musical creativity was .57. Factors of fluency, flexibility, originality, and quality were demonstrated. Only quality scores were not distinct from measures of general intelligence. Reliability coefficients were moderately high. MMDP scores showed no pattern of correlation with selected music aptitude and achievement test scores and were not dependent on age, music training, or experience.