Creativity beyond innovation: Musical performance and craft

While creativity has been defined in a multiplicity of ways across disciplines, scholars generally agree that it involves the generation of ideas or products that are novel, of value, and appropriate to the field. Yet by too readily connecting creativity in musical performance to innovation, does this model neglect the more inconspicuous and unrecognised, but no less valuable, dimensions of creativity in score-based performance? This article offers a characterisation of musical performance situated within a framework of craft, by tracing rehearsal strategies employed in two new performance projects: the rehearsals for, and first performance of Four Duets for clarinet and piano (2012) by Edmund Finnis, written for Mark Simpson and Víkingur Ólafsson; and a recording made by Antony Pay of Alexander Goehr’s Paraphrase for solo clarinet Op. 28 (1969). My argument draws attention to “everyday” aspects of music-making, in which musicians make decisions in engaging with their work which are less explicit than the conventional “moments of revelation” that are prevalent in the literature, but which are nonetheless significant. Acknowledging these attributes of musicians’ performance practices can serve to develop a more nuanced understanding of creativity based on processes rather than outcomes, in order to move beyond a paradigm that opposes notated permanence to improvised transience

New tools for measuring global academic performance

The study is on performance measurement in academia. It aims at developing and validating the measurement scale for the performance of higher institutions. The items were developed based on the extant literature. Data were collected via an online survey in which a questionnaire link was sent to 269 vice chancellors/presidents of the sampled universities. A total of 133 responses were retrieved at the end of the data collection period. This study used proportionate random sampling for sample selection. The goodness of measures was checked via field experts, academicians, and data analysis with SPSS. Overall, the alpha coefficient was .974. The outcome of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) exposed all factors loaded more than 0.50. The results revealed that the instrument was reliable and valid. Hence, the instrument developed was suitable to be used in examining the performance of higher institutions