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This chapter begins by setting out the purpose of the book, which is to deal with complex musical issues previously regarded as intractably abstract, complex, and difficult to subject to empirical enquiry. The topics of musical imagination and creativity, from the points of view of both musical perception and musical production, involve fundamental concepts of core importance to all aspects of music-making, and psychologists are beginning to make a demonstrable contribution to their understanding and practical application. The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. The second section discusses the conceptual distinctions between creativity and imagination, and also the associated field of imagery. The third section deals with the social, cultural, and musical contexts of musical imagination, which draw on the disciplines of musicology, sociology, and ethnomusicology. The fourth section focuses on the neuroscientific approach, which is probably the most rapidly-growing branch of contemporary music psychology, and the fifth deals with the vitally important yet neglected topic of improvisation, and in particular its widespread use in music therapy. The final section takes a brief and speculative look ahead at what the future might hold.

Through its emphasis on experimental cognitive psychology and approach to classical music as ‘high art’, the old 1980s paradigm for music psychology failed to point out the social, emotional, and financial value that music has to the general public going about their everyday lives. The topics of research that the social and applied paradigm leads to may be new to music psychology but in fact have been a concern to society for centuries now. It is surprising then that other topics dominated music psychology until only recently. But social psychological and applied issues are now at the heart of the discipline. This chapter states a hope and belief that the social and applied psychology of music is well placed to put the case for the defence of music as a cherished object in 21st-century society.

The psychology of music is a well-established discipline and has been instrumental in understanding social and cultural phenomena that regularly transpire in human beings' daily lives. As a formative and well-founded discipline of study, the psychology of music has its own institutions, empirical methods, research agenda, and a wide range of publications. Since the book generally focuses on trying to understand phenomena and to answer questions related to music and veers away from reflecting on the psychology of music as a well-established discipline, this chapter attempts to compensate by providing a foundation on the book's primary field of study. This final chapter presents a brief history of the psychology of music which dates back to the era of well-known Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Aristoxenus. This brief account presents how the psychology of music has developed over time and how the discipline looks at present in this contemporary era. Its development, however, brought forth a number of preoccupations and blind spots which this chapter touches upon as it closes.

This chapter summarizes the many ways in which music and marketing relate to one another. It argues that the range of the effects that music can have on consumer behaviour is striking. The available research suggests that the ‘right’ kinds of music can typically lead to increases in turnover of around 10 per cent, such that piped music makes clear commercial sense. Note also that different types of music very clearly have different effects. Businesses cannot regard music as a homogeneous sonic mass.

The preceding 32 chapters of this volume reveal the healthy state of the current field of music and emotion. This final chapter comments on the history of the field, summarizes current trends, and proposes future directions for research.

This chapter describes a highly significant shift in the fundamental paradigm of music psychology to a greater emphasis on purposes, implications, and naturalistic methodologies. The chapter states that currently it is impossible to consider social topics without considering applied topics, and vice versa. This book describes the experimental research that has addressed the structure and content of composition/performance and musical taste. On musicianship, it describes the research on how being a musician helps to formulate identity and on the potential association between musicianship and intellectual ability. On music listening, it describes how people use music actively in everyday situations to address immediate goals. It also describes to the role of music in adolescent subculture; and the role of music in producing profit and health. It also discusses the means of optimally-educating future musicians.

This chapter examines the different ways in which performance can be said to be creative, discusses the significance of these different varieties of creativity, and explores some of the varied manifestations of creativity that can be found in performance. It discusses improvisation, arguing that existing literature tends to focus upon the cognitive aspects of real-time music creation and that there is still much to be learned about its social and contextual aspects, and how these influence the process and outcomes of improvisational practices. Creativity in performance takes place at the interface between socially constructed musical materials and performance practices, the possibilities and constraints of the human body and instruments with which it interacts, and the perceptual, motor, and cognitive skills of individual performers. The psychology of music has made some progress in studying this complex phenomenon, particularly in understanding the cognitive processes that underlie this highly regarded behaviour.

This chapter believes that there are five important characteristics of a healthy paradigm: an agreed set of central problems; agreed methods for working on these problems; agreed theoretical frameworks in which to discuss them; techniques and theories which are specific to the paradigm; research which is appropriate to the whole range of phenomena in the domain being studied. Although parts of this recipe have been present in different research endeavours, the full set has only recently emerged at one time and within a research community who intercommunicate their ideas and results. Journals such as Music Perception and regular conferences, have been, and continue to be vitally important to the health of the discipline. The chapter takes each of the five characteristics of a paradigm in turn, and elaborates on them in the context of the psychology of music.

This chapter discusses the psychological functions of music in the aforementioned event. Music, according to this chapter, has four major functions classified into four categories: Ordering and organizing time; Representing and expressing people and values; Controlling and facilitating participation and observation; and Channelling and expressing emotions. Using Princess Diana's funeral as a case in point, the chapter delves on each function by presenting concrete and factual events that took place during Princess Diana's funeral. This chapter also shares valuable insights on the psychology of music and how it differs from musicology. This chapter closes with a comprehensive synthesis of the topics and discussions that the book will delve into in the succeeding chapters.

The ability to read music is, if not essential, an irreplaceable asset to anyone who indulges in musical activity. There are two points that need to be established: firstly, that influential commentators on psychological aspects of music have, in fact, had very little to say about music reading; secondly, that this neglect is unjustified in consideration of the importance of musical literacy for overall musical competence. This book argues further, however, that the reading facility is not simply a useful additional skill for a musician to have, it is, in a sense, necessary for full membership of the musical community. The book shows that the psychological study of music reading is an important area of the psychology of music which nevertheless has bearing on central theoretical and practical issues in music. It offers one important route to a better understanding of the nature of musical cognition itself.

This chapter poses several questions regarding useful criteria to evaluate research in music psychology, deciding what to research, and whether to carry out research at all. In exploring them it is necessary to address broader questions, to do with the social responsibilities of scientists, academics, and educated citizens. Attitudes towards values and priorities are so intimately connected to a person's social context and background that removing them from the discourse can hide key assumptions that motivate the argument. The chapter further discusses that the lack of attention to social benefit may also be a consequence of employment culture. The chapter then presents some characterisation of what different levels of socially responsible academic engagement might look like. The template postulates four successive social engagement levels, which involve increasingly prominent roles for considerations impacting on academic activity ‘from the outside’.

The role of music in worship is not a topic that has greatly exercised psychologists. Both the psychology of music and the psychology of religion are very much ‘fringe’ topics in contemporary psychology. The number of psychologists interested in both must be tiny. This chapter takes a phenomenological approach to worship. That is to say, the chapter concentrates on what it understands people to be doing or feeling in worship, and tries to describe this in theologically neutral language. Where it has seemed necessary, for ease of expression, to use terms like ‘God’, the chapter is neither claiming to be theologically precise nor attempting to use any particular set of dogmatic assumptions, whether Christian or otherwise, to support the arguments. It further shows that one has choices about the mental processes one engages in a musical context, and discusses musical ineffability.