Student Profiles

Shira Lee Katz, Human Development and Education

Doctoral student Shira Lee Katz focused much of her energy this summer on interviewing 25 composers for her qualifying paper.

She traveled to Chicago, Western Massachusetts, and New York speaking to, and learning from, composers, two of whom have won Pulitzer Prizes for music.

"It's very exciting," Katz said. "I learned so much about how these accomplished composers think and work. I feel very fortunate to have gotten these interviews."

Katz, now entering her fourth year as a doctoral student at HGSE, is researching how new music composers at various stages of human development discuss the way they incorporate inspirational influences into their compositions.

"Shira's study is original and timely," said Hobbs Professor Howard Gardner, Katz's dissertation adviser. "In the future, anything that can be done by machine will be; and so an understanding of the processes that stimulate creative thought is especially important. It is crucial that we understand the full range of human competences and creations, including those in the arts. In this regard, I note that more people have been celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth than any other event from 1756."

Katz explains that many of the composers she has interviewed are eager to learn more about the creative process of other composers. "Composers are used to hearing analyses and critiques of their products--their scores--but few have been exposed to information about the creative process," she said. "And a lot of composers are interested in hearing about [the process] and ways that this can translate into teaching for their own students since many are professors as well."

In order to understand how the creative process works for composer, Shatz asks them how various factors (e.g., environmental stimuli, theories, sounds, personal experiences, spirituality) have influenced their work. While she's still in the beginning stages of analyzing her data, Katz thinks it possible that there is a group of composers that may draw information from non-musical content domains and apply their highly evolved knowledge of these domains to their compositions. For example, one composer that she interviewed was fascinated with and intimately familiar with theoretical physics. He used his knowledge from this domain when he developed the seminal idea for one of his pieces.

"My hunch is that some composers are amazingly good at applying information and ideas about non-music domains to the music domain," Katz said.