The way we blend: Rethinking conceptual integration through intermedial and open

The article overviews the basic assumptions and limitations of conceptual blending theory (CBT) as applied to music, and reconsiders the implications of the theory for musical creativity. CBT accounts of music have until now relied quite extensively on examples of music-as-product, and rarely considered the various levels of mediation between composition, performance and listening. It is therefore argued that an investigation of more process-based paradigms could hold significant ramifications for CBT. This argument is elaborated through a discussion of three intermedial, open-form scores by Earle Brown, Pauline Oliveros and Jennifer Walshe. The scores are considered as documents of situations where one or more performers partake, as active agents, in the composition, completion and elaboration of new cross-domain blends, as well as in the disintegration of already blended concepts. This conscious disintegration or unpacking of blends in performance is discussed as a significant aspect of the musical blending process as such, and one that deserves further consideration in creative conceptual blending research