Authorship and Musical Resources

This thesis investigates how collective creative music-making can be designed to give space to artistic expression, creativity, and interaction. Situated at the intersection of artistic and educational research, the study is based on an analytical autoethnographic method, in which the researcher reflects on his own role as a composer in a year-long collaboration with primary school students.

The theoretical framework draws on creativity theory and social semiotic multimodal theory, analysing how semiotic resources – such as sounds, images, words, and emoji symbols – function as musical tools in the creation of musical meaning.

A central concept in the study is authorship, used to understand how music-makers – both the composer and the students – contribute with initiatives, expressions, and artistic ideas. The study explores how musical resources can inspire both individual and collective expressions, and how different forms of musical authority influence the development of the creative process. When music-makers jointly explore and negotiate forms of expression and working methods, new possibilities for collaboration and innovation emerge. The study also highlights how a composer’s perspective can be deepened through encounters with co-creators, where rules, roles, and resources interact to enable participation, variation, and artistic depth.