The role of science in the processes of musical creation is justifiable as a method of formalizing knowledge used for expressive purposes. The understanding of musical phenomena, however, should not be reduced to cognitive aspects or entrusted to a purely descriptive iteration; certain creative functions of musical composition go beyond the many degrees of control offered by the technologies of knowledge. The necessity of comparison with the cultural orientation of an audience, sometimes considered secondary by some, must remain integral. Our interest in qualitatively new creative and intellectual acts must not abandon the dialectical character of musical communication, which involves, among other things, a shared linguistic universe.

Denis Smalley devoted himself to the elaboration of a method based on the analysis of spectral transformations by connoting sonorous motions and adopting metaphors borrowed from non-musical contexts. While considering Smalley's earlier theorising within the context of past and contemporary research, this paper focuses on the use of non-musical models in spectromorphological design in order to show how sonorous qualities, imaginative factors and extra-musical meanings concurred in defining new cognitive itineraries and in extending the terminology adopted, thereby establishing the basis of a new compositional approach.

This paper discusses temporal narratives and musical action, focusing on the decentralization trends in models, means, objects, knowledge and objectives of artistic creation on the Net. In a widespread cognitive environment, diachronic and spatial communication values have to be adapted. The development of linguistic flows, codified according to digital models, leads net users to interact in a different way. In a decentralized environment, many conditions for composing and listening to music may be subordinated to the conception of creative thought as a combination of recursive, connective, and systemic processes, which redefine not only the concept of musical object and sound space, but also that of music itself.

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