14 September 2010
Creativity in Musical Composition
This article gives some background to the way creativity in musical composition is being explored. It attempts to show that method is a core issue in finding ways to agree on the value attached to music that we compose, play, hear and analyse, when we say that it is creative. It reviews methods and concepts that have potential and limitations for explaining creativity in a musical context. In particular, definition is seen as counterproductive in encapsulating what creativity is like and how it is used. This leads to five axioms that the writer believes need to be satisfied if we are to gain any prospect of advancing our understanding of musical creativity. Invitations are being made to composers to contribute to and benefit from the project via personal interview with the writer.
Music permeates all societies and cultures in one form or
another. Whether 'world music' - blending all musics - really
exists is often debated [Howard, 2010]. Western art music in the
21st century is, in reality, a modest innovation within the wide
spectrum of musics. Pluralism undermines comparison of one music
in reference to others, so that finding worth and value via a
universal touchstone of musical creativity may not be possible
across musics. In addition, even within Western art music itself,
divisions occur if new works are regarded as one-offs, rather
than contributing to a recognised genre, structure or form.
Yet we all 'judge' art music, new or otherwise, often by whether
the composer and performers were creative in bringing music to
the listener. The analyst and listener can also perceive
creatively. So why concentrate on trying to find a workable usage
for 'creativity in musical composition'? I think to do so might
find a valuable and oft-hidden methodology.
But what constitutes method here? Attempting to be definitive
about musical creativity seems sensible at first, but definitions
emerge from consensus and this means creativity would be subsumed
into convention, which is an oxymoron.
A fugue can evolve in new ways without having to rely on a formal
definition beforehand, and musos are good at recognising
fugue-like features. A concept in the mind becomes a score and/or
performance, but that does not represent everything the work can
offer. No matter how many times we play or hear some works, they
generate newness for us, which can then be related to creative
content.
Persuasion is a vital part of musical methods and can come from
both the generator and the receiver. The cadence is a persuasion
to conclusion, but can be achieved in so many different ways.
Constellation, juxtaposition, spectralism, silence and minimalism
are now vital means of creating interest in music. Collage
assembles objects and montage assembles film and movement.
Similarly, sontage assembles sounds, and the creativity in all
these '-ages' is crucially in the arrangement chosen.
Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments is a
sontage, persuading by juxtaposition.
Composing that includes creativity is also not necessarily
reasonable or rational, for creativity comes from a work altering
our sense of the logical. When we inevitably get used to the
creativity, the work becomes banal. The rate at which banality
sets in is most probably in inverse proportion to the creative
content of the work in the first place.
Finding how we can identify creativity in musical compositions,
in conjunction with their performance, can lead to better value
judgements on all types of music. Success comes from a more
coherent understanding of how canon is being made and how a
consensual base on worth is being formed. No precision is
possible here, but achievements may be prophetic in predicting
where new music might next be made. But good method still needs
to be found.
Science is objective and lacks the nuance of human value
judgement, even in a social science context. A new composition is
not judged true or false, and, in music, we do not try to refute
a hypothesis. In the converse, a purely subjective and aesthetic
judgement lacks because it is a product of an elite, often
determined by faction and personality.
In an attempt to choose method that avoids both limitations, I am
interacting with a group of contemporary composers, getting to
know them, interviewing them, and examining some of their works,
as well as composing myself (invitations to be interviewed for
this program are being made all the time - if you would like to
take part as a composer, please send me email at
rwil7157@uni.sydney.edu au). I am noting how these composers
arrive at their composing stance and what or who motivates them.
In particular, they have been asked from many different
directions what they think is creative in their work and what is
generating 'good process, product and behaviour' Sometimes they
have seen the words 'composing' and 'creating' as synonymous.
I am primarily dealing with instrumental works in which meaning
is not present until a composer, performer or listener places it
there. Choral works are included but their meaning is often
prescribed by words already chosen. Formal analytic methods such
as Schenkerian analysis, Forte's pitch class sets, Nattiez's
discretisation, Morris's semiology, Adorno's authority and
sovereignty, historicity, authenticity and fidelity to composers'
intentions, are no longer sufficient. Critical theory and
postmodernism, for better or worse, have rendered such paradigms
and (para)metrics too constricting. Each needs to be assessed
meta-methodically as to whether it generates substantive and
relevant judgements on new works. I think that method must now
satisfy a number of axioms to justify usage by relating them
closely to what we term creativity.
Firstly, music is. If method detracts from a composition being
composed, performed and experienced by anybody who wishes, in
their own way, it is a hindrance. There is no rightness or
wrongness in form, structure or style or how to create or hear
music. Commodification of contemporary art music is based on
economic rationalism and makes no comment - aesthetic, ethical,
artistic or otherwise - on value except as money. Artistically
creative people are not necessarily motivated primarily by money
but some would hastily add that finance does help.
Secondly, 'polished' music is not ultimately an experiment. We
may experiment to find a finished form, structure or style (or
none at all), on which to base our composition. But when composer
and performers 'let go' of the work, it is finished for better or
worse, notwithstanding revisions and the like, which are also new
and finished in their own right. Sketches are experimentation,
but we do not perform sketches. Artistically creative people do
experiment with form and the like to find effective formulae.
However, the form should support their inspiration not the
reverse, for if it did, the result would itself be formulaic and
no more creative than for the plot of Movie Title N, where N is
greater than one.
Thirdly, musicological analytics of any kind shoe-horn music into
a constrictive definition mainly for the benefit of the analyser,
but always leaves remainders that are unexplained, ill understood
or misrepresented. Creative people open up open-ended paths, so
that remainder is a vital element in the understanding of how
creative the composer was. For it is the remainder that is the
source of ongoing interest and enjoyment in the work, delaying
the onset of banality.
Fourthly, a transcendental dimension to assessment cannot be
ruled out. Emotions are, as Meyer claimed, an inextricable
component to music and the stuff of inspiration. To look for the
meaning of emotions in the phenomenal alone is to bake the
soufflé, appreciate the aromas, but not benefit by consuming
it.
Fifthly, music is not language in the verbal sense. It can
communicate in ways that words cannot. A verbal explanation does
not need to be added to a performance to experience its worth -
being there is enough. This also raises the problem of what real
benefit recordings are. Though recordings are invaluable in
tracing historical and developmental aspects of music, giving
access to those who otherwise cannot experience performance, they
are but a reflection on live music, the essence of which is an
attendant immediacy and uniqueness of the moment. Musical archive
as analysis and recording is helpmate, not authority, and the
merits of these two opposites are being frequently debated by
historians.
Musical zeitgeist cannot now be said to be devoid of 'world
music', whatever that means. We all travel and communicate so
much more than previously and have become frequented with music
around the world that inexorably invades our creative space. That
will out in compositions in one way or another, and to deny that
such hybrid influences and products take place is Canutish. Music
in the 21st century contains the postmodern, even though
postmodernism's death is frequently announced. New music also
contains increasing formula via algorithm and computerisation,
generating inestimable capacity for 'new' sounds.
Bennett [2008] found that composers quite rightly showed that
each was prepared to interpret what terms like postmodern meant
to them and to reflect as such in their music. But what is the
creativity of such offerings? Is it in the development of
algorithm (more and more enacted by computer), the invention of a
new algorithmic base, a Derrida-type difference or 'differance'
heard by the ear - or what? Is it in the facilitation of means
way beyond that which was possible via the purely mechanical -
extending human control yet again? But, more importantly, in my
frame of reference, what is creative and valued in musical
terms?
Critical theorists state that any basis of assessment has itself
to be questioned too. We also know that no method chosen will
guarantee us achieving the goal. But by adopting a pose that
looks for the creative in music, by whatever means can be made to
work, we will take a step nearer to making some sense of how to
appreciate the value of new musical offerings and to appreciate
the immense musical heritage already available to us.
References:
Bennett, D. (2008). Sounding Postmodernism. Sydney:
Australian Music Centre.
Howard, K. (2010). What is World Music? Whose World and Whose
Music?. University of Sydney: Conservatorium of Music, Public
Lecture Series: Contexts. 23 April 2010.
© Australian Music Centre (2010) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to reproduce this article either online or in print.
Richard Willgoss has been researching creativity for around ten years, adding it into an already long academic engineering career. His interest in the topic deepened when studying for a BMus and BA in philosophy at the University of New South Wales recently. He then extended that interest into how musical works are termed ‘creative’, in conjunction with composing himself and having a few works performed publicly. He is now studying for a doctorate on this topic with Anne Boyd and Keith Howard at the Sydney University Conservatorium of Music.
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