I thought of this years ago after one of my compositions was performed. I thought, “How will I ever top that?” My answer came from Beethoven, when I wondered if he must not have felt, “How will I top the Moonlight Sonata? The Fifth Symphony?” Of course Beethoven did not stop composing, and we have so many more musical riches because of that; I’m sure I need hardly mention the Ninth Symphony, the Appassionata, ¬†and the late quartets.

So it is interesting to read Mr Cuse’s struggle with what to do next, now that “Lost” has wrapped up its run. As he puts it,

…even the most talented among us, after an intense period of work on a project, struggle with the question, “What do I do next?”

Then there’s the typical struggle of wondering

…what, if anything, would get me excited to go back to work.

My answer has always been to keep writing, no matter what. Keep the creative habit going. Eventually you will find, as Mr. Cuse does here, that inspiration comes when least expected and in the strangest of places.

The full article can be found by clicking here.

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Photo by Michelle V. Agins for the New York Times

So far, said Candace Hoyte, a supervisor at the Manhattan store, the instruments have drawn a steady stream of attention, especially from children. They skip past the video game stations and head straight for the instruments, banging away at Roland electronic drums or tapping on one of the dozen or so keyboards, she said.

What–passing up video games?! Perhaps parents might now start to serve up a musical instrument to their child rather than a new video game system.

And what might it suggest about the human condition–and about music–that the desire to express oneself through music is so appealing and such a draw?

I find myself wondering what kind of music education, if any, these children receive. Will they ever learn to play an instrument? To read music? To compose? For the sake of our shared humanity, I hope so!

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Now, perhaps this is common and perhaps not, but I already knew the Beethoven very well, as my love of classical music came from through listening to recordings. I suspect nowadays most people hear classical music for the first time as a record. When I was a junior high and high school student, I had a set of complete Beethoven symphonies which I listened to over and over again. But what a difference a live performance made!

I thought about these things as I read this article in today’s New York Times about the low quality of playback evident in the MP3 players that everyone now owns.

But iPods and compressed computer files–the most popular vehicles for audio today–are “sucking the life out of music”

states an audio engineer in the article.

True?

In fact, there is a long tradition of worry and hand-wringing over the advance of recorded technology infringing on live performance. Does a player piano, for instance, have the musical soul of a live performer? Does a record? This was one of the big concerns of Theodor Adorno, who cautioned about the commodification of  music through easy reproduction.

I won’t offer any polemics here in favor (or not) of Adorno’s argument. After all, Beethoven was exposed to me via record because, as a youngster, I did not live near a symphony orchestra. In other words, without technology, I might have missed out on classical music all together.

But I will quickly add that nothing can replace the experience of a live performance, so while you may spend lots of time listening to radio, TV, internet streaming, or whatever, be sure to get yourself to a live performance every now and then. You might be surprised!

The post On Audio Fidelity appeared first on Richard D. Russell.

For instance, here’s Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting, including this bit about aiming your songs especially to an audience of women. The idea is that men sing songs for women, and women sing songs for women. It’s much more rare in popular music that songs are sung especially for men. So why not do what’s popular?

One can argue this point, of course (“Hey Jude”?), but for the sake of the argument, I’ll take this at face value, because it really got my curiosity going.

Compose for…whom exactly?

Gendered perspectives of classical music has been a hot topic in the last 3–4 decades. I am reminded of Fred Maus’s excellent article, “Masculine Discourse in Music Theory,” which argues (amongst other points) that one reason music became so theory-based in the twentieth century was to be more scientific and less “feminine.” Male composers wanted to appear masculine for their colleagues. (See Perspectives of New Music,¬†Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 264–293)

I wonder if there is anything to all this. I also wonder what is would sound like if I wrote for just a female audience only… or just a male audience! A little thought exercise that might lead to something.

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the kitchen sink

A fascinating read, which you can access here.

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Andrew Bird

Ultimately, I think that writing about music is a deliberate act and has nothing to do with creating music. The latter is mostly an involuntary response to being alive.

He also writes:

I think we’ve all got a well that can be tapped and there follows the sort of sequencing or curating of one’s own ideas.

There’s some truth to this. I mull it over when I write about music. I deliberate over each word.

I do this when I write music, too, but my first instinct when composing is to just get it out. You should curate your ideas and collect them. It’s better not to edit yourself as as you go along. (As opposed to writing words, where I do edit as I go along.) The idea when writing music is to let the inspiration carry you, involuntarily, to where you need to go! Besides, you can always edit later, after all!

You can read Andrew Bird’s comments, along with several other songwriters, at this New York Times blog for songwirters.

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Hegel, 1770–1831

Recently I read a paper by Robert J. Sternberg in which he applied this line of thinking to creativity. He maintains that intelligence is the prevailing status quo “thesis,” against which creative people are seen as nonconformists who think outside the box. This would explain why creative people sometimes have a hard time fitting in.

But of course, being only intelligent isn’t great; nothing new ever happens. Being only creative isn’t great, either. Sternberg proposes that wisdom is the synthesis of these two forces, “balancing the old with the new.” He writes:

Wise people recognize the need to balance intelligence with creativity to achieve both stability and change within a societal context.

(The cited article is “What is the Common Thread of Creativity” from the April 2001 American Psychologist, Vol 56. No. 4, 360–362.)

What are the ramifications of this idea in relation to your own creative process?

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This is not a pipe.

Personal creativity can also be understood as a kind of postconventional behavior. Postconventionality was originally proposed by Kohlberg (1987) to describe the highest level of moral development, or at least the highest level of moral reasoning. The earlier stages are preconventional (the child does not have the cognitive capacity to grasp “rules,” “morals,” or “conventions” of any sort) and conventional (the individual blindly conforms to what others do and expect). I suggested that the conventional stage is apparent not only in moral reasoning but also in creative performances… It may help explain the fourth-grade slump for example, as well as the literal stage of language and the loss of self-expression in children’s representational art.

Postconventional reasoning characterizes the individual who understands conventions but still thinks for him– or herself.

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Music is a succession of tones and tone combinations so organized as to have an agreeable impression on the ear and its impression on the intelligence is comprehensible…These impressions have the power to influence occult parts of our soul and our our sentimental spheres…

Arnold Schoenberg

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Bob Dylan cares about you

You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.

Dylan also pokes fun at his own history of stylistic changes. When he became a rocker, the folkies complained. When he became a country singer, the rockers complained. When he became a Christian rocker, everyone complained. Dylan is ready to do away with all that now, stating:

Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that.

What do you think Dylan is saying about the importance of style?

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