The Creativity of Not Knowing

I read some­thing inter­est­ing in the paper today. There is an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton DC of almost 50 paint­ings by Henri Rousseau. Even if you don’t know his name, you prob­a­bly rec­og­nize his paint­ings. Here’s one and here’s another. (And just one more.)

What caught my eye about this review is that Rousseau painted all his famous for­est scenes from his work­shop in Paris, not ever hav­ing vis­ited these forested areas. How then, did he paint these scenes?

First of all, pho­tog­ra­phy existed by the time of Rousseau’s life. He could study prints. This would not be pos­si­ble in the time of, say, El Greco or Rem­brandt. Such pre-photography painters would have to expe­ri­ence the for­est first-hand, or rely on paint­ings or sto­ries by others.

What does this have to do with com­pos­ing? Sim­ply this: Try com­pos­ing what you don’t know. See what happens.

How do you do this? One way is to read music reviews. Review­ers will often describe a piece you have never heard. Read it and then use your musi­cal imag­i­na­tion to jump­start a new com­po­si­tion of your own. Or ask a col­legue to describe a composer’s music that you don’t know; see how it tick­les your musi­cal imag­i­na­tion. Or, if you don’t know the music of Rus­sia very well, imag­ine you are the court com­poser in the last days of Tsarist Russia.

There are myr­iad ways to explore the cre­ativ­ity of what you do not know.