What makes a composer

That means having a proper technique, which immediately raises a problem for all those recent or living composers who might be a candidate for greatness. In recent times the common musical language of classical music has collapsed. But without a common language, how do you judge whether the technique really is good?

Following on from this…. It should be greater than the sum of its parts, and make room for heroic failures, trifles, and interesting but flawed experiments, as well as masterpieces. The liberating thing about the great composers is that they keep doing things which are out of character. Mozart sometimes sounds like Bach, Bach sometimes sounds like Frescobaldi or one of his own sons, and Beethoven seems to foreshadow an awful lot of what came after him, from Chopin to Albeniz to boogie-woogie.

This pace Damian Thompson is why I place Stravinsky among the great composers. Researchers have shown how our brains continue to activate in response to music Asian Composers Reflect on Careers in Western Classical Music For all their shared experiences, each of these five artists has a unique story of struggles and triumphs. And Much More. A festival broadens our understanding of Nadia Boulanger, the pathbreaking composer, conductor and thinker. If samples of Bach, Haendel, Mozart or Beethoven playing had been preserved, given the great interest they hold, would these high examples seem blemish-less to us?

If the gramophone record had been invented two hundred years ago, it is in fact unlikely that a modern performer would precisely replicate the performing traditions of times long past. The evolving performing art is less durable than the composition itself. A musical composition that has been fixed in notes but has not been performed, that is only on its way to full realization in sound, is not completed.

Probably it is because of this that a beautiful but for whatever reason unperformed composition sometimes retains an unexhausted potential energy of ideas and emotional essence. On the other hand, typically great works that are heard over several artistic epochs successfully survive the stylistic diversity of performance techniques.

Not only do phrasing styles and the means of sound-production change, but also the very instrument that the work has been written for undergoes evolution and perfecting. The modern listener might not be satisfied by the sound of the harpsichord in performances of old works written for the instrument.

The modern piano is so different from the original keyboard instruments that the appearance of new stylistic trends related to new sound and technical possibilities is quite natural.

Descriptions of the playing of the great pianists of the past do not always conform to modern esthetic demands. Even in the course of his own life a pianist often witnesses changing tastes and styles of interpretation. However, playing is devoid of conviction when the performer himself is unsure of the logic and necessity of his interpretation. An artist is distinguished by conviction and the stability of his artistic positions. The more distinctly the desired result of his efforts emerges, the more clearly the artist sees the shortcomings of his playing.

A clear musical vision increases demands on performance. A well prepared plan of interpretation helps to solve not only problems of style but technical difficulties as well. We always consider the harmonic agreement of goals and means to be the highest stage of mastery. There exist champions of curatorial trends in the performing art.

Their basis is the idea that the loss of the original — coeval with the work — performing techniques and playing styles; new instruments, evolving virtuosity and changes of technique — all widen the gap that separates us from the earlier composers, and serve to attribute foreign stylistic qualities to him. These views permit of no progress in performing techniques for the classical works.

Mutatis mutandis introducing necessary modifications , one should not put new wine into old barrels: new "clothes" do not conform to the artistic aspirations of the past. The old instruments are restored for that purpose, the finest details and stylistic particulars of prior eras are imagined, using descriptions and evidence that have reached our times, the old atmosphere is recovered, turning off the electric lights and lighting the candles.

Does a composition that touches the heart of a modern listener need these transparently ancient clothes if it makes us forget the destructive forces of time, and stimulates our imagination and aesthetic feeling? Any performance is just a transparent membrane for the invariable inner force that holds together the content and form of the work, for everything that has been crystallized and finalized in the written notes. It should allow a clear vision of the potential energy that is contained in the composition, and that is eager to be seen under new conditions.

A composer exhibits the special wisdom of historical foresight when he allows sufficient freedom of interpretation to the performer, and crafts his ideas with flexibility and elasticity.

The most firmly fixed material often turns out to be the most fragile. These ideas are the springs of time. The inner force of original ideas comes into live emotional contact with a multitude of perceptive minds — the new audience, new times, new tastes and artistic vision — through the flexible elements of the performing art.

A Professional and an Amateur. One of the main problems related to the performing art is its value socially. The need for and role of an artist-interpreter are obvious. Besides playing aloud, one may also replay the sound as reminiscence, or imagine it while reading the score. A poem also assumes a performance. Declamation depends on an individual performance to an even greater degree than music.

A reader of a poetic work is simultaneously a performer. Even if he does not recite a poem out loud, the rhythm and all the sound elements of the work are realized in his mind — as a particular interpretation. A creative refraction of the text is necessary even in reading. Still it is unlikely that a poetry lover attributes any objective value to his interpretation. Of course, one has to consider silent reading as the most subjective degree of "performance. The inner sound images in music appear most often as a recollection.

However, the next stage of subjective interpretation in poetry — "reading out loud but for myself only" — corresponds reasonably to the playing of an amateur acquainting himself with a composition or performing at home. Lack of technique, naturally, prevents an amateur from a complete expression of his understanding of a piece, and he realizes this, restricting his audience to his home circle or playing just for himself.

However, even such intimate playing is not simply a mechanical process but rather a creative one that reflects individual treatment of the content and form of the work.

A form of competition between amateur and professional arises, which subjects the contested originality of ideas and depth of emotions to mutual criticism and analysis. All the advantages are of course on the side of the professional, who possesses a technique that allows him to completely express his ideas as to a musical work. Nevertheless, how many creative forces and ideas may be hidden in the unassuming and imperfect playing of a dilettante!

How often a listener returning from a recital by an important performer remains unsatisfied. An amateur does not completely trust the professional. He treats each new public interpretation of his favorite work with jealousy, accusing the performer of superficial, insufficient love, and lack of selflessness in his chosen pursuits. It would be a mistake to dismiss this as a sign of sheer overconfidence.

However, no matter how convinced an expert is of the supremacy of his erudition and the strength of his craft, he should take into account the persistent, passionate desire of a listener, which accompanies the active perception of music, to take initiative in conveying the ideas and images of a piece. Not only is a musical composition a treasure that belongs to all amateurs, but also not a single listener in any audience relegates himself to the passive role of spectator.

A nod, a hand movement that follows the music rhythm, an attempt to sing silently a memorable theme or tune on the way back from the concert — these are all signs of a natural desire to participate in the performing process. The expression of even minimal creative activity leads to high moral satisfaction for an amateur, as it is accompanied by the feeling that something created as abstract, general and non-concrete, now resounds for him too. The movements of a professional conductor nearly turn him into a kind of master of music, independent of his immediate artistic direction.

A dancer, by means of expressive plasticity, or even a marching soldier, merges his movements with the music, as if possessing it for themselves. A perception drops any claims to its own individual plan of interpretation only when a listener becomes one of the performers — as a participant in the common musical action — as a chorister, or orchestra or ensemble member.

We observe two distinct domains — those of composition and of sound realization — and establish the prerogatives of the performer and the composer. At the same time we may determine varying degrees of involvement on the part of a given [listener]. They not only follow the development of musical ideas but also feel the coming direction of the flow of sound, anticipate the importance of musical events. Like participants in an ancient Greek tragedy, they melt together with all the turns and twists of the drama, sympathizing, feeling anguish, and foreseeing coming events.

Underestimation of the personal participation of the listener in music perception is a grave error on the part of an artist-performer.

Not all the emotions, life and breath of the performer on stage reach the audience completely; a concretizing artist must be content with silence and attention. But this in itself is not sufficient: agreement and unity are needed. A performance in front of an audience is an act of purification as well, of all that is hermetic and subjective, an act establishing individual features that have universal value.

A performer justifiably requires total attention from listeners as he brings them not random and passing accomplishments of taste, fashion or artistic whim, but his own gift of opening the depths and values that are inseparably linked to a true creative process.

The Double Life of a Musical Image. A musical image has two lives: one in our minds, and another in real sound. Not just simple melodies but entire compositions — with all their harmonic and polyphonic riches and the timbre color of the orchestral score — fit comfortably in the part of mind responsible for musical conceptions and auditory imagination. This is a special domain of consciousness where music can live a priori — before realization in sound and before the experience of sound.

Musical imagination and inner hearing help the composer, during the creative process, write his ideas down in notes with sufficient precision. Even before concrete sound is realized, he can hear the composition in his mind with sufficient precision and clarity.

Upon completion of a score, the composer knows that the created music now exists as an artistic entity. We reconstruct a musical piece in our mind, using this same auditory imagination. The precision and completeness of this reproduction depend, of course, on the musical memory and gift of the listener. The composition is deposited in the musical imagination with greater and greater completeness and increasingly refined detail upon repeated listening.

It is recorded in our mind, which is blessed with a musical memory. Still, one should hold the musical imagination in the same regard as the skill of musical perception.

Hence each sound imprints in our mind an imagined sound echo. This echo occurs in a silent world. Silence in a sense serves as a neutral surface. The sounds of real music arise out of stillness. However, sinking below the surface we enter the realm of sound imagination.

This opposition may be perceived as the original positive and negative sides of musical sound. Silence is the background of musical art.

A real sound emerges above the surface; it sinks lightly into it, the convexity of the sound changed by the concavity of the imagination. A composer collects sounds drop by drop in his work, neither reaching nor violating the stillness. The paint in painting, or the stone in sculpting, invariably brings essential modifications to the artistic plan.

A finished sculpture stands in front of us as a result of the unified efforts of nature and artistic will. But a musical idea usually reveals itself as an identity of inner and outer forms, the identity of an inner concept with its realization. The absorption of a musician reading the score of a noteworthy composer is understandable: he is imagining beautiful music that has not yet been realized in sound.

Wagner claimed that creating the instrumentation of his pieces brought him a special uplifting, as he now heard the music in an ideal rendition. Schumann pointed out as well that all the signs of the score were reconstructed in his mind as he listened to music.

There is no doubt that an essential and serious barrier exists, separating imagined and realized music. A composer often approaches the instrument in an attempt to escape the enclosed world of the imagination. He is looking for support in real sound for the created musical image. He verifies his theoretical findings like an experimental scientist. But this does not modify the principles of the composer for whom the clear picture of a musical image is simultaneously its realization — in a smooth and integral transition.

Many extraordinary composers have written without an instrument, particularly during the classical bloom of symphonism. It is said that Mozart wrote the sketch for the score of the overture to "Don Giovanni" in one night, as it had already been fully composed in his mind. With his hearing loss, at the end of his life Beethoven completely lost the ability to hear his own music.

Enormous strength of conviction as to the infallibility of their creative decisions — decisions that virtually never required correction on account of realized sound — is felt in the scores of Bach, Haydn, Mozart. However, the process of realization of sound images does not pass so painlessly and easily with some composers.

Some shyness, lack of trust in the reality of sound, some fear of loss of much of the feeling and thought in the final act of creation, is felt in many Schumann scores and especially in his chamber compositions. A creative dream sometimes exceeds the possibility of its realization. The concept is grander and at the same time finer than the result. A kind of unfilled gap is left in the second movement of the Piano Concerto, or in the romance on the Heine poem "I cried bitterly in a dream" — a gap in which the imagination acts more strongly on the far side of real sound, in the kingdom of pure poetic fantasy.

The last precious drop of sound is spilled only after an interval of time. This is perhaps an example of the utmost expressivity that a pause in sound can produce.

It would be reckless to underestimate the special position of the art of musical interpretation — between the two contrasting but similar domains: the world of real-sound perception, and that of sound imagination.

In one case the sound and sound image are perceived as they are executed in reality. In the other case, real sound is restricted to necessary and crucial moments. An importunate finality may only ruin such music.

Excessive precision leaves no room for the imagination. At the same time, a musical image that lacks support in reality loses stability as well as the ability to spontaneously influence the audience. The armory of a symphony orchestra includes not only tender-sounding instruments capable of carrying the sound to an utmost diminuendo but also the brass and percussion groups, which produce sharp formulations and strong accents.

Even at the utmost stress of real physical sound a performance can carry much that is hidden and unsaid, and that appeals to the forces of inner hearing and fantasy. Were we to attempt to indicate the doorway between the appearance of sound and the surface that encloses the world of musical images, we would find that the appearance of sound depends on its force as well as on the physical properties of hearing, its acuity and sensitivity.

Musical sounds are perceived by people placed at different distances from their source. However this disadvantage was compensated for by the enormous capacity of his musical and creative imagination. Nevertheless, much of the clarity of music perception depends on more than the physical "threshold" of the listener.

Listening to a musical composition one may receive a right or wrong understanding of the rhythm, melodic material, structure, harmony, polyphonic development of the piece. Finally, even after digesting all that, one may fail to grasp the meaning of a musical composition, its mood, its relation to other realms of mind. Everything that a music critic knows and usually states with such confidence may seem quite unclear to many listeners even if they possess the necessary musicality and experience listening to music.

A listener sometimes has too modest an opinion of his own creative intuition, overestimating the qualities of the performer. However, the interaction and cooperation of the performer and the listener lie at the very core of musical aesthetics. If this connection is possible and assumed in almost all kinds of art — a creative connection between an object of art and a counter-directed understanding — musical comprehension remains special in this regard.

Sometimes the listener has to enhance the musical thread, enriching an illusory and incomplete musical message with clear musical notions of his own. The reality of architecture and the fine arts is not subjected to such deep shifts.

A spectator may always be pointed to the correct starting place for viewing and understanding a painting, sculpture or work of architecture. However, if in even these arts the optimal viewing point is not always found immediately , such oscillations and sharp shifts are observed in music even more frequently. Listening to the playing of a great pianist, we often point to the perfection of his performance, to his extended and singing expressivity of sound, rhythmic clarity, rich color palette, delicacy and logic of form and nuance, not noticing that this impression is assisted to a great degree by the imaginative abilities of the listener himself.

The whole concept of the interpretation is formed by a listener as a consequence of impulses and moods that come from the stage. The immediately gripping playing of an artist is usually mentioned in this context.

Everything is done, finished and finalized on the stage so that the listener has to obey the orders of the performer. However, could one transmit the dreamy images of Chopin, Schumann, and Scriabin that sometimes lie outside the boundaries of real sound, with didactic musical judgments of that kind?

These images are of course always individually colored. One observes sometimes that overly zealous teachers find the greatest imprecision and distortion in student playing in exactly those musical episodes where the sound image depends almost completely on this kind of individual direction of perception.

Two Types of Interpretation. We will not label each type of interpretation as romantic, classical, realistic or psychological, etc. Contrasting terminology would serve only to sidetrack the flow of ideas. Still, one should point to a significant distinction between characteristics of playing by various artists. Some touch the sympathetic creative inclinations of the listener, with varying success. Others cultivate a kind of interpretation that leaves no room for listener doubt as to the structure or importance of the constructed musical image.

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