Learning from Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experiences in Music Education

Abstract

There are several possible ways for investigating the creative process in musical composition in order to induce certain assumptions about the nature of the compositional experience that may provide a certain philosophical framework for shaping compositional experiences in music educational settings at all levels. By taking an approach mainly based on writings and interviews of twentieth and twenty-first century composers, such as Boulez, Ferneyhough, Foss, Ligeti, Xenakis, Reich, Reynolds, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Varese, among others, Eleni Lapidaki illustrates certain parameters about their actual compositional process. Implications for music education are suggested for immersing student composers in learning experiences that respect their intuitions, search for their individuality, and place emphasis on innovation and creative freedom as inseparable from expression in their compositions. Asked in an interview how he could explain the creative processes involved in his composing, Gunther Schuller readily admits that the element of mystery that © Philosophy of Music Education Review, 15, no. 2 (Fall 2007) lies beyond rational explanation plays an important part in the creation of his music: As an artist—and I believe I am a thinking artist, not hopefully a mindless artist—it doesn’t bother me that I don’t know everything about either the creative process or its progeny. I am happy to know that it works, and that in the main I can rely on it and the way it functions. The fact that there are unrevealed and incomprehensible mysteries in the creative-arts process and in our evaluation of its products does not disturb me, although it arouses my curiosity. But I don’t have to know how something works in order to use it.1 The present study, however, is based on the premise that a music teacher needs indeed to grasp how this creative process works in a real world context in order to foster and expand the student composers’ craft of composition in educational settings at all levels. More specifically, the present study involves the investigation of the compositional process as seen from several twentieth and twenty-first century influential composers’ viewpoints that may help us gain insight into a domain coated with a colorful diversity of personal experiences and theoretical speculations. The composers chosen for examination include the following: Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Robert Erikson, Brian Ferneyhough, Lucas Foss, Gyorgy Ligeti, Tristan Murail, Steve Reich, Roger Reynolds, Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, and Iannis Xenakis, among others. The choice of these individuals was dictated by my wish to include composers from as wide a variety of compositional styles as possible including serialism, avantgarde, modernism, minimalism, musique concrete, and electronic music and who placed emphasis on innovation and creative freedom as inseparable from expression. Their musical styles which opened up new possibilities of expression encompass, as Elaine Birkin wrote, “free form, unequal time segments, fuzzy or non-tonality, angled contours, rapid change, multi-hued harmonies, dense texture, dissonance, mixed—or no—meters, an exploration of instrumental resources, and more.”2 The choice of the above-named composers by no means implies a value judgment on my part about the importance either of their accounts or of their compositions and their respective styles. It is simply that their writings, lectures, and interviews demonstrate a dedication toward capturing the subtleties of the creative process and are especially elaborate in their description of the nature of creativity, in contrast to others who are not as prone to divulge their feelings about their creative process. In order to draw any kind of philosophical implications, I strongly believe that one should have in mind what Arthur Danto wrote in Beyond the Brillo Box: “Variation in style may have historical explanation but 94 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW