Music Creation Process Research Articles

The Process of Musical Creation: Interviews with Eight Composers

The process of musical creation was investigated through a series of semistructured interviews with eight professional composers of classical music. For these eight composers, 12.1 years was the average chronological age when they composed their first work. For the majority of composers, the first composition was a song or melody. The composing process frequently involved first discovering a “germinal idea.” A brief sketch of the germinal idea was often recorded, followed by a first draft of the work, elaboration and refinement of the first draft, and then completion of the final draft and copying of the score. Compositional activity seems to occur most frequently in association with feelings of tranquility, security, and relaxation. Suggestions are presented for future research on the act of musical creation.

The Process of Musical Creation

Introductory note. Henry Cowell is young musical composer described on pages 246 to 251 of my book, Intelligence of School Children, (1919). history of Mr. Cowell is in many respects of exceptional psychological interest. His case offers a remarkable example of inborn genius pressing to victory against most adverse circumstances; he is of high IQ, unsupported by formal schooling of any kind, and of creative ability in musical composition combined with exceptional aptitude for scientific thinking. Mr. Cowell's school days ended before he was seven years old, but before he was 23 he had served as an instructor in a great university. At fourteen he had never touched a piano and had no musical training, but he has since played his own compositions to large audiences throughout United States and in England, France, and Germany. He has published some twenty or more of his compositions and has created a new technique which has attracted wide attention among American and European musical critics. He is author of a number of articles published during last few years in Sackbut (London) and Musical America (New York), and in collaboration with Professor S. S. Seward, of Stanford University, has written a book (not yet published) on New Musical Resources. is a matter of special psychological interest that Mr. Cowell was composing music of an extreme modernistic type when he was a mere boy and unaware of very existence of such a school of composers. Mr. Cowell is now 28 years old. Nine years ago wrote as follows: It remains to be seen whether Henry will become one of famous musical composers of his day; several musical critics of note hope for this outcome. hope seems to be well on way toward realization. Pitts Sanborn, in League of Composers Review, May, 1924, writes: I have no hesitation in saying that to me outstanding American composer of season was Henry Cowell, of tone-cluster fame. Adolf Weissmann, in Die Musik, Berlin, January, 1924, describes appearance of Henry Cowell in Berlin in autumn of 1923 as the most remarkable event of local concert season. According to London Daily News, December 23, 1923, there is no reason . . . why Mr. Cowell's theory should not acquire a place in Grove's Dictionary of Music, and an honored position on concert platform. nature of Mr. Cowell's original contribution to musical technique is indicated by following statement of Paul Rosenfelt in Dial, New York, April, I924: Felicitations on discovery of a method cannot be denied Henry Cowell; and in an age of small technical innovations he cuts a not unrespectable figure. Those toneclusters of his, sounds produced on pianoforte with side of hand, fist and lower arm, extend scope of instrument, and offer some new possibilities to composition. Concordances of many close-lying notes have been used by Leo Ornstein since he wrote his Dwarf Suite; and Percy Grainger calls for notes struck from strings inside box of piano in one of Nutshell movements; but it has been left for young Californian to demonstrate completely quality of sound to be produced on concert grands by deliberate application to key board of muscles other than those of finger-tips, and by application of fingers to wires themselves. New lovely rolling sounds occur in all of pieces of Cowell which employ new method of tone-production: Dynamic Motion, Antimony, and The Voice of Lir in particular. piece for Piano with Strings has a fine dead quality of resonance not to be produced on any harpsichord. And it seems probable that writers for