source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 19:32:12 -0800 Subject: Composition by Rules vs. Cleverness From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> One of my CompuServe correspondents of over two years responded to my posting about how composers work with music intellectually as well as emotionally. She found it difficult to think of the great composers composing music by rules and formulas. I responded pointing out that there's a very important difference between composing by rules and formulas and composing by cleverness and intellect. Rules and formulas are unemotional of course, but they're also unintellectual. They're just statements of reality. For something to be intellectual, it must be open to interpretation. If it were not, then there would be no clever or uninspired usage of it, because there would be only one possible way to use it! Truly great music carries both emotional poignancy and intellectual intrigue. Music that goes only by the rules is boring, because it has no source of inspiration. Music that carries only emotionalism is unintelligible. Music that carries only intellectual intrigue has great meaningfulness but quickly loses it over time, because it never finds a home in your heart. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 8 Dec 1995 04:33 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id TAA27985; Thu, 7 Dec 1995 19:33:36 -0800 Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 19:33:36 -0800 Message-Id: <951208032815_71670.2576_HHB62-10@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu