Memeteria

Here is an interesting piece by Thomas May from his blog "Memeteria":

Memeteria by Thomas May

It is about the music of Krzysztof Penderecki, (a polish contemporary composer) and focuses mainly upon his "Concerto Grosso for Three Cellos".

For me, given my interest in how the principles and practices of music and musicians can help us all be more creative, two things stand out as very significant:

1. Penderecki has very wide and diverse interests. He has deep interests in philosophy, classical antiquity, science fiction, theatre, visual arts and botany. This is significant because, time and time again, I see this trait being possessed by those widely recognised as some of the most creative and innovative of thinkers: Fry and Silver (the scientists who invented "Post It" notes); Bill Bowerman (the inventor of the rubber soled trainer); Carlos Kleiber (the renowned conductor); Leonardo da Vinci (the archetypal Renaissance Man). Whatever the fields of endeavour, the most creative and innovative within them have wide and diverse interests. Having wide interests helps people see opportunities and make connections that others do not. It also helps people to describe things in new and original ways that can lead to unique insights and interpretations. (For example, Carlos Kleiber used descriptions of the pictures of Caspar David Friedrich to inspire his orchestras to create memorably great performances.)     
2. Penderecki's "Concerto Grosso for Three Cellos" treats each solo cellist as a personality with something of its own to say within the context of the piece as a whole. Again, this is significant because it emphasises another key aspect of effective creativity and innovation: individual voices need to be heard, acknowledged, valued and developed within the context of the creative endeavour as a whole. People need to work together to creatively problem solve but whilst doing so they need to aim for unity of purpose rather than uniformity of perspective. They need to develop and support each other's individual insights and ideas and work together to harvest those that lead to the best, most innovative solutions.            

Don't leave things unfinished

Have you ever had the feeling that you have left something unfinished? When I was in my early twenties I wrote a piece for brass band that played on my mind for years and years. I would repeatedly go back to it, read through its score, listen to it, play it and variously tinker with it, but whatever I did I could not get rid of its mental itch.

Then one day something clicked into place within my mind. I went back to the score and added a few bars to the very end of the piece. The piece felt finished and the itch disappeared.

Many musicians demonstrate this compulsion to finish things off. Composers and musicologists put immense effort into completing works that the great composers left unfinished. Performers and conductors devote years to preparing and performing complete cycles of a composer’s work.

In fact completing things, finishing things off in a satisfying way is a deep need within most of us and fulfilling it is essential to effective creativity and innovation. Every time we ignore the nagging call of an unfinished idea the greater the danger of it fading away, leaving only a glimmer of a suspicion that something of value has been lost.

Do not ignore the nagging call of your unfinished ideas. Go back to them. Look them over and identify what you need to do to finish them off. You will then begin to realise their potential value and eventually feel the satisfaction and fulfilment that comes of a job well and truly done.

Music lessons go into orbit!

Yesterday, I attended the launch event of Musical Orbit, a website that offers online one-to-one music lessons with top musicians.

Having an occasional hour with a top musician can be a great supplement to someone's ongoing musical training, adding that vital one or two percent of quality and polish that enhances an exam result or concert performance, or makes the difference between success or failure at an important audition.

I know from my own experience that a small piece of advice or an insightful observation from someone successful at the highest levels of professional music making can be immensely valuable.

Here is a personal story of mine that demonstrates what I mean. I was having one of my first lessons with Philip Cannon, who was then Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music. He made one small comment about my compositions that, as you will see from my story, had a profound effect upon my music making (and approach to things in general):    

 Click Here to read my story.
   
It was very clear from talking with Nicole Wilson (founder of Musical Orbit) that making affordable top quality music lessons easily and widely available to as many people as possible is a passion for her, and it is this passion, plus her many contacts in the musical world, that has made Musical Orbit the success it is.

So, if you are looking for that nugget of insight or wisdom that could make your performances truly memorable (for all the right reasons), why not go into Orbit?    

    

Explore what lies between

Many regard Charles Ives, an American composer of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, as one of the founding fathers of modern music. Even now, those who choose to listen to his music will find it wonderfully outrageous and original: an alternative reality composed of sounds that are a joy to explore.

Charles Ives’s father, George, probably planted the seeds of his son's musical originality. George Ives was a US Army bandmaster who had a very creative approach to the musical education of his son. George introduced his son to bi-tonality and polytonality (techniques that only the most modern of composers were beginning to use) and as Charles played the piano, his father encouraged him to listen for "the sounds between the notes": for the sound world within the cracks of music’s traditional structures, tones and harmonies.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Charles Ives went very much his own way as a composer, seeking out sounds that have more in common with the subtle and complexly dissonant sound world that surrounds our everyday existence than the tidied up scales and harmonies of traditional music.

The orchestral piece "Central Park in the Dark" is a prime example of Charles Ives’s style. It creates a tone picture of a city park after dark. The atmosphere within the park is created by strangely and darkly harmonised strings, and other glistening snippets of sound and half-heard melodies impinge upon this "sound of darkness" as if from far away within the surrounding, ever awake city. The overall effect of this piece was revolutionary in its day and remains immensely evocative (and strangely attractive) for those who experience it today.

When we are looking for new perspectives that could help us deal with the challenges we face, it can be fruitful to explore what lies between our fully formed and realised thoughts. 

Explore what lies between your thinking by doing some of the following:

• Identifying what nobody is talking about or considering.
• Asking what you and others are assuming is not part of the problem.
• Giving yourself and others permission to express feelings and intuitions as well as facts and opinions.
• Verbalising your thoughts and encouraging others to do the same.
• Allowing time and space for partially expressed ideas to become fully discernible.
• Making a point of looking for connections and links that others are not seeing.
• Listening out for the ideas and opinions of those people to whom nobody listens.

 

Follow on Twitter @charles_lines

 

 

Institute for Women Conductors: New Residential Programme at the Dallas Opera

If you are a woman 40 years or younger who wants to conduct opera, take this opportunity from the Dallas Opera: 

http://dallasopera.org/learn/womens-conducting-institute/

It's a chance to create your very own Attic Club that will support you in your career!

Go for it!

Best of luck!

Charles

7 key traits of creative people

I have been studying Ann McCutchan's book 'The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process'. It consists of a series of insightful interviews with leading American composers, each of whom share their thoughts, opinions and experiences of the creative process of composition.

Unsurprisingly, given that it is a series of interviews, the book is full of memorable quotes and, as part of my reflections upon the book, I decided to make a list of those that stood out to me as particularly significant and insightful about the creative process.

I then decided to analyse this list to see if any themes emerged about the traits necessary for not only effective musical creative thinking but also effective creative thinking generally.

I grouped together related quotes and then gave each group a heading that summed-up the trait or traits that were present in each case. (The headings, together with their relevant quotations, are given at the end of this post.)

I identified the following strong traits:

1. Being patient, putting in the hard work and making gradual progress.
2. Trusting, valuing and encouraging intuition.
3. Balancing intuition with logic.
4. Seeking and achieving a sense of flow.
5. Being open to and willing to learn from everything.
6. Collaborating with others.
7. Challenging oneself to explore new ways of expressing and doing.

These traits are clearly applicable to the creative process in general, not only that of composers. Here are some ways we can all begin to develop them:


Being patient, putting in the hard work and making gradual progress   

There are three key things we can do to develop this trait:

• Explore our subjects extensively and become expert in them. 
• Create our own daily work routines that we find attractive, are comfortable with and are motivated to use over the long-term.
• Mark and celebrate our gradual progress by periodically reflecting upon our work so far and creating an uncluttered 'clean record' of our current positions, outputs and achievements. (This can then be used as a launch-pad for our further progress and the development of our ideas.)  

Trusting, valuing and encouraging intuition and balancing intuition with logic 

To develop these traits we need to expand our thinking, to think in a quadruple rather than binary way. We habitually think about what is good or bad about something. To break out of this limiting duality we need to start accessing our intuition, identifying and exploring those things we cannot easily judge as good or bad, those things we find interesting, intriguing or for some unknown reason concerning. The 'PINC Filter' can help us do this. When thinking about a subject or issue identify those things that are:

• Positive about it and how they can be maximised.
• Intriguing about it, why this might be and how they can be exploited.
• Negative about it and how they can be minimised.
• Concerning about it, why this might be and how they can be taken into account.         

By thinking about not only those things that are positive or negative but also those things that are intriguing or concerning, we are widening our thinking to include our intuitive hunches and emotional reactions. We are beginning to balance our intuition and emotions with our logic and rationality.          


Seeking and achieving a sense of flow

By investing time in and working hard at developing the first three traits we will increase our chances of achieving a sense of flow. This is a natural coming together of conscious thoughts and subconscious feelings that enhances our creative thinking and problem solving. It is not easy to achieve; it takes time and hard work. It is, however, worth the effort, as the following short quote makes clear:

'One way of describing it is the feeling of the conscious and the subconscious both being present, with no line dividing them. It feels like a completely elevated state when you're like this, because everything's available, without interfering with each other at all.'
Bruce Adolphe       


Being open to and willing to learn from everything

To develop this trait apply the 'Force-Back Principle'. When presented with or experiencing something, especially if it is new or unexpected, we immediately need to react by asking how we can 'force-back' or adopt and adapt its principles and aspects to our lives or work or a problem we need to solve. If we do this we may be surprised by the insights and occasional benefits we gain. (If we don't we won't.)       


Collaborating with others

By sharing our ideas and acting upon the feedback we gain about them we will instantly begin taking our first steps towards developing this trait. So, if not already doing these things, we need to start now. We can develop the trait further by planning our collaboration with others and adopting a methodical approach towards it. Start doing this by selecting and using some readily available creative problem solving tools to structure discussions and interactions with others. As we become familiar with the tools and their use, our ability to creatively collaborate and problem solve will steadily grow.   


Challenging oneself to explore new ways of expressing and doing

We can develop this trait by challenging ourselves to:

• Mix and work with new and different people in new and different ways and places. 
• Create things and solve problems using new and different tools.
• Describe issues and problems using different words/other people's words.
• Express ideas, problems and solutions through different media, e.g., pictures, video, songs, music, poetry, sculpture, cartoon strip, story, personal story, mime, role-play, documentary, news cast, newspaper headline and article, poster, software application, online wiki, blog, etc.            

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Quotations grouped under themed headings

Being patient, putting in the hard work and making gradual progress

'Sketching and throwing away, sketching and throwing away...'
John Adams

'Ideas do not just happen - constantly working in mind - visible crest of the wave.'
Shulamit Ran

'Work a lot - think a lot - write a little bit down - sometimes throw it away.'
Shulamit Ran'

'I kept trying things that wouldn't work, but none of that work was wasted.'
Steven Stucky

'You have to create the conditions for inspiration by working really hard at ideas that might at first seem unpromising. Maybe you have to prepare the synapses for something to happen - without work it doesn't just happen.'
Steven Stucky

'It's a really good piece, it just floats, and it is effortless, but it is far from effortless to make it.'
Steve Reich 

'I think the best thing to do if you are creating something is just to keep doing it no matter what. Just continue.'

'Take a minute to come up with an idea, then six months to execute.'
James Mobberley

'Trusting yourself is a function of experience.'
James Mobberley

'Sometimes the bad work has to come out and manifest itself before the good stuff.'
Richard Danielpour

'I have learned to wait like an insect.'
Igor Stravinsky

'For me, more and more, writing is about listening and waiting. It's about receiving rather than willing something into being.'
Richard Danielpour

'What you do just after the beginning of the creative process, after the creation or discovery of the initial idea, is the most challenging.'
Sebastian Currier

'An opening gesture leads to something else, which leads to something else, which leads to something else...'
John Adams

'Have it in my hands, like a sculptor - hear and feel the sound as I 'make' the piece.'
John Adams 


Trusting, valuing and encouraging intuition

'If I stop to think about it, the flow stops. I don't analyse the impulse; I just let it keep coming.'
Claude Baker

'Beauty lies in the ability to trust the unresolved.'
Libby Larson'

'It is mystical, it is special, it is unique, it is unexplainable. Sometimes I look at a piece I have written and wonder, how in the world did I do this? How did that even come to pass? I just don't understand! And the memory of all the hard work is completely gone.'
Claude Baker

This last quote highlights the importance of environment to accessing intuition: 

'There are physical settings where the inner state pushes itself up into the right place more easily.'
John Harbison


Balancing intuition and logic

'There's some elusive and yet absolutely necessary balance between fantasy and rigour. It's a constant back and forth thing.'
Shulamit Ran

'When I am working on something everyday, day after day, it seems to become a conscious and an unconscious expression at the same time.'
Lois V. Vierk

'I can write without (logically) thinking about it, and go back to it later to see if it is what I wanted.'
Lois V. Vierk

'It seems to me our critical faculties are best put into play in the interstices, when we've made large scale decisions about the kind of thing we want.'
John Harbison

'As a piece becomes more tangible, inevitably something is lost.'
Claude Baker

'Many times I've gone through this elaborate process of making diagrams and graphs and realised as I've gotten into the piece that its just not going to happen that way, while at the same time something even better is suggesting itself.'
Claude Baker

'I usually succeed in the larger sense, but when it comes to working out details, I often get much pickier than I need to be.'
Daniel S. Godfrey

'I deal with infinity, so I need pressure to help me put some kind of structure into infinity.'
Libby Larson

'I'll tell you what keeps me composing. It uses all my brain, at least all the brain that I can get in touch with, to try to understand how to communicate.'
Libby Larson

'I realised that a sound might undergo a certain rhythmic development or get louder and louder or become more and more ornamented, while another might gradually fade out and disappear, because that was what was called for to strengthen the piece as a whole.'
Lois V. Vierk


Achieving flow

'One way of describing it is the feeling of the conscious and the subconscious both being present, with no line dividing them. It feels like a completely elevated state when you're like this, because everything's available, without interfering with each other at all.'
Bruce Adolphe

'The way to achieve this perfect integration of everything present in a piece is to be in touch with feelings and write when you have powerful feelings.'
Bruce Adolphe

'It is a state that brings together everything I know about music and about my real life, so that music seems like the perfect language for saying what I'm thinking.'
Bruce Adolphe

'The experience of composing is akin to a waking dream.'
Richard Danielpour


Being open and willing to learn from everything

'Everything I do is practising.'
John Zorn

'Whatever I do, I'm going to get an idea from something, because I am open to it.'
John Zorn

'Everything I have learned has gone into everything I have written.'
John Zorn


Collaborating with others

'I can sculpt with sound, using musicians' personal languages to create a composition that could never exist in any other situation.'
John Zorn

'Performance of the piece was also the composition of the piece.'
Libby Larson

'Composers and certain kinds of performers are capable of a strange sort of creative symbiosis.'
James Mobberley

'It's about putting it out and having it come back.'
Richard Danielpour

'You can find out how people get along, or how ideas move, by creating pieces that are big models of these social functions.'

'Write - but also explain.'
John Zorn


Challenging yourself to exploring new ways of expressing and doing

'Force myself to sing another melody I have not sung before.'
David Lang

'It's very easy to write music that we all like. It's hard to write music that is fresh. But at some point, writing music that's fresh has diminishing returns.'
David Lang

'For me, the interesting ideas are where those happy tunes aren't. The interesting things are in the dark places, or in the ugliness, or in the noise or the grit.'
David Lang

'When I heard it, it was the most ugly, crunchy piece, and I had a revelation. I got tricked - and because I got tricked, I had a fresh experience. I heard the depth of that ugliness for the very first time, and I loved it.'
David Lang

'With each new piece I have to learn the art of composition again.'
Gustav Mahler

'Each environment is different - it's like I'm exploring another planet.'
James Mobberley

'Maybe you have to go through other people's worlds before you can get to your own.'
Michael Daugherty

'All gestures are now cliché, so it is how the gestures are put together that has meaning.'
Michael Daugherty

Coffee at Zimmerman's

Gottfried Zimmerman was an enlightened and clever businessman, and he knew exactly how to encourage the aspirant middle classes of early 18^th century Leipzig into his coffeehouse.

He knew that his educated and discerning clientele would be attracted not only by the excellent coffee he sold but also by performances from the top musical artists of the day, so he arranged for a regular series of informal concerts to take place at his establishment.

Zimmerman took these informal performances very seriously, regularly providing twice-weekly, two-hour slots and even going to the expense of buying expensive musical instruments for the musicians to play. Importantly, he encouraged top composers such as Telemann and J.S. Bach to compose and perform new works.

The informality of these gatherings encouraged people to relax and chat about the music being performed and enabled composers and performers to ‘compare notes’, learn from one another and gain immediate feedback from their audience.

In addition to being informal, these gathering also had the following very specific characteristics:

• Refreshments were on hand to keep people happy and alert.
• The gatherings were regular and frequent.
• They were aimed at a particular type of clientele.
• They took place in a fashionable and accessible part of town within which the target clientele felt comfortable.
• They took place at a convenient time.
• They took place within a defined time period.
• The audience was encouraged and indeed expected to comment upon, discuss and no doubt sometimes play a part in the performance of the music.
• They were well resourced. The accommodation was comfortable and good quality instruments were available to help ensure high-class performances.
• The concerts offered a programme of music that was new, interesting and innovative.

The timeless principles contained within the above list form a useful checklist that we can still use today when planning and delivering problem solving workshops and networking events. The next time you need to arrange such a workshop consider the following questions:

• How can you encourage informality and help people feel relaxed?
• What refreshments and amenities will ensure people’s comfort and encourage them to feel positive about the workshop?
• How are you and/or your organisation going to demonstrate your commitment to the workshop or workshops?
• Who needs to attend for the workshop to be a success?
• How are you going to make sure that the workshop is attractive and accessible to those people you really need to involve?
• When is the best and most convenient time for the workshop?
• What is the optimum duration for the workshop? For how long will participants be able to remain focused, alert and active?
• How can you encourage people to discuss issues, share ideas and participate?
• What equipment and resources do you need to ensure the workshop’s success?
• What are the specific topics for discussion and exploration?
• How are you going to ensure that the workshop’s topics stimulate participants’ interest?
• What specifically do you need people to do for the workshop to be productive?