I've just returned from vacation, and I've returned home with a brain full of ideas for musical compositions I'd like to write. This usually happens when I don't have access to a piano for a few days. The problem with it is that I am primarily a pianist, not a composer.
In grade school, I sometimes wished to be a composer. Usually, I would get very frustrated when I tried composing. This helped me to see that my gifts were better suited to performing than composing. Today, I'm quite happy as a pianist.
But I still try to compose from time to time. I write for a while, then I judge my efforts. Not surprisingly, they always fall short of the great music that I study and perform. After all, without even considering my level of talent, I have spent next to no time really studying how to compose.
This brings me to the breakthrough I had while traveling. Something that should be quite obvious dawned on me as we were driving from state to state.
One usually has to spend quite a while becoming an artisan before becoming a mature artist. Maybe some of the creative blocks of musicians who want to compose might be cleared away by focusing on learning the skills of the craft of composition before judging the aesthetic or communicative value of our output.
3 comments:
agreed.. there is something to the method and discipline that is critical to the maturing.. I am a singer.. who has always wanted to play the piano.. but whenever I try, I end up frustrated with my inability, and ultimately give up practicing again..
Question: is there something to the journey that is inherently valuable..rather than just the end result?
The act of learning the steps is key to any sort of growth.. You to have to learn the rules, before you can even consider the license to bend or break them.. I have trouble here, because my passion gets in the way of discipline.. A balanced approach is the key, with plenty of peer feedback, and individual accountability. Accountability is pretty important to growth too.. I need a master/model to grow with/beside/against.. like a good parent.
Picking up on one of the strands in what Jeff just said - about learning and following "rules" in artistic endeavors.
Just today I happened to be thinking about the "rules" that are sometimes called performance practice. As a young pianist, I found them constricting and they seemed empty and arbitrary to me. However, over the years, I have come to realize that many of those principles amount to a consciousness of how a particular style of music works.
In my experience, when teachers explain the thought process that led to the principle, then the "rule" becomes a gateway to an even deeper and more in-sync connection with the music.
Some of the people I worked with at Peabody were particuilarly good at that - in particular: Ellen Mack, Stanley Cornett, and Vern Falby.
Well I finally found your website.
In regards to being an artisan before artist, I see your point.
But at the same time I say baloney!
Charles Hulin go and bang your head on the keyboard for thinking that!
If you want to compose, then compose.
If you want to write than write.
The act of doing an art makes you an artist.
It does not make you a well recieved artist necessarily, but composing your own music makes you a composer.
Of course your first efforts aren't going to compare to whoever you want to compare yourself too! Geez! What a revelation!!!
Oh sure you defintately know how to play the piano, but wouldn't composing your own music develop another talent and at the same time make you understand the piano a little more?
I don't know the classical music world at all, but classic rock and roll is filled with people who didn't "study" until they became mature. Eddie Van Halen, one typically considered one the greatest rock guitarist ever, never took one lesson. Not one.
Think of it this way. I know you know Beethovan's 1st symphony, but guess what, the rest of the world just knows his 5th and 9th symphonies.
He had to write four symphonies before he got to the 5th! And then he laid down a little on the 6th 7th and 8th...you see my point!
Even the greats aren't always great.
But they did one thing differenly than you did...they composed crap, then they composed more crap, and that kept going until they got it right.
Stop making high folutent and ivory tower excuses.
Just go and compose.
You got this piano thing down.
Hoped you enjoyed your first combative comment!
I'll blogroll you today.
See ya Sunday!
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