1

2
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COMPOSITION –
SCIENCE
OR ALCHEMY?

Alex Davidof
Laura Nik

L’Arrangement
Basel
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A Davidof, L Nik
Composition – Science or Alchemy?

Translated from Russian by A Levin

All rights reserved by L’Arrangement.

ISBN 978-3-033-01143-4 © L’Arrangement

Basel, Switzerland
2007
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Dedicated to Mr M. Rostropovich,
a great artist of our time,
who regards music with love and sincerity.

We are very sad that Mr. M. Rostropovich did not live to see the
release of this book, which he had been keenly awaiting during the
last 3 years. In a letter to the authors he wrote:

"I have read your book very attentively and am filled with gratefulness
for your excellent research. I was amazed at the depth of your insights
into the special aspects of the composer’s profession. I congratulate
you on your brilliant work. "

M. Rostropovich
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Composition – Science or Alchemy?

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. What Distinguishes One Composer from Another?

1.1 What Is Creativity?

1.2 What Is Originality?

1.3 Emotion and Reason

1.4 The ‘Obedient’ and the ‘Rebellious’

2. Specific Features of Artistic Creation

2.1 The Spiritual Object

2.2 The Method of Artistic Cognition. Merging with the Object

2.3 The Creative Process. Insight

3. Criteria

3.1.1 The Presence of a Musical Object

3.1.2 The Absence of a Musical Object (or Speculative Object)

3.2.1 Criteria to Judge the Presence of the Artistic Method of Cognition

Dramaturgy. Link. Development

3.2.2 Criteria of the Absence of the Artistic Method of Cognition

3.3.1 Criteria of the Presence of Insight

3.3.2 Criteria of the Absence of Insight

4. Artistic Approach, Style, Period

5. The Composer’s Goals

Conclusions
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Music is much more than a score

In 2004, when the authors of the book had decided to dedicate it to the great connoisseur of
music, the world-renowned maestro Mstislav Rostropovich, publishing house L'Arrangement
appealed to the maestro with a request to give a critical assessment of the book. Several
months later, the phone rang and the spirited maestro told us that he is delighted with the book
and grateful to the authors for the dedication. A month later, I met up with maestro
Rostropovich in Basel, and during this meeting he told me how he had studied the composition
in his student years and had written some scores and what sort of knowledge of composition
appeared to be useful to him at that time. He also revealed that only now after reading this
book he finally realized why he had not become a composer. He added that he would keep the
manuscript of the book all the time by him in order to introduce it to a bigger circle of music
connoisseurs. Unfortunately, he never lived to see the publication of this book on what he really
hoped during the final years of his life.

The authors conceived the book as a reaction to modern trends of constructivism and
simplifying of the task of composition in the music. Nowadays many people perceive music as
a dexterous physical finger sport: countless notes rush past at breathtaking speed executed
with a captivating and magical power that leaves us enchanted. However, music is much more
than that. Music is a language akin to a foreign language that is used to communicate and to
exchange and transmit information and emotions.

"The most important in the music does not reside in the sheet music itself," said the Austrian
composer and conductor Gustav Mahler. One can improvise freely, as if he is juggling and
exploring sounds but to see the mere juggling of sounds as the final goal of the action this is
to take a very shallow material superficial aspect of a much greater whole.

Up until now, musicologists have been unwilling or unable to set firm criteria for determining
the quality of an artistic musical work as a completed opus, because any criteria seem to them
subjective or unverifiable.

Definitions of a work of art and objective criteria that must be fulfilled in order to qualify it as
completed opus are seemingly illusive and unknowable and thus far have evaded music
scientists. However, in this book, the authors make the attempt. They not only list here the
criteria of creativity in the music, but also give examples of well-known pieces of music to
attempting to prove them. The method that they used for this is very original: to show what
makes a real stroke of genius as opposed to the composition of an amateur, they “recompose”
a famous work. This shows that in principle there are several possibilities for the writing of a
particular composition as a formal opus. Why does the talented composer choose this and not
the other way to solve his task, due to the fact, that he was followed to the music image in his
soul, which he tends to reproduce. He is trying to create this musical image so that everyone
could grasp its meaning with his senses. He does not just write sheet music, but he composes
music as high art.

In the comparison between art and science, following topics are been discussed: what
distinguishes an art object from a scientific object? What is the method of artistic cognition?
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What is the creative process? What is originality and how it is manifesting? What traits has a
creative person? How emotional and rational he should be? And so on.

The concrete utility of the book is larger than the topics themselves. The knowledge that is
gained through the application of these criteria gives musicians and the audience a secure
direction to progress in the world of music:

1 When composing the composer can choose the route that leads to a fully-fledged work of
art.

2 The music scientist gets a „toolbox“, to distinguish a full value musical opus from a formal
sheet music construction.

3 These criteria provide a guide to the composer's intentions enabling the pianist or other
instrumentalist to interpret a music piece much deeper insight.

4 The listener gains some tuition in the art of music and the expert appraisal thereof.

5 The retailer for whom musical works constitute a considerable investment is providing due
the criteria with a wall of protection from inferior products.

The book is unique in its field offering unprecedented perspectives of evaluation of musical
creativity and art in general. Many views that previously appeared contradictory or
inexplicable are here resolved and many of the little composition secrets are disclosed and
convincingly explained.

It is my sincere hope that many more people will be able to benefit from the insights revealed
by book.

Larisa Voedisch
Publisher
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Introduction

This book is not a guide on how to compose music; on the contrary, it is much more a manual
on how you should not compose. The purpose of this book is to return to the composer and
the art of composing the authentic name and elevated significance that they have gained
through the course of the history of music. At present, however, these defining qualities are
being overly simplified, putting a straightjacket of narrow professionalism on the art of
composing. In the opinion of many people, including several professional musicians, a
contemporary composer is almost any educated person well-versed in musical notation;
according to the same people, composing is the knowledge and application of the rules of
composing techniques, musical forms and so forth. The sharp-edged rationalism and mass
consumerism of our era have led to a situation in which individuals who are not born musicians
often end up composing. The attitude of these individuals to composing, regardless of their
own opinion and statements, comes down to a temporary stimulation of the listener’s
imagination. The goal of this book is to remind every person who has an interest in the art, of
the primal (great and eternal) purpose of music. You, dear reader, will understand this idea if
you read this book from beginning to end. I hope that it will assist music enthusiasts as well as
professional musicians in forming their attitude towards contemporary music.

A Davidof
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1. What Distinguishes One Composer

from Another?
We were once acquainted with a composer who made a magic table of chord tension (similar
to Mendeleyev’s periodic table), which was his main composing tool. The basis for this table
was a harmonic series in which every successive interval was a priori considered more tense
than the previous one, and a chord was a mere sum of these intervals. He assumed that it was
enough to sum up the total tension of intervals in a chord and then divide this number by the
number of intervals within it. In this way, you could derive a certain «tension coefficient» from
this chord. Then, with the help of these magic numbers and chords arranged in the table in the
order of ascending tension (uniting alchemy with Pythagoras, so to speak), you might create
music that becomes both objectively right, and, of course, a stroke of genius. This
acquaintance of us was very proud of the fact that his creative process was not accidental but
beautifully mechanized and based on scientific principles. He was completely happy when in
the course of three hours of creative effort his work has progressed by as many as three bars.
He even said: “Today, I’ve been very productive; I have got all three bars.” Hearing this
reminded us of the words of J Vibert: “In works of this kind, we find recipes of mixtures, which
do not fail to specify the exact proportions of paints used to convey the colour of leaves of all
species of trees, the rivers and lakes of Europe, Swiss mountains, flame effects, and the
velvety skin of a peach, etc. In other words, you are provided with directions on how to depict
everything, including the blue of rage, the red of shame, deathly pallor, and the embodiment
of chastity. Naturally, we shall forgive this careful and extremely accurate advisor for forgetting
to tell us how to depict a lady who wants to conceal her age. Perchance we must mix all the
above together?”1 Statements of this kind reflect the naïve belief that it is sufficient to grab
paint #5 and spring will automatically appear on your canvas, or that if you write down chords
from the table of tension in a specific order, you will be sent into raptures by the charming
sounds of music. No way! In practice, we see no evidence of magic; on the contrary, the listener
is deafened by endless monotony.

If you ask someone what distinguishes one composer from another (or rather, an interesting
from a less interesting one), the answer will be simple – the degree of creative potential. But
look how differently we understand the meaning of creative potential or creativity.

1.1 What Is Creativity?

Is it sufficient, in your opinion, to invent something new in order to be considered truly creative?

Let us ask a baker: is it enough to add a little bit of chilli to doughnut dough to consider the
result a new and good product?

The answer will be an unequivocal “No, this is not enough. It will be the same doughnut, but
totally spoiled”.

Another composer, a friend of us, used to spoil F Liszt in a similar manner. His methods of
expression were very close to those of Liszt, but the melodies he composed to this “dough”
sounded too simple and naïve. They obviously did not correspond to either the pathos of
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powerful chords or the splendor and expanse of the musical texture, created by glittering,
sweeping passages: they were like pathetic Bruegelian blind men against the background of
luxuriant Rubenesque interiors.

It is clear that any creation becomes a truly new product only if it acquires some new quality.
This quality emerges not through reshuffling components of the product (e.g. as in playing a
card game), nor does it appear by changing separate elements within the existing system of
means of expression. For Bruegel’s blind men to be credible, it is necessary to create a natural
environment for them. For this reason, replacing a single element in a system begets a
replacement of other elements which affects the global picture.

Thus, creativity implies the emergence of a product of a totally new quality. However, we can
only speak about this new quality when a certain processing of already familiar elements takes
place, resulting in their reorganization. When we talk of the degree of creative potential that
distinguishes one composer from another, we actually have the level of this reorganization in
mind. This implies that a truly creative person will create his own unique system of means of
expression, intuitively recognizing its necessity.

But how does one become aware of this necessity? And what makes this reorganization
possible in the first place?

1.2 What Is Originality?

We all come into this world as unique and original individuals because nature does not like to
repeat itself (not only our inner worlds, but also our fingerprints and genetic codes are
individual). Following our natural instincts (and that is what we do in childhood), we inevitably
express our personalities. For this reason, in childhood we perform all our actions and
transform everything in our own individual way. Even in imitating, we unavoidably discover
something special in things, as if creating them anew. This explains why all or most children
are thought to have the capacity to be creative. Yet with time, our environment renders us
more and more alike, and we try to fit in with the crowd and not stand out. The power to create,
granted us by nature, slowly dies, giving way to the copying of ready-made recipes. Later,
when we consciously desire to become creative, we do not even notice how closely we imitate
existing examples or how much we resemble others. In order to depict something, a child does
not need as a rule to look at the pictures of a house, a cat or the sun. Children are quite satisfied
with what they have seen in real life. They will rely on the impression they have in their memory
from looking at the sun, and on the instinctive ability to reproduce this. The sun is not an
abstract to them, and they will not try to invent anything. Instead, they will trust their instincts,
i.e. their perception of the object itself. Moreover, their starting point will be a real (or imagined)
picture, but still their own, which they will try to commit to paper.

We would like to emphasize the latter: children will have a prototype in their minds, which they
will wish to depict very precisely, thus rendering it into a ‘measure of all measures’ and the final
criterion of the success of this depiction. Only this method will allow the child to create
something that will consist of familiar elements (the same old sun, the same old sky) but,
globally, represent something qualitatively different, more alive, more interesting, unusual etc.
And if they see the sun as not perfectly round, their instincts would inevitably tell them that the
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house should be slightly crooked. Everything in the recipe for doughnuts will be changing, and
a completely new cake will be made. The degree of originality (it looks like the others and, at
the same time, like nothing else) will not depend on something thought up, but on the personal
qualities and individuality of a person. This is why children do not have to struggle to be original.
To them, creating something is not a school task or work but pure pleasure instead. It is
unfortunate that not many of us are capable of becoming (or remaining) who we used to be in
childhood – vivid and natural creatures without the prejudices and biases imposed on us by
the environment. Too much lies behind that: a concern about public opinion, the fear of losing
somebody‘s respect or of spoiling our reputation, and so forth. However, so much has been
written about this2 that we prefer to let the reader consult other sources on this matter.

Very few people correctly understand the motto be like children when creating. This does not
mean, however, that you should get rid of all your experience and suddenly become silly. Great
scientists, truly creative and original people, would not be able to implement any of their ideas
if they become sillier. Their knowledge is the foundation of their success and reality, and yet
they are still basically children in this process. Firstly, they always begin from a certain idea or
prototype, which outlines itself with increasing clarity before their inner eye during the creative
process. This prototype is something objective, although it exists only in a person's
imagination. It is also relatively unchangeable and may thus become a criterion of the success
of any implementation. This is not a phantom, a self-delusion or a passing caprice that will be
gone the next day. This is not you, this is it within you. (Goethe, Nietzsche, Mozart and many
other great people referred to it as an ‘alien visitor’ who appeared on the doorstep; Mme
Landau writes about it in her dissertation Psychology of Creativity – available as a book in
German). Secondly, they trust their instincts or intuition (one may call it the ‘inner voice’). It is
as if they are led by this prototype as a blind man is led by a guide. They submit to the will of
this inner voice, which is called upon to put everything in its right place. When in a creative
mood, these people seem to lack their own opinion on the subject. (Schiller once wrote that
the intellect must call back its hounds that are guarding the gate of the spirit, so that ideas can
reach beyond it.) Thus, the more clearly etched and concrete your prototype is, the more
convincing your creative result (in this case, an acoustic result) will be. The louder your inner
voice speaks, the brighter the spark that kindles the listener will be. And vice versa: if the
prototype is just some dry scheme, vague even to the creator, the result of the reflection will
be a vague and boring something. If you do not trust your intuition, your inner voice, do not
expect any miracles. Your rationality and control will affect the result, which will be trivial and
old hat. You will simply re-invent the wheel.

But how can a grown-up person know whether he is led by his prototype, or his actions are
being conducted by his consciousness? What controls him at this moment: emotion or reason?
And what is the relationship between the two?

1. 3 Emotion and Reason

We are all familiar with the saying “like a dog chasing its own tail”. This can be said about
people who in their creative work engage in outpourings of their self, or strive for a ‘belles-
lettres’ effect (this tendency is especially conspicuous in the art of writing). They describe (or
try to express in notes) those subjective sentiments which probably overcame them today or
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yesterday. Such music or books are mirrors that reflect the authors themselves. If we were
asked to describe this process in detail, we would draw a sequence of pictures, in the first of
which a person seems to look at a canvas hanging on a wall. The canvas then gradually turns
into a mirror reflecting him. When you read or listen to such outpourings, you get the impression
that the author does not care about the way others will perceive them. Frequently, nothing here
is truly grounded and no comparisons are being made. There have been no attempts to place
these feelings among other events in the history or culture of man. The product of such creation
resembles a diary – take it or leave it. It is as if the author does not write for the reader but
simply for the sake of writing. (Russian writer M Saltykov-Shchedrin put this very succinctly:
the writer writes for the sake of writing, the reader reads for the sake of reading…) Such works
are very difficult to grasp and can be of interest to just a narrow circle of amateurs, or they limit
the reader to absorb only a few paragraphs at a time. Emotionally unstable, unsteady people,
in music mostly women composers, usually write such works since for them each emotion is
an event and every little detail is a revelation.3

As you probably realize, dear reader, such creativity is not based on a clearly defined
prototype, because its outlines changes from one moment to the next. In fact, there is no
prototype as a complete whole; there is no ‘alien visitor’, and the author obviously thinks that
his “tail” is something extraneous and objective. Therefore, this prototype is impossible to trace
or evaluate. Thus, there is nothing to say either about the emerging image or the piece of work
itself.

In recent years, however, the opposite tendency in composing has been in evidence; namely
a shift towards hyper-rationality, typically popular among those composers who have come to
this field from other disciplines, often technical or scientific ones. They are so fascinated by the
rules of music and so intent upon finding regularities and laws, that the compositions they
create resemble blueprints. We shall discuss the differences between scientific and artistic
thinking later, in chapter 2. Now, it is important to emphasize the following point: the absence
of that inner voice, which we have already mentioned, renders true free creation impossible
and turns composing into a problem with several unknowns. And here even a strict
mathematician will tell you that solving a problem with several unknowns is no act of creation.4
To continue our thoughts about emotion and reason: true composing is processing feelings at
such distance from oneself that, from the viewer‘s perspective, these feelings become
meaningful, objective, and global. Only then are they interesting to another person. The listener
perceives some sort of ‘objectification of the idea’, a reflection of the feeling as such. In order
to avoid any further discussion of the subject, we shall define the significance of emotion and
reason in the following way: the feeling, or rather the prototype, which manifests itself through
feelings and which we want to reproduce, comes first. (The composer is under the impression:
this is not ‘I’, but the ‘it’ within me…) And then we are faced with the task of how to pour it into
sound; how to materialize it, taking into account physics and acoustics and following all the
rules of ‘the law of gravitation’, so to say. The latter requires rational thinking. But we should
not stop here either, or our prototype, the spirit of music, will elude us. Thus, in the process of
creating there is a constant checking of the acoustic result against its prototype on the level of
emotion, which is done with the help of the inner voice we have already mentioned. Only once
both our hemispheres – heart-felt conviction and rational thinking – are well developed, shall
we be able to materialize our prototype or make it audible.
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This is the way all great composers understood their art. When violinist J Schuppanzigh
reproached Beethoven for the technical difficulties of his musical piece, the latter retorted: “He
imagines that I think of his wretched violin when the Spirit is addressing me.”5 This quote clearly
expressed the priority of orientation toward the spiritual object, which was to be reproduced by
an ordinary violin. The composer relates himself to the prototype with the help of emotion, but
grasps and materializes it through his reason. (The latter process includes many components,
which we shall discuss later in chapters 2.2 and 2.3.) This job resembles the work of an
architect who first sees the whole building with his inner eye and then must make all the
necessary calculations: draw up blueprints that contain the masses and measurement of
proportions of all parts of the building in conformity with his module etc., so that the building
will stand firm and not collapse like a house of cards at the slightest touch. However, by
calculating and measuring and constantly checking against his unique and graceful prototype,
he can consciously and unconsciously look for a solution that will make his building look very
light, almost weightless. Then suddenly, unexpectedly even for himself, it occurs to him that
the façade of his building might be faced with pyramid-shaped stones rather than with ordinary
hewn ones. And it is precisely this decision that makes the building look like whipped cream
on a cake, not like stone. Magic transpires and yet it will seem simple and clear, since it is the
same stone.

Thus, creativity is the human ability to keep track of his spiritual prototype: to observe the
traces it leaves in our dimension and to see it become visible. It is an ability to be in two
dimensions at once: in the place where the non-material object resides, and here, where it
leaves its imprint.

But how does an author know if he has really created something significant, which has never
existed before, or whether it is only a repetition of what has already been discovered?

All creative people would like to take giant strides into the future, creating new things. In order
to find out whether one's step was large or small, Horace made a stipulation about time: let the
work be published in the ninth year after it was created. Only from a distance of time does it
become clear whether a person has accomplished a leap in thought, or just remained on the
level of ordinary statistics. Why is it that one person cannot transcend the boundaries of local
significance in his originality, while another – a genius – outstrips all humanity by centuries?

1. 4 The Obedient and the Rebellious

There are two kinds of people: those who are more or less obedient and executive, and those
who are rebellious. Why do the latter rebel? Why do they tend to do everything against the
rules and contradict everything and everyone? Are they bad people who wish to destroy
everything that we have so painstakingly built? If you spend some time with such people you
will discover that they have no evil intentions, that they are sincere and warm-hearted people
of good will. They are in conflict with their surroundings not because they want to be so but
due to their unusual nature. Being true to themselves, and very sincerely expressing their
feelings and thoughts in an almost childlike manner, they create their own rules, which are
more congenial to them than ready-made ones.
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When my nephew was seven years old, he refused outright to learn multiplication tables. His
teachers, parents and neighbours all conspired to persuade him of the usefulness of this
knowledge, but he stubbornly continued to follow his own system. If he needed to multiply 9
times 5 for example, he would first multiply the smallest number by ten and then subtract the
redundant five (5 times 10 equals 50, minus 5 equals 45). His thinking pattern was longer this
way; yet, by using this strategy, he was developing an amazing rapidity of thinking. He was
compensating one thing with another and for him it felt natural, like being a fish in water. People
around him scolded him and considered him dumb. Only a few were able to understand that
people like this boy, who did not follow the linear train of thought, were capable of creating
some sort of a paradox and things that were qualitatively, not quantitatively, new. Such people
are able to make leaps in thought from one plane to another, joining them together. In one of
these leaps, they encounter the unexpected. Their revelations do not lie within the realm of
possibility, but in the realm of the unpredictable, of illumination (see ‘Insight’, chapter 2.3
below). This is why following the rules (of Bach, for example), of which some people are so
fond, leads to very unsophisticated and simplistic results (such as the above-mentioned
practice of following the table of chord tension). Whereas in fact it was the emergence of these
new rules (or rather, regularities), born from the imagery of Bach’s music and coupled with his
strong and rebellious personality, that lead to the uniqueness of the composer’s works.

Let us summarize what has already been said. Composers are distinguished from one another
by the degree of their creative potential, which implies a restructuring of the elements of a
product resulting in a qualitatively new product. This can only occur based on the originality of
the human personality itself. The rebelliousness of a person‘s nature is the main point of
departure in this qualitative restructuring; it is a condition of its effectiveness, and finally, a
condition of the appearance of new and original musical creations. But the only possible way
for this personality to fully express itself is the presence of the prototype at the very outset of
the creative process (see chapter 2.3). A person will attempt to reproduce it as exactly as
possible in his work, in accordance with his or her own musical talent and knowledge. In the
process of notating the music, creative people will continually check themselves against the
prototype and listen to the inner voice.

We do not doubt that some of you will immediately ask: how does it happen that people who
are talented, have a good knowledge of music and are rebellious in spirit do not automatically
become significant and interesting composers? Perhaps they make mistakes? Or maybe some
other qualities that we have not yet mentioned account for this?

In order to answer these questions we shall, in the next chapter, outline and analyse some of
the main pillars of creation on a theoretical level. We shall compare artistic (including musical)
to scientific creation and, at the same time, point out its specific features.

2. Specific Features of Artistic Creation

2. 1 The Spiritual Object
There was a time when people did not believe in science, but instead believed in signs, legends
and superstitions. There was a time when legends were considered to be nonsense and there
was great faith in science; and if something could not be proved by science, well then it simply
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could not be true. Today, people are contradictory: pagan notions are often taken to be
absolutely true and even scientific, whereas science, with its complementarity principle (Niels
Bohr), inconceivable in logic, has lost for these people its status as the source of stability and
infallibility. Moreover, there is a clear tendency towards taking every judgement to extremes:
say “spirit” and you are already labelled an anthroposophist; say “material” and you are nothing
more than a shoemaker. (We do not mean to offend either of them, but only emphasize the
fact that people often like to put words in your mouth that you do not say, and interpret your
ideas in the light of their own understanding.)

The same thing is true in musical composition. Our views on music change along with changing
times, and the issues surrounding the spirituality of art and the material aspect of it (musical
notation, for example) are still subject to lively discussion.

There was a time when a musician – a composer and performer in one – was considered a
prophet who spoke the word of God himself (this concept was widespread, for instance, in
classical antiquity and nearly always in the East). It was assumed that a musician possessed
power and knowledge of which not every human being was capable or had the right to judge.
His art was not open to debate or, as we would say today, it was not subject to any analysis or
critical assessment.

There was a time, however (in the Roman Empire, for instance), when all that was expected
from a musician was thorough professionalism and virtuosity. The musician had no mission.
This was the result of a hedonistic lifestyle and a very pragmatic outlook. Moreover, it was
mostly slaves, who practised the arts, and their efforts were judged from the viewpoint of
expertise and skill. This understanding of creation naturally led to a development of the arts
that, today, we should call ‘applied’.

Music has been and still is being discussed so broadly and in such different ways that it is
impossible to avoid misunderstanding and disagreement. How do they arise? Let us consider
the following example.

Until quite recently, the process of creating music seemed mysterious, enigmatic and so vague
that it evoked a feeling of nausea in those who preferred concrete thinking. We can understand
these people. Indeed, discussions about mysterious things or things that cannot be verified
are simply not acceptable in this scientifically-minded day and age. We left scholasticism
behind a long time ago and now prefer the material aspect of things. The trouble is that in their
frenzied quest to introduce order to the art of music through a supposedly scientific
understanding, confining the idea and contents of music to its audible and visible ‘veneer’ and
only taking into account its ‘tangible’ side, those material thinkers have come up with the
preposterous idea that, as a purely physical entity, sound is quite incapable of rendering
anything but itself. Therefore, they claimed, there is no other content in music (which is an
acoustic art) apart from notation, and none can be expected. It follows that music is only an
audible palette; roughly speaking, the meaning of music lies solely in the aesthetic of its chords
and arpeggios. And if this is the case, the art of music is nothing more than the assembling of
a mosaic or jigsaw puzzle, and an entertainment for the ear. There is no great difference
between the art of a composer and that of a juggler. Here, the content of music is being looked
for, not ‘behind’ the text or between the lines, the way it has been done for centuries, but only
in the text and without transcending its boundaries.6 Then there is no other semantics in music
except for that of its sounds that are being aestheticized. And everything else, which
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musicologists usually describe by means of symbols and metaphors, is poetry or literature,

having little, if anything, to do with the composer’s intent. Indeed, treatments of the same piece
can be so different that one can hardly speak of its objectivity.

Today, not only philosophers involved in the issues of music, but also composers themselves
justify this mode of thinking by discussing their works in terms of a construct that requires a
degree of professional understanding, thus either avoiding or completely ignoring the question
of the content. The structural order and logic of this sound construct become their sole aim;
from here, it is just a short step to an understanding of the idea and the whole phenomenon of
musical composition as a kind of visual aspect of sheet music. Indeed, in order to enjoy the
rightness of such music, it is not necessary to hear it; it is enough to see the perfection of the
construct. Art, now, becomes merely artifice and can only be comprehended with a certain
amount of expertise in this field.7

But let us suppose that our opponents are right; that there is nothing in music except for its
objective, material result; that it contains nothing more and is not intended to express anything
but that. If this were true, if music were just a game of sounds or playing with sounds, we could
frankly say that at some point, it would become extinct, like all unnecessary species in nature,
(life and nature do not tolerate duplicates).8 There are so many games already that one game
more or one game less would not make any difference (i.e., there would be no special need
for this particular game). And having in mind its cost (orchestras, soloists, concert halls that
must be filled with an audience, i.e. all those expensive matters), this game would soon be
replaced by some other, less expensive and less complicated one. However, the primary
argument here is the following: the goal of every game, even if it is considered an aesthetic
game, is to entertain; it must contain the element of excitement. But, to be honest, who could
grow excited by textbook examples of harmonization problems, which reflect this urge toward
the perfection of a construct or, for example, by such exercises as composing a fugue on a
given motif? Those who have been engaged in such a game in practice know all too well how
exciting it is. Listening to such exercises, as with listening to technical studies for piano, is even
less entertaining. It is not worthwhile being deceived by the idea that constructs conceived
according to a new principle will be radically more interesting than the old ones. This is
precisely why many modern pieces of music live not for one day, but literally for some minutes
only. Listening to them for a second time is boring, not to mention the prospect of purchasing
a CD or sheet music, i.e. playing this music at home.

Those who say that music is merely a game either misunderstand the word creation (see below
chapter 2.3, about the creative process – they underestimate the significance of insight) or
negate the possibility of an artistic cognition of the world, leaving cognition completely in the
hands of science, as an objective method based on the experiment.

No, art does not admit experiment. It does not admit it because in art, the material object of
cognition, which submits to measurement, is absent. Art, however, including the art of music,
does have its special object. And by means of this object and the respective method of
cognition, art, just like science, fulfils the function of world cognition. This cognition is just of a
different type.

Both science and art begin their road to cognition in a similar way. In the psyche of both the
scientist and the artist a spiritual object appears, which, like a piece of reality, even though it
is only a potential or possible material object, is subject to examination. The renowned
 18

physicist, Nobel prize-winner Wolfgang Pauli, wrote: “I hope that nobody still holds the opinion
that was current in my student years, which claimed that all theories are results of necessary
logical deductions that originate directly from record books. Theories arise through
understanding, which is inspired by empirical evidence, and can best be described by Plato’s
theory about the correspondence of external objects and their correlations with internal
images.”9 In order for this internal image, this spiritual object, to acquire the status of a scientific
object, it must subsequently be separated from the human psyche, from the cognizing subject,
and be replanted in the soil of those objects that most people are capable of seeing and
comprehending. (Indeed, no scientist can talk about an object as a scientific object if it only
exists in his head, in his imagination.) The object must become something palpable, something
that can be touched, some physical quantity or mathematical number, for example. Only from
this moment, it can be described and measured, i.e. subjected to scientific methods of
research. Only then does the object become objective and scientific. And science, separating
the subject from the object, seeks and finds similarities between objects. This is how the
abstract is born.

Art takes as its subject precisely this spiritual object though, this non-material or impalpable
internal image. It is objective only to the author himself. In fact, it is located in the human psyche
and cannot be separated from it. Art can thus only work with concrete, characteristic, or
individual subjects; its object always carries the imprint of the author’s personality. The
examination of similarities in objects, abstract thinking, gives way here to the examination of
differences and of each concrete phenomenon. A mathematician, a friend of us, once told us
a professional joke: “A mathematician is a person who creates out of a simple cup of coffee...
a theorem.” To which I (Davidof) replied: “And the artist is someone who makes even out of a
theorem... a sweet-smelling cup of coffee”. Science favours the abstract because it implies a
separation of the two realities: the subject and the object of cognition, a separation of ‘I’ and
‘not I’. But art does not separate them. (How cognition can be possible in art and what the
connections between ‘I’ and ‘my object’ are, will be discussed later in chapter 2.2.)

From all that has been said here, it may be concluded that, because of the differences between
their objects of cognition, art and science cannot be directly compared. And unlike science, art
is unable to draw direct parallels between the object of art and its material result. In order to
understand better the correspondence of the object of art with its material result, let us give an
example.

If we were to determine scientifically the source of the beauty of the flight of a swan10, we would
most likely begin with calculating the potential altitude of its flight. We would measure the length
and the width (contours) of its wings; calculate how many strokes the swan can do per minute;
what the force of air would be, etc. In other words, we would search for all the components of
this process exclusively within the object, i.e., the swan itself.

Beauty (the meaning) of art, however, does not lie in the very swan, but in its flight. If we shoot
the swan and pluck it, which is what conscientious but pedantic music critics do with musical
texts, we shall all be very disappointed, since we shall find nothing special either in its skeletal
structure or plumage. Everything will seem so ordinary, simple and almost banal. (The same
happens when calculating bars and enumerating all major and minor modulations in a piece
of music, which is typical of works of poor music criticism that take into consideration the
material side of things only. The mystery of this amazing, breathtaking beauty will never be
 19

unravelled in this way.) We know that a woman’s beauty is not only in her proportions, but also
in her smile, her special glance, in the twinkles of her eyes - something that seems to be
‘between the lines’. And then suddenly the ineffable is revealed, and then something happens
that Hermann Hesse described in his novel Steppenwolf: “It was at a concert of lovely old
music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened all of a sudden to the other
world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my
defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave
up my heart. […] Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses,
in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then
in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an
old brittle husk.”11

Thus, the beauty of art is in this movement, in the flight; although this flight, which is something
immaterial from the point of view of the observer, is performed by a completely material object:
the swan made of flesh and blood (i.e. the artistic object is placed within the text of a piece of
music). Needless to say, that without a swan there is no flight; but the presence of a swan does
not automatically presuppose a flight.12

This flight will become the artistic object for an artist. Therefore, a truly good and accurate
description of a musical object is possible only when one can read between the lines - when
the music critic looks not for the letter (not only for the musical text), but for the meaning,
reading and feeling the object.13 (By the way, a dry interpretative analysis of pieces of music
occurs when the analysis itself is considered a scientific act, and the musical text is thereupon
identified with its object.)

However, if we want to say anything about, for example, the art of Maria Callas, we shall
undoubtedly find many beautiful words to describe not only her technique and artistry, but also
something deeper – that, which she could express so beautifully. We shall be able to find these
words only because we are able to hear the object of her creative efforts; we shall compare
our own concept of this with the singer’s interpretation. Here, everyone can recognize the
object; there is no need to dispute whether its origins are material or spiritual. But how often
music critics forget about this when they attempt to analyse a piece, especially a piece of
contemporary music. One cannot help the impression that we are all in a morgue and
examining dead bodies. Let us recall the lines by R M Rilke, who warned us about this:

I shudder from words that people pronounce.

All that they say is clear till it stings:
So there is an ending, and there it begins,
And this is a dog, and that is a house.

I fear their play with deep scorn - like a shot

Rushing out their knowledge of future and past,
No mountain is wondrous to them, and, at last,
Their gardens and properties border on God.
 20

I want to warn you; my wish: stay away!

I hear the things singing throughout the whole day.
You touch them and they become rigid and dumb.
You kill all the things, you kill their hum. 14

Rilke, as though from the top of a mountain where it is so easy to lose one’s equilibrium and
fall into a crevasse, would certainly also have warned those music critics who in their analyses
of music, seeing the text, go overboard and describe their own emotions and reactions to a
certain piece. This immediately becomes ‘the water of music criticism’, without fish, however.
An analysis carried out like this can easily become a separate kind (or genre) of literature
inspired by music. It will resemble the genre of musical variations on someone else’s motif.
However, let us not go too deeply into music criticism and give examples of good or poor
analyses. This book would become twice as long in that case. What matters in music is whether
we feel the specific character of the object, whether we can hear how and in what ways
(through what means) this ‘flight’ is performed. In the end, failed works of music criticism that
describe everything in a score which can be seen by the naked eye, or in which motifs are, in
a scientific manner, split into ‘protons’ and ‘neutrons’, are useless to an interpreter, who will
obviously not become smarter because of this. Nor are they useful to ordinary music lovers
ready to evaluate the qualities of the piece, as they will not sense the ‘taste of the coffee’.

Thus, the delusion that is often encountered today in composing originates from a
misconception of the object of art, which is considered to be analogous to that of science.
Formerly, people often committed the reverse error. They saw the flight but forgot that it lay in
the swan and not somewhere in the sky. Today, we often see the swan but not the flight.

The reasons for such a misunderstanding stem from the influence that the modern scientific
age has on us. Today, even musical people tend to evaluate all phenomena from a scientific
point of view. And, what is even worse, a lot of people today enter the sphere of art who do
not, in fact, belong there. We are certain that after all that we have said about the specifics of
the object of art, in comparison to that of science, many people will immediately understand
our point. Many, however, would not understand it even if we were to write two additional books
on this subject. The latter are not musical by nature. They are like blind men who have never
seen the sun but try to tell us about it. It is very difficult for them to understand that there is a
completely different world, a totally different dimension behind the door labelled ‘music’. To
see this world, one must have a special organ. (This is the answer to the question raised at
the end of chapter one: why people who are talented, educated, and even rebellious in spirit
do not automatically become interesting and significant composers - because, first and
foremost, they must have this musical sensibility.)15 It is from this particular point, from the
words “different dimension”, that the pretty disguising of the subject usually begins. In order to
avoid such obscurity, we would rather stop on the threshold for a while.

Let us add a few more words about the purpose of music.

Through its long history, art as a whole has made a long journey from simple forms to forms
of much higher complexity; it has finally developed into a means of cognizing the world and life
in its different aspects. Tasks that art is to solve are often more global than those to be solved
 21

by science. In general, those tasks are almost equally as significant as those of philosophy
and religion. We shall discuss why it is so in the following chapter.

2. 2 The Method of Artistic Cognition.

Merging with the Object

This topic is the most complex one in the book, because we are going to analyse how the
above-mentioned flight is performed, or how the spiritual (immaterial) object gets its material
shell. When speaking about this, we must not simply enter the door labelled ‘music’, enter this
different dimension – i.e., not simply be a person with artistic inclinations and musical by
nature. We must have yet another talent, namely the ability to enter and exit from one
dimension into another. In other words, we must be able to see them both simultaneously and
understand how one object (spiritual) is transformed into another (its material result). We shall
analyse this from two different perspectives: the perspective of the composer, when we see
the process of the materialization of the spiritual object, and from the perspective of the music
critic, who tracks down the reflection of the composer’s prototype in the final result. First we
shall attempt to look at this complex process from the composer’s perspective, i.e. from the
perspective of the spiritual dimension. This is the symbolic approach, and for those who are
musical by nature this will not be an alien experience. In chapter 3, where we shall discuss the
criteria of our theoretical postulates, we shall look at the same problem from the perspective
of the music critic. This will come close to the ‘bodily’ method, which can be submitted to
relative measurement.

We know that there are people who, during a creative process, seem to be filled with sounds
from the outside; as if their souls receive some external information. It seems as if they do not
deliberately do anything special; they only have to be able to listen carefully to their own inner
voice. This careful listening, however, is not as simple as it might appear.

It is not at all a passive act, but an extremely active one, which shakes the author’s soul as
well as his body. It is not by chance that such gifted and talented people are often viewed as
being insane: talking to themselves, waving their arms about, with eyes that stare maniacally.
These are symptoms of active, careful listening. What is going on in this soul? And why, in
fact, do we make a distinction between geniuses and madmen?

In such a creative state, when an author is overwhelmed with thoughts and images, his soul
touches another world that you might call the world of the spirit, or the world of ideas. (If some
feel more comfortable with Plato’s concept of this phenomenon, we do not mind. Otherwise,
take this idea as a symbol.)16 While it is there, the human soul strives to register its feelings
and impressions. It is a very strong upwelling of energy, which fills the composer with surprise,
impressions and thrills to such a degree that he feels a necessity to ‘discharge’ (this is what
he does when he records his impressions on paper, i.e. jots down his composition). Listening
to yourself at this moment is an attempt to understand what you have experienced; an attempt
to see objects (which take the form of sounds for a composer) which are in this stream of
energy that overwhelms you, as well as to grasp what is most essential in it. A creating person
resembles a madman in that, in this state, he is not capable of self-reflection, of understanding
or controlling his condition, but is only able to undergo it. When he returns to himself, to his
 22

regular ‘I’, however, it is as if he returns to the earth-bound world, to his former raison d‘être,
and once again becomes what he was before: an ordinary, realistic, and healthy spirit. This is
what distinguishes him from a real madman (if a similar state is ascribed to the latter according
to outer behavioural characteristics): talent (we often use the term ‘genius’) travels there and
then returns. A madman travels there and does not return...

Due to the above mentioned reasons, we are not going to dwell on the subject of the other
dimension any longer. We have not measured it.17 What has been said about this dimension
was enough to understand where the keys to the door are to be found. We simply want once
again to emphasize the anti-unreal and anti-enigmatic interpretation of this phenomenon, i.e.
the creative state of diving into the world of spiritual objects. For an artist or a composer (and
also for a scientist), the world of spiritual objects is just as real as our reflection in the mirror is
to us, and that is expressed absolutely clearly in these sounds that will be recorded on paper.
It makes no sense to mystify this subject anymore; there has been nothing here thus far that
belongs to the sphere of the ineffable.

Thus, we continue our careful listening. Well, we shall follow the prototype, trying to grasp and
describe it. This prototype is so alive and clear that we could take a photograph of it. But how
does one photograph pain... moaning... euphoria... harmony? (Not the feeling itself, but
something that appears to us or that can be described by means of these feelings.) Indeed,
this is not the ordinary juxtaposition of object and subject, ‘I’ with ‘not-I’. No, it is more
complicated: ‘I’ see this ‘not-I’ when I become this ‘not-I’, when I seem to be in its skin, in its
space and time. ‘I’ - i.e. my personality - am in a state of metamorphosis. All of a sudden, I
can... fly (my soul seems to ‘know’ how to do it as though it has experienced the sensation of
flying). All of a sudden, I know the joy of blossoming (experiencing an absolutely extraordinary
and previously unknown emotional state) and intimately touch the cosmos; feel its harmony
and internal concord and necessity. Ah, we know much more - only, how difficult it is to convey
this all in words, and still more difficult to believe what is said, if you have not been there
yourself. It is one thing to know how to fly, yet a completely different matter to fly yourself.
Words are not sufficient to describe this state. But please believe us.

Therefore, the method of artistic cognition lies in the simultaneous merging of the subject of
creativity with the object of cognition, in experiencing this object, in a kind of metempsychosis,
and also in the reflection that follows. When, for a short instant, you become ‘not-I’, you can
easily recognize the specifics of which your prototype consists and it is easier for you to localize
it. Then this prototype becomes a very clear and concrete it within you, and the one who is
cognizing already knows a great deal about it.

This merging is not a very easy act though. You cannot experience it whenever you wish, and
it cannot be obtained as many times as one desires. The fact is that this act depends not so
much on the individual human will (though it is not possible without it), as on the personal
innate qualities of an individual.18 The subject of a creative process, may, for example, enter
the stream and exit it without drawing anything from it. Or he may long and passionately wish
to experience this state again, but not be able to become pregnant.19 At the same time, the
muse will not visit a soul that is not ready. For example, it can be exhausted, lazy, or too worried
by problems of its own dimension. The muse comes only when you beckon it, when you wait,
when you are awake and think intently, as if you are preparing the ground for it. A composer
may carry an idea in his heart for a long time; it may seem murky, indistinct, and elusive. This
 23

requires patience, active inner work with yourself, and time. Then, suddenly, at a certain
moment, this cactus will bloom of its own volition. The door opens, and we finally touch the
prototype and experience its warmth.

Many talented musicians reach this phase, feeling a creative surge (musicians feel this, for
example, when they intensely experience the work they are playing). Here we do not yet know,
however, whether the prototype has left any traces (and what kind) in our dimension, on the
body. Are we capable of reproducing it? We do not know that yet. The stream carries us farther,
swinging us from side to side. Then we come closer and closer to something - and suddenly
we arrive at some state of truth. Here it becomes so obvious, although we do not know why,
that this is precisely as it should be and that this is exactly that. Otherwise, it would be a lie.
We do not know why we are so certain about this; but we are completely happy. This joy is the
joy of truth. Here, you suddenly grasp what is most important, as if these two dimensions
suddenly touched one another at a certain point (see below, chapter 2.3, on insight). Honoré
de Balzac claimed that he did not know why Rastignac suddenly married the daughter of his
mistress. In other words, he wanted to force the story in a different direction with his mind and
his own will, but the inner truth of the image did not allow him to do so. To Balzac, it was clear
that had he done otherwise, he would have been describing something that could not happen;
it would not have been the authentic, real thing. Truth revealed itself to him, although it seemed
strange and unwished for. For a fraction of a second his prototype, that ‘living spirit’, became
visible, here and now, and even in great detail, as if it had always been here but the writer only
noticed it now. It is not merely by chance that Charles Sainte-Beuve considered Balzac to be
clairvoyant.

The same thing happens to composers, when, at the moment of truth, it becomes absolutely
clear to them how this prototype should be committed to paper. Arthur Honegger describes
this in his book, I, the Composer: “Sometimes the solution to a problem can come from a
secondary thought. The rhythm, or a tune I considered banal, suddenly appears in its true light.
It bewitches me, and I do not diverge from it a single iota.”20 At this moment of illumination -
and this is important - the composer is very much aware of the fact that he has not thought up
the solution himself, but found it. It is as if it lay there, ready-made. After this act of truth, it is
relatively simple for him to write down notes, since everything in his composition converges
onto the main idea; this is because he saw the prototype not just in the spirit, but also in its
shell.21

In regard to the above, one might say that the composer, or any artist whatsoever, is the most
honest person, because he cannot lie if he is loyal to his nature and his calling. Indeed, it often
happens that people consider artists to be cheats, pretenders and very snobby persons. This
attitude derives from the fact that this truth that cannot be verified is not accessible to everyone.
Not everyone is capable of keeping up with the artist, treading this difficult and winding road.
And then they speak with irony: “Oh well, he’s one of the élite! What do we ordinary people
know of these matters?” You cannot conduct an experiment here that would verify the truth of
what is being expressed. We can only follow the guide, believing that he has no reason to lie;
follow him into the stream and see the whole. Only this whole, as a living organism, as
something exciting and breathtaking, will convince us of its objectivity and meaningfulness (see
below, chapter 3.1, about the criteria of the artistic object).22
 24

Here, a reader will certainly cry out: “Stop! You have told us enough of different things. All
these symbols are subjective; they may all be understood in different ways. It is not possible
to derive a single, unified image or truth from them. Then what is the point of this ‘idle talk’?”

Let us first examine, however, where symbols are born. They seem to be neither one thing nor
another. They are a kind of conglomerate of many familiar components which yet at the same
time claims to be integrity. But let us take a closer look at this. What we see here is exactly our
new object, prototype, or an ‘alien visitor’. It is so difficult to describe it because it has never
existed before. It is alien. In trying to announce its arrival, we attempt to construct it like a
mosaic from stones familiar to us and other people. We speak of quantities and qualities,
comparing it with something familiar. We try to bring the imagination of it by another person to
that of ours. At this moment, the symbol is the best medium of transmission, since it is not a
concrete object but something that surrounds the object. This is why it is so important and
convincing. It shows us a completely unfamiliar object which we cannot name or point out. But
if the symbol had not contained any objective information about the object, we would have
rejected using it long ago. The subjectivity of the symbol is not an obstacle to understanding
it. The artistic object, as we have already said, is always subjective. Coffee always smells
differently to different people. However, it is still coffee; it is something that can be
characterized on the level of the real. The obstacle or difficulty in decoding the symbol always
arises due to a wrong interpretation of the level of symbolic thinking. We would compare it to
a sense of humour. If a person has a sense of humour, he can easily understand the punch
line in a joke. A joke should be understood on its own level, in its own language; otherwise it
is not a joke, but an explanation. Precisely the same thing happens in symbolic thinking: if we
are unable to use this language, we pass onto another plane of thought and begin to explain
the symbol. What comes from it we all know very well. But we are not going to discuss it now
because this theme would provide material for a separate book. The damage of this literal or
explanatory understanding of symbols can best be seen in religion.23 The fact that the symbol
contains objective information about an object and is the best tool for communication if it is
necessary to transfer objective features of this object is very palpable in television shows in
which children are given the task of describing a thing, a notion, or a phenomenon, and the
adults must guess what they are describing. Here, adults demonstrate the presence or lack of
a sense of humour, or rather the ability to think symbolically. Communication on this level,
however, is quite functional, that is it works well for people capable of symbolic thinking.

Symbols do not serve the purpose of helping us to measure or make a blueprint of an unknown
object. Their purpose is to induce associations with similar objects that could construct the
spirit of this new prototype in a person’s imagination or senses. We must constantly see them
in context. If we forget this in music and think of a composition only from the perspective of its
material result, and not from that of the image it creates, if we split music into individual
elements and do not see a need to put them back into a context, we get a picture in which the
spirit of music, its mysterious alien visitor, quietly slips away like a genie from a lamp, before it
has completely appeared, as if into a crevice, into a dominant seventh chord...

Let us summarize what we have said: the specifics of the method of cognition in art lie in the
peculiar merging of the subject with the object, contrary to science where the object is
juxtaposed to the subject. Thus, it is clear that in this type of cognition an experiment striving
to prove the truth is simply not feasible. Here you can only follow the guide and grasp the truth
yourself (similar to the experience of revelation in religion). It is not by chance that science, so
 25

highly praised in the West (as though only science would allow for a true and objective
cognition), is rated lower in the Orient than both religion and art, precisely due to the qualities
of its method of cognition. (Science implies splitting and, thus, it is always a loss of something
that might be important. Art, on the contrary, implies seeing an object in its unity.) In this
consists the great and eternal purpose of art in general and of music in particular. 24

2. 3 The Creative Process. Insight

We have just described how the act of creation takes place. We have already pointed to all the
components of the creative process. Let us, however, spell them out once again for the sake
of clearness, and do it with the help of scientific terms.

Psychologists, G Wallas for example, have developed the following model of creative process:

Phase 1: preparation (gathering information). Phase 2: incubation (analysis, processing of

facts and information). Phase 3: illumination phase, otherwise called insight (unexpected,
intuitive illumination, solution). Phase 4: verification (result, product).

The first two phases of the creative process are, as a rule, common to all types of creativity
and any kind of thinking. This means that a person receives and accumulates information on
a particular subject and processes it by means of analysis; subsequently, he will synthesize
the results of the thinking process.

Let us, however, pause and clarify exactly what the gathering and processing of information
means in music.

When we described the creative act of a composer, we pointed to a condition of his being in
the stream, to his merging with his prototype, and even his sensing the warmth of the object.
This relates to the first phase of gathering information. A composer perceives his prototype as
a question to which he is seeking an answer, and he only tries to localize it in the beginning.
He feels emotional tension, as does any other person seeking the answer to his question, and
the gathering of information is finished for him only when he sees his prototype most vividly on
the spiritual level; that is, when merging with it, he senses its warmth.

In the next phase, processing information, he looks for the traces this prototype may have left
in our dimension, or, in other words, he tries to understand how it could be conveyed to the
listener so that it would become audible and palpable. At this point, a state of anxiety is initiated
in the person, because he does not yet know whether this can be accomplished, and if yes,
then how. Consciously and unconsciously he continues to search for the solution. He remains
in the stream, compares (on the level of associations) the features of his new prototype with
other, already familiar images, and waits for the answer.

These initial phases are very important for a composer, from the perspective of the general
cultural value of his would-be creation. Some artists underestimate these phases. Gathering
information about a new, relevant prototype takes place against the background of an artist’s
cultural baggage; i.e. against some backstage of his life experience, his knowledge of the
achievements of humanity, etc. The stream, into which a creative person falls, is always a very
individual inner world, where objects reflect the intellectual and emotional experience of the
 26

person in question. The artist can draw a lot or nothing at all (or very little) from it, as from a
book that one has finished reading. Thus, the greater the baggage of general cultural
knowledge a composer carries with him, the higher the probability that his future composition
will acquire the desired quality. Here one can only rely on one’s own personality, which has
absorbed much from life in general.

At the stage of information processing, the creator’s own attitude to his new prototype is very
important. A truly professional composer will not invest his strength in a large-scale piece of
music, a symphony for example, if having sensed the warmth of the prototype he has not
tackled the question: “Is my new prototype worthy of the efforts that await me on the path
towards realizing it? Is it worth materializing?” Here he should objectively evaluate his creation-
to-be on the general cultural level in order to avoid repetitions and disappointment.
Unfortunately, it happens much too often that such a new prototype is only new to this particular
composer. Later, however, it becomes clear that this inexperienced composer, in his
tremendous effort, using complex sentences, proclaims... a commonplace. He believes he has
discovered America, but against the background of all mankind it appears that he has
reinvented the wheel. In other words, a composer who cannot, for example, sense or compare
the quality of his prototype with images in the works of other composers, is doomed to follow
the melodies of Schubert or Puccini, and the texture of Rachmaninoff or Liszt in his music, etc.
He will not be able to create anything truly valuable, new and significant if he does not know
exactly what defines the significance of any piece of music. The significance of a new product
lies, as we have already said, in its qualitative restructuring; which, in the context of the history
of music, sometimes even implies a change of our view of the world. There is no significance
without the knowledge of what the value of this view of the world consists; i.e. it is unthinkable
without knowing the very values.25

The composer will also feel disappointed when he makes another mistake, namely, when he
fails to estimate accurately his own abilities during the phase of information processing, asking
himself the following: “Shall I be able to do that?” If his professional knowledge is insufficient,
he will not be able to realize his idea despite all his efforts. For this reason, the more rational
the composer’s thinking at this stage, the more effectively will he be able to realize his
intentions.26

Thus, in the first two phases of creation the composer resembles to a significant degree a
craftsman who must know his trade thoroughly. He also resembles his other confrères in
creative efforts – the painter, the architect, and the sculptor – in that like them he must know
the material from which he will manufacture his product (for example, not knowing the
difference between clay and marble, a sculptor cannot begin a certain sculpture). Equally so,
the composer must know his acoustic material in order to create in accordance with his
prototype; i.e. a short piece or a whole symphony. Ignoring this craftsmanship, this somewhat
impersonal aspect of the matter, almost always leads to a loose and amorphous musical score,
which is very spicy, but has not much meat on the bone (or in other words, lacks substance).
To put it more simply, this is evidence of the composer’s illiteracy. It cannot be justified by the
originality of the initial idea or concept: if a heel comes off a shoe, a shoemaker cannot say
that it was his original idea. Thus, the stronger the composer is as an analyst in these phases,
the higher the probability that he will create a truly valuable and solid piece. (Great scientists
did not make their discoveries in a vacuum either.)
 27

How are these true discoveries made, then?

Here we have come to the only objectively unexplored and difficult to describe stage of the
creative process known as insight (the term was introduced by W Köhler). Had we been able
to grasp how it occurs, we would long ago have written a program, mechanized the whole
process, and built a kind of creative machine that would have made all the mysteries of nature
accessible, made scientific discoveries and created immortal works of art. But we cannot be
higher than God; we cannot become masters of nature and create our own rules of existence,
and this is a good thing too. We know all too well what would come of it.

Let us recall: in chapter 1 we discussed the matter of the obedient persons and the rebellious,
and we claimed that only the latter were capable of true discoveries, because they received
them through illumination. What is happening here?

When we described the creative process of the composer, how he travelled ‘there’, listened
carefully, sensed the warmth of the prototype and how he was being swung from side to side,
we said that this was followed by a sudden moment of the advent of the flaming truth. That
was exactly the moment of insight – of what people usually call the divine spark or revelation.
It was this moment that gave cause for obscuring the creative process in general, since there
is actually nothing concrete to say about it. We simply try to explain this state, this effect of
knowledge, by a certain leap of thought from the linear plane of thinking to the vertical one,
although, as you already understand, these explanations and this terminology are absolutely
relative; they grope in the zone of events, rather than establish it. In other words, the ordinary
chain of logic of the thinking process (such as the modus ponens: If A, then B; A; therefore B)
breaks at this point. By some analogy, the thought skips to a totally new plane, to absolutely
different objects that are not connected to earlier ones. We call this INSIGHT – and we
emphasize this word in capitals to underline that this is not our own will. Osho has written about
this very vivid and impressively: “Creativity emerges only when you are in such harmony with
the Creator that you present no obstacles. The biggest obstacle comes from the ego. (…)
Magnificent paintings, immortal poetry, marvellous music and beautiful dance appear only
when you are dissolved, when you no longer exist. If you are present, you suddenly become
an obstacle and retard the stream. Then God cannot use you as a flute, he cannot sing through
you. The flute must be just a hollow piece of bamboo, just an open space, and a medium. (…)
If it is you, who expresses, this will become something very plain and worldly. If this goes
through you, it contains beauty and it brings something unknown with it.”27

As we can see, this stage in creation is an absolutely incomprehensible, almost mystical

phenomenon. Not, however, in the negative sense, as though it were some kind of
spinelessness, some unknown force; on the contrary, it is a riddle of nature, God’s will or the
mystery of existence which conceals a great deal of substance within itself. Without this
mysterious act, which is the key act in creation, it is impossible to achieve a truly new and
original result.28 Those who underestimate or ignore it in their creative efforts are mistaken:
without insight, creative activity cannot be called creation; it is merely an act of combination.
(We know that the latter word is more related to technical thinking, where one construction can
be replaced with another one. The substitution of constructs in engineering is related to the
prime cost of a product. For this reason, combination is a matter of significance for it. In art,
the notion of prime cost is absolutely irrelevant. Therefore, all new constructs acquire the status
of a new composition and are evaluated from a completely different perspective. Thus,
 28

combination in art is also irrelevant; it does not acquire an adequate meaning.)29 In order to be
a real creator, a composer must be rebellious; he must be a person capable from his birth of
thinking in paradoxes. Unfortunately, composers today rarely distinguish combination from
creation and do not realize whether they are able to experience insight. Almost any educated
person is capable of combination in music: every musician, or even an engineer skilled in
musical notation, is able to shape musical signs into a formal composition; but only a composer
who possesses a special mentality and does not tend to obey the rules can become a true
creator.

Moreover, we shall not forget that this gift does not depend on a person himself. Indeed, this
is not his will. (We have already mentioned that a composer can try very hard to experience
this state, but his mere efforts are not sufficient to achieve it.) All great people who made
discoveries, regardless of whether they believed in God or not, were certain that the moment
of experiencing an insight was not their will. They feel the limits of their efforts and are perfectly
aware of them. Typically, quite a number of people solving the same problem come very close
to achieving the same result in science or engineering, independently of each other. Yet not
all of them are receptive to insight and make a discovery. (Let us note in passing that to
evaluate an insight, as the will of God, from the point of view of man – whether it is a good or
a bad thing, a blessing or a punishment – is absurd and ridiculous. One should not imitate
Salieri and envy Mozart – the burden and often also the fate of a genius is not easy.)

This explains why we say that geniuses are born, not made, and that one cannot be taught in
full to create real art. One can learn all that can be understood and reduced to a common
denominator. We see, however, that the creative process contains something, which cannot
be reduced to a common denominator. We can only describe the state of truth, or experience
it ourselves. An outsider can see the traces of a composer’s insight in his composition (see
below, chapter 3.3).

The last phase of the creative process, verification, is oriented toward the state of insight. The
composer considers his music to be successful (regardless of the opinion of others) if he has
managed to bring his acoustic result closer to his prototype, which he saw in its facets at the
moment of insight.

3. Criteria

After all we have said, a question quite naturally arises: what are the criteria of truthfulness of
all this? Can this be verified in the musical text itself, in the notes?

We have already promised that everything we have said will be analysed from two points of
view: from the perspective of the composer and his creative act, and from that of the music
critic who analyses music. Now, the turn of the music critic has come.30

However, it should be mentioned that an amateur listener does not usually care about musical
notes. He might want to rephrase this question in the following way: Can the criteria of the
 29

aforementioned statements be determined by ear without going into notation, in which not
everyone is well versed?

We say “yes” and for a very simple reason: music is the art of sound, and all the events in it
are eventually defined and estimated by the ear as its supreme judge. The ear is the final
arbiter of all proof. If the ear is dissatisfied, any further analysis of music or discussions of its
ideas are superfluous and fruitless for the listener. Music is a product, albeit an aesthetic one,
and it is called upon to satisfy the listener as a consumer and not ignore him or persuade him
of the ‘benefits of vegetarian food‘. People like music not because it has been praised by some
authority, and not because they have been told about everything in the process of its creation
or what it is meant to express, etc. Frankly, the listener does not care a fig about all the best
intentions of the composer. The only valuable thing for him is the result of this work. The rest
might somehow fire his imagination, deepen his own attitude towards the piece of music, teach
him to understand its structure; but all this is secondary, and it will not make him need this
music. If your composition does not appeal to the listener and is not convincing, then, our dear
composers, he will respond to it in Eugene Onegin’s words, pronounced with a touch of irony
in reply to Tatiana’s confession of love: “Your perfection is all in vain…I do not deserve it.”31
No words spoken about music can replace the music itself. It must affect the listener by its own
means, and if this does not happen, the use of any other form of art is an attempt to run away.
(It is unfortunate that many, but not all, of today’s multimedia shows do not follow this rule.
Often, one wonders why they use music at all.) We would also like to warn composers who
love to talk about their music, to tell the listeners more about it, because it can sometimes
happen as in the old Russian saying: “When he speaks, the gusli plays, but when he works,
it’s just the balalaika.”32

3.1.1 The Presence of a Musical Object

Thus, good music can be heard; it is being defined by the ear. But what is it, exactly, that is
being defined?

You certainly recall times when music has captivated you, carried you off on its waves,
subjugated you, conquering your attention and imagination. It was as if you had met a good
old friend and wished to tell him about yourself, to make a confession - to become better,
kinder, more innocent, and sincere. It invited you to establish a dialogue with your own ‘I’. It
told you something. It could even scold you and make you feel ashamed. And suddenly you
may have wanted to confess your sins, or maybe to embrace someone very warmly. The
outcome of this dialogue was unclear to you; you listened carefully, waited, argued, became
glad, and dreamt. And the only thing you could not do at this moment was to withdraw from it,
to switch off and avoid this dialogue. Such music carries you away from the first bars. It is quite
impossible to resist it. This involuntary moment of subjection (we would suggest that it even
paralyses your will) implies that this music is alive and pulsing with independent life. It is like a
well-coordinated, living and breathing organism. It is as though it has its own will, which
subjugates yours. These qualities are the first sign of the presence of a spiritual image in this
music, which shows through the sounds. We could find a lot of examples of this kind. Let us
take Lauretta’s aria ‘Oh! mio babbino caro’, from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi. We are
 30

certain that any musical person who now recalls its melody and begins to follow the tune in his
head will not be able to stop halfway through. He will continue to sing it perhaps to the very
last bar, being in a state in which his soul seems to vibrate. He will probably smile, feeling the
sunny tenderness of this music; he might even drop a tear, moved by its turns. Here is the aria:

Example 1.
 31

Have you performed the experiment? Has it happened as we predicted? Isn’t this emotional
state of obsession an indication of the objectivity of the image that affects you, as well as an
indication of its deeper origin, which has no connection to the notes?

You might object: “Not everyone likes classical music. Give us another example”. Fine, here’s
another, a more accessible example. Most radio listeners are familiar with the melody by Tom
Evans, arranged by Walter Afanasiev and sung by Mariah Carey, ‘Without You’:

Example 2.

Note the development of the melody; how it gradually unrolls into a huge wave lifting you up
to its very crest; how you wait, from the very beginning, with all your heart, for the ‘launch’.
How natural are all the steps it makes, how perfect and wise timed is the period it gives your
 32

soul preparation for this launch. This music was inspired by a very explicit prototype, which
captured the composer. Every time you listen to this music, you are being led by this prototype,
again and again.

Why do we perceive such music as a living organism? Because it is a complete and integrated
whole: it is very elegant and well-rounded, as if it has been cut out from a single piece of
marble. There is nothing superfluous in it, nothing that can be crossed out or added to it without
spoiling the result. It is always perceived as authentic and ‘first-born’, as if it was meant to be
that way. When you listen to such music you sense the authenticity and necessity of all the
tiniest movements, whether these are turns in the melody, harmony or arrangement. All actions
here are as organic as the movements of athletes’ muscles during a crucial jump. All the
nuances of the composition prepare one’s soul for the events to come. We wait, for example,
for a slowing of the tempo, which inwardly we sense as corresponding to the image, or for a
change of key from minor to major, which allows us to feel a state of transition to the opposite,
as if the sun peeped out from behind the clouds. All events happen so logically and
purposefully, as if they themselves knew why it must be so.

We might express ourselves in the following way: it is the presence of a context in the
composition that reveals the presence of the musical or spiritual object in it. Why is this so?

Let us think for a moment about how we define the word ‘context’ in music. How do our minds
blend the separate parameters of music and its parts into a whole? And on what level does
this unification occur - on the level of notes or on the spiritual one?

Let us imagine the following situation: you have forgotten the original rhythm of a composition
and try to remember it by combining various rhythmic formulas in your head. We are certain
that you have experienced this situation more than once and that you know that this strategy
will lead you into a sound labyrinth of variants, where you will be sorting fruitlessly the different
possibilities that you recall. Finally, you will intuitively reach a point at which you will want to
remember the whole musical context to catch the elusive rhythm. Any separate constituents
of music, such as a modulation or an interval pattern of a musical phrase, will be of no help to
you either. Only recalling something important and very characteristic, some spirit of this music,
will immediately allow your memory to restore all the lines of its silhouette (i.e. the lost rhythm,
melody, etc.), which you will remember due to the whole musical context. (Only then you
realize that nothing is separate, but firmly soldered together in the context.) This means that
the context, as we understand it, appears first of all on a spiritual level. It has its own foundation
that dictates the rules of the game.

We will go even further in our statements and say that in hearing the context and seeing the
image of music, even notes become something relative and secondary to a performer. They
become a mere means of materializing this image, a means of approaching it. Take, for
example, various editions of the Beatles’ musical scores. The first thing that might strike you
is the slight differences in notation of the same song. For example:
 33

Wise Publishing

Example 3.
Hal Leonard Publishing

Example 4.
 34

One is under the impression that every editor reads the same music somewhat differently or
as if the notes themselves were of no particular importance to them. The second thing you
might notice, if you are not a professional musician, is the initial difficulty in reading the text
(not in the sense of a technical difficulty, as, for example, with complex pieces for piano, but in
the sense of decoding the spirit of the music). For several moments you will be trying to feel
the pulse; this rhythmic pattern or harmony has suddenly become alien and generally will seem
unfamiliar to you and strangely confusing. Something here will simply be mixed up or not fit in;
and only when you remember, “Ah, this is Harrison’s ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’” – that
is, when you remember the character of the tune – will you feel its wholeness. After that, it will
become clear to you that you do not need to count the beat so awfully strictly, following each
part of it, or that you don’t have to be too careful about keeping time, and that the harmony
does not occur exactly where indicated. Precisely at this moment of deviation from the notation
in your reading of it, does everything fall into place and come alive and begin to move. This
slightly improvisational method of performing will be possible not because of your knowledge
of improvisation – improvising as you wish, you might come up with totally different results. No,
it will become possible only when you restore the object as a whole, the way it already exists
somewhere.33 (We are certain that if one published the songs of the Beatles performed by
them at various concerts, the songs would look different in notation from, let’s say, the original
version, because if you reflect the image creatively, you can’t step in the same river twice.
However, if the performer, upon repeating the exposition, plays a cadence in precisely the
same way, this means that he does not inwardly hear the image, but just mechanically
reproduces the notation).

This is what happens to all good compositions, in which we can perceive their spiritual image
behind the shell of sounds. Most of parameters is relative, then; it is as if the notation only
points to the object, only delineates it (as the symbol does). The object does not, however,
flow directly from the notation into the music (into the musical sound with its semantics). This
requires corresponding spiritual efforts, efforts by the performer who reproduces this object
and efforts by the listener who recognizes it. If no effort is made to provide music with a spirit
of its own, it turns into a mere scheme, a dead body. The musical sound melts again into a
purely physical phenomenon. The magic of music disappears. Only noises remain, enough of
which we hear in the streets, the subways of big cities or the spaces between skyscrapers.
Without a spiritual object, music loses its semantics and turns into a collection of notations on
paper that performers translate into acoustic signals with the help of their instruments. There
is nothing to say about the informational aspect of this music. Beat is beat. It is information.
But – what is its sense?34

Thus, we see that the composer proceeds in his music from the spiritual plane, from a spiritual
prototype with the help of which he creates the image of a musical composition from sounds.
In his notation he just tries to outline his spiritual prototype: on the one hand, he gives the
performer a strict framework, which he must adhere to in order not to deviate from the musical
image, and on the other hand he leaves him a margin of freedom to interpret his composition.
If the performer does not follow the same path, if he, say, does not understand the meaning of
the music or ignores the framework for interpretation, the listener might not be able to
recognize his ‘good old friend’. The composition will seem unknown and alien to him. This
alienation implies that the reverse – influencing the image the composer has created by means
 35

of the musical text alone – is impossible and can only destroy it. No new image will appear to
replace the old one.35

Yet we see the most convincing proof of the primacy of the spiritual image and the secondary
role of the musical text in the phenomenon of plagiarism. Think for a moment about what it is
we are copying – the notes or the spirit, the character of the music? How do we recognize
plagiarism? Why do people practice it; i.e. what is the purpose of copying?

Let us answer the first question. If only notes were copied (i.e. individual chords of a piece of
music or some techniques of playing the instrument, as, for example, playing a so-called
‘prepared’ piano) the listener would never consider this to be plagiarism. He would not even
suspect that there is something from another composition, since his ear would not be able to
hear anything essential to himself in such a copy. All copies would seem equally valid, each of
them having a right to exist. For this reason, no composer will seriously claim that another
composer stole his manner of arpeggio. However, if after listening to a composition, we can
hear the original showing through the copy, composer no.1 has the right to tell composer no.2
that his work is plagiarism. This means that the copy is recognized through the spirit of the
original, which, like the protagonist in a movie, attracts the attention of the listener and induces
unambiguous associations. It is exactly these associations that give purpose to the practice of
copying or plagiarism. Actually, it is not just any composition, but precisely those that are very
striking and successful which are likely to be copied. These compositions are favoured by
many people and, thus, are worthy of being copied. Who would bother to copy music that is
not interesting? Would this make any sense? Music that is real, that moves us; music that is
striking, even when it is rewritten in a different manner will still be able to emit its ‘aroma’ and
affect us with its energy. Such a copy will continue to inspire corresponding - positive -
emotions and attract our interest. As you can see, it is the spirit that is copied, not the notation;
only because of the presence of the spirit in music is the phenomenon of plagiarism possible
and makes sense at all.

And now, let us analyse how to recognize plagiarism.

You probably can recollect many of these ephemeral copies we often encounter in popular
music and hear every day on the radio. You may also recall that after hearing a few bars of
music, which you recognize as copied, you will search your memory for the original, trying to
restore it completely as something emotionally extremely valuable and dear. And in this return
journey of yours, it will not be enough to be guided solely by an intuitive sense that it is, for
example, the rhythmic pattern from which the likeness emerges, while the harmony and melody
have been changed. This rhythmic pattern that captures your imagination will only provide you
with the general direction of the search, but you will not be able to recall the original melody
through it. This method will not reveal the whole picture. Only something characteristic which
you will grasp in the spirit of the copy - a little detail - will call the entire picture of the original
to mind (the way a portrait of someone with pursed lips will immediately allow you to make an
association with the face of a stern friend of yours). Once you have restored the original in your
memory - intentionally or unintentionally, in your consciousness or subconscious - you will
continue to listen to the copy and even relax and enjoy it, since you will actually continue to
enjoy the spirit of the original. Copies willy-nilly (and this is their function) charm us with the
magic of the original.
 36

The interesting thing is, however, that no transformation, no simplification or tendentious

complication of the original, is ever better than the original itself. In a copy, as in a photographic
montage, there are elements which do not blend in with others and which create the impression
that something is displaced or artificial, like legs that are too short, or arms that are not in their
right place. Indeed, no matter how many copies you make of, for example, the waltzes of J
Strauss, you will never surpass the initial composer, because he perceived his image more
profoundly, with insight, while the copier caught only ‘one side’ of it. Therefore, a copy may be
only considered some kind of a recorded interpretation of the original. The original is always
better. It was meant to be this way and is authentic. It contains the truth of insight.36

Some may ask whether it is possible to make a boring piece interesting - in other words, to
turn a caterpillar into a butterfly?

3.1.2 The Absence of a Musical Object (or Speculative Object)

In Amadeus, a film by Miloš Forman, there is a marvellous scene which shows Mozart playing
Salieri’s march on an instrument and at the same time changing it. Salieri’s march sounds like
this:

Example 5.
It is unwieldy, crude and schematic. It is clear that the composer wrote notes, not music. Now
look how Mozart treats the melody and harmony (i.e. the given elements):

Example 6.
 37

Here the melody seems to come alive; it begins to glow with colours. Its pattern is logical and
complete; the phrases seem to generate one another (an exclamatory ascending movement,
and a responding descending one, etc.) The harmonic sequences replace one another
naturally; they come in no hurry, at the right moment, emphasizing the coquetry of the melody,
etc. We can prove the perfect harmony of this piece by applying the rule of opposites: let us
try inserting some other chords here. For example:

Example 7.
What would happen in this case? The music would change from sounding coquettish to
capricious and even slightly hysterical. We shall now stop transforming Mozart; but you could
continue doing this yourself for the sake of the experiment. What we wanted to prove here is
the following: as soon as you make a change in the score but neglect the spirit of the music,
its appearance and character will be destroyed. As a result, it will become less beautiful and
perfect.

Let us now return to the scene in the movie. After comparing the two pieces, we see that
Mozart, like a magician, breathes life into the given melodic and harmonic pattern. His march
(or rather what we know as the music from Le Nozze di Figaro) is a creation, whereas Salieri’s
march is only a pattern. The latter seems to contain all the necessary formal aspects, but since
it has no musical object, it does not have the most important thing – life.37

Another characteristic that makes us discuss the absence of a musical object, or the presence
of a formal object (we would call it a speculative object) in a composition, is the disproportion
of its parts. If someone tells you that your composition seemed too long, make a note of this
comment. The ear itself determines that something is wrong here. We do not want to give
examples of ‘insolvency’ in authors; it is not at all difficult to imagine them in theory. For
instance: if the development in a work is disproportionately short in comparison with the
exposition and the recapitulation, the composition will seem bald or farcically, ridiculous and
not at all serious. It is okay if the character of music corresponds to it, but if not? Imagine the
exposition of Beethoven’s Fifth followed by a ‘bobtailed’ development. This will sound as if
someone exclaims loudly: “To be, or not to be” and then just falls silent. The same is true of
the end (the recapitulation). It must stop the motion and balance all the listener’s impressions,
even prepare the slowdown of the listener’s heartbeat, which has been quickened (indeed,
when we listen to music our heart involuntarily beats along with the beat of the music). If a
composer ignores this and cuts off the end of his piece abruptly, the effect of his music will be
the same as if he pressed the listener’s nose against a pillow. The listener will feel slightly
dizzy and short of oxygen. (This phenomenon can be compared with the state experienced by
a long-distance runner who is abruptly stopped; his heart might not hold out.) We have,
however, only described the external effect; but what does this indicate? How can such lack
of ability, as you may put it, relate to the fact that an author lacks a musical object?

The point is that the proportionality of parts in a piece of music is a very relative parameter.
Proportions cannot be measured by some general method, for instance by counting bars, since
 38

they depend on various other and more complex factors (such as the melodic structure, the
dramaturgical line of the development of the thematic material, etc.). A composer measures
the proportions of parts of a piece of music by playing the entire composition inside his head.
He does it intuitively, by listening carefully to tempos, the character of the music, the length of
separate parts, etc. (He does exactly the same thing as a performer who inwardly measures
the slowdown at the end of a composition.) When this happens by means of an orientation
toward the musical object, it is not difficult for a composer to achieve a perfect fit. If the object
were speculative, however, a composer would lack this natural guideline and almost inevitably
miscalculate.

But it is not only by ear that we are able to define the composer’s substitution of a creative
musical object for the speculative object. Often, a professional can simply glance at a musical
score (a graphic representation) and be able to see through the composer and his intentions.
Here, it is useful to remember the clean and even handwriting of Mozart (he did not even need
a draft), where the idea is clearly visible. Often, when you look at a contemporary musical
score, you see, for example, overly complex rhythmic patterns which look like the Morse code
and which will unavoidably merge into ‘non-rhythm‘ in the context of the piece. They do not
reflect the complexity of the composer’s intentions, but rather his wish to make such an
impression. These complexities are mere obstacles to a performer, who gasps during double
dotted rests. Moreover, you see sharp notes that are…lowered in pitch; naturals in places
where it would be more readable to repeat the notation with a sharp; interval leaps in the
dodecaphony with multiple artificial complications, double sharps and double flats. You see
broken phrases and unreasonable and fast changes of instruments that quickly lead to an
over-saturation of impressions (which Rimsky-Korsakov warned about in his Principles of
Orchestration). Or, for example, you see an arrangement for instruments that can be called
‘without gravy’ – where brass instruments is given the main part and supported by a lonely
violin or nothing at all. (It resembles an aquarium in which fish swim without water.) And so on,
and so forth. There are many examples of such jungles of notes and authors' deliberate
sophistries. They simply reveal the composer’s search for artificial solutions that are void of
true meaning and a musical object as a foundation. What should appear to us as from behind
the screen, from the realm of the unknown, so that the result of our creativity can become
synergetic, is on screen in these examples. The musical object is substituted by some kind of
intellectual structure that implies a math problem with several unknowns.

Of course, these artificial solutions must not be confused with drafts and errors by young
composers who, for example, enthusiastically draw pppp for the harpsichord (one can indicate
p raised to the tenth power, but the trick is to hear in your head what will become of it).
Sometimes, when it is clear that it is enough to rewrite the score using a different metre and
indicating a relevant tempo, then this does not give rise to further irritation or indignation. The
real jungles of notes, however, which try to encode something, speak for themselves. The
purpose of notation is to make the original intention of the composer as clear as possible,
rendering the composition comprehensible and accessible, not turning it into a puzzle. It is not
by chance that the remarkable German music critic C Dahlhaus warned us that a new notation
does not always express a truly new approach. We shall cite an example to make it clear what
it is all about. Let us rewrite a romantic composition (the constituents of which – the melody
and accompaniment – are familiar to us), in the modern style. The pitch will be rendered by
sinusoidal curves, rests will be marked by empty spaces between these curves, and the
 39

duration of both will be indicated by a varying length of horizontal lines and bigger or smaller
spaces between them.38 It will look as follows:

Example 8.

In your opinion, is it possible to recognize Schubert’s Ave Maria in this notation?

Example 9.

If not, then let us ask you: why should we ‘scratch our left ear with our right hand‘?

It is thus clear that if we rewrite some complex musical scores, we may suddenly detect the
well-known Romantic style, or – what’s worse - Salieri’s march...

Some of you may ask: what about real mistakes? Some minor errors may occur when
composers are writing in shorthand, as for example, an inaccuracy of notation that leads to
ambiguity, or the absence of logic in the indication of tempos, etc. How can we distinguish
those from the presence of a non-musical object?

True, mistakes happen, and this is quite normal considering the difficulty of the process of
transforming the spiritual into the material. Something may not be calculated correctly while in
haste. However, there is a litmus test that allows us to distinguish the aforementioned
phenomena: it is the performer. Usually he senses very accurately, judging from the context,
what can be corrected in the notation to its advantage during performance, and what are just
 40

notes without spirit, i.e. the speculative object. It happens most often in the following way. A
performer takes a score and begins to work with it; his imagination may or may not accompany
this work. If he is caught up in the composition, then everything in it, even the slightest detail,
becomes very clear and important to him from the point of view of performing it in accordance
with the well-rounded musical image. In Music and Our Life39 by M and G Rostropovich, Mr.
Rostropovich reminisces about a staging of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin which he
conducted. He describes the atmosphere of the introduction and then suddenly mentions a
detail that has surprised us with his profound comprehension of music. Rostropovich wanted
the pizzicati of the double basses at the beginning of the introduction to be performed very
softly, with vibrato, as if smelling “the aroma of freshly cut hay”. We thought: how impressively
a performer’s imagination works when he hears the picture of music; how precisely he then
captures the nuances in the score, on the indicating of which the composer would naturally not
waste time. You can only hear this when you have a clear and fully rounded picture of the
composition in your mind. It is undeniable that a good performer will be able to rectify the
composer’s minor mistakes or lapses in logic. The lack of spirit in music, however, will
inevitably lead to a situation in which even a clearly indicated forte and marcato will be played
in a flabby way, with a visible effort and without any sense of direction: is it aggressiveness or
triumph?

We shall refrain from discussing here the subject of the relationship between the composition
and the performer; this book would become far too voluminous. The performer undoubtedly
must have a good knowledge of his field (the so-called ‘rules of play’ - knowledge of form, style,
etc.). Additionally, he must be able to apply this knowledge to his work, i.e. to master all of the
technical possibilities of his instrument. Without professionalism, he will not be able to express
his deepest inspiration. Moreover - and very importantly, - he is required to make efforts to
recognize the spirit of the music; in other words, he is supposed to have a corresponding
amount of creativity. What we wish to emphasize here is the fact that the inspiration to perform
a composition in a specific way does not come automatically to the performer, but only when
he perceives the whole context and image of the music. If this is the case, no details or even
mistakes made by the composer will lead him astray or distract him from seeing the most
important thing.40

We have listed main criteria of the composer’s substitution of the musical object for the
speculative one. They show that the presence of the musical object inspires the performer to
play the music and the listener to listen to it; whereas a composition with the speculative object
will never acquire the status of true creation and remain some sort of construct of notes (i.e.
an empty bottle). One does not have to be able to understand the technical structure of the
polyphonic music of J S Bach in order to enjoy his creations. Without the knowing what inspired
him to create a certain piece, or how to create polyphonic music in general, the listener can
still be emotionally influenced by it. Bach’s constructivism is not an obstacle to his flight.

The last thing we want to emphasize in connection with the theme of the musical object is that
even the boldest and most interesting aesthetic credos implemented in music cannot ignore
its audible, i.e. its heard result. If we persist in ignoring it (as it is often the case in contemporary
music, which sometimes aims at denying the very foundation of art – its imagery and universal
purpose), we shall either disorient the listener, or force him to eat ‘vegetarian food’. It is for this
reason that many people do not like (and do not strive to understand) contemporary music,
rejecting it completely. It is high time for modern music to clear the road ahead of it from non-
 41

musical phenomena, in order to become truly necessary, in its finest manifestations, to the
listener.

3.2.1 Criteria to Judge the Presence of the Artistic

Method of Cognition
People who are inexperienced in musical matters usually think that it is enough to compose a
melody for music to flow unimpeded. However, this is by no means the case. After a few
opening bars, composing a piece becomes more difficult, because in the wake of this melody
one has to compose a subsequent one, and so forth. Moreover, even if we assume that the
composer succeeds and, thus, continues to string one melody after another like beads, the
product of this creative activity will have a wearisome effect on the listener. No sooner has he
become enamoured of one melody than it is replaced by another one. No sooner had he been
allowed to involve himself in the last one, than another one follows close on its heels. When
the composer realizes this, he also becomes aware of the need to be knowledgeable about
such an essential factor in the creation of music like dramaturgy41; that is, about how to develop
the initial idea.

It might be necessary, however, first to explain to the reader something about the origin of the
psychological phenomenon of ‘over-saturation’ - it may occur even with the most beautiful of
melodies - and why a composition constructed on the principle of ‘stringing’ will not be
perceived as an integrated whole.

According to the information processing theory what is new in a text is assimilated best by a
human being when the proportion of the known and the unknown in it – and this applies to both
literary and musical texts – account for about half and half (about 50% of each). If, for example,
someone, when reading a book or listening to a lecture, discovers that there are lacunae here
and there in his familiarity with the subject, he very quickly loses interest in it and, essentially,
does not absorb anything new from the book or lecture. He rapidly grows tired of too large a
quantity of new information. There is a direct parallel here to our bead-like melodies, as well
as to the ‘belles-lettres’ effect we already discussed. Information, in the guise of melodies or
emotions, pours out in a flood; the listener is fed up with novelties and loses interest in the
composition altogether.

Another extreme is the situation where the reader (or listener) finds a great deal of what is said
by the author or composer known to him. In this case he becomes completely lax in his
perceptions, and his ears fail to pick up what is truly new for him in the work. The same occurs
if a composition is written in strict compliance with all the rules; it will seem painfully familiar to
the listener, and he will not focus on, or respond to, those bars that are truly original and unique
to the composer.

These examples demonstrate that for any form of creative activity, one of the primary
conditions to secure the quality of the work is an observance of the fifty-fifty rule. This rule
implies the informative contents of a work with respect to the listener (it is relative because
what is new varies from person to person).
 42

All of this, however, is only the psychological aspect of the phenomenon. Now let us look at
what this psychological informativeness tells us.

The listener’s interest or lack of interest in a composition arising from psychological (from the
listener’s point of view) informativeness, simultaneously reflects the way the composition came
into existence. We have already discussed the proportionality of parts in a piece of music,
which is impossible to establish objectively with the help of any instrument, and the same
applies here. It is impossible to distribute, in any artificial way, the new and the old information
in a composition so that it would comply with the fifty-fifty rule and make the composition, as a
whole, informative. This can only happen when a certain clear prototype is present, when a
composer describes it as though he were reporting an unknown event to an outsider, i.e.
sincerely taking into account all the frictions between the event as such and its perception.
One might express this more precisely: he would relate something to another person as though
he were relating it to himself. Only in this case would he be absolutely convincing. And when
is a composer capable of such a musical narrative? Only when he himself follows his prototype,
when he is led by it. It is as though he reflects that path by which he himself was led. For this
reason, if the piece to which we are listening leads us, this is evidence that the prototype led
the author when he was composing the piece. This is also true, even if a work inspires a
negative reaction, when it irritates the listener, for example. (It is not by chance that a lot of
innovative compositions call up storms of indignation during their premières. In time, however,
these same compositions often become the favourites of the public. One need only recall, for
example, the première of Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville or Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite
of Spring.) The same psychological rule applies here. If a listener is interested in that work and
his attention is willy-nilly focused on the composition, it is an indirect sign of a special method
of cognition of the object in the composition, namely of the inner merging of the author with his
object. And if the listener is overcome by boredom and apathy, if his interest weakens with
every bar, this means that the author has distanced himself from the prototype and this has an
effect on the listener. Coffee gradually turns into a theorem.

Dramaturgy
Now it is time to turn to the issues of dramaturgy of a musical composition. In order to
understand its true significance, let us first give an example from the classics.

We are all familiar with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (op.27, no.2). After a short introduction,
there is the famous motif:

Example 10.
 43

Out of this motif, as from an acorn, grows the melody of the composition. The motif also serves
as the foundation of its development:

Example 11.

After the first phrase, the further development of the melody could have been constructed in a
different way, more simply than the composer did it. It could have been constructed as a
sequence, for example, and sound like this:

Example 12.

We could continue to compose in this manner (out of respect for Beethoven we are not going
to do this). In this case, the melody could also be developed to a greater or lesser degree,
modulating more or less often. But listen! What kind of music would it be? You will notice that
in this form it seems not to be able to detach itself from the ground, and is gliding like grey mist
along the asphalt, wrapping everything in a shroud of monotony. And if you imagined yourself
in the composer’s skin, it would at this point become clear to you that the trick is not in the
 44

motif, or not only in it. The significance is in its development, in what Beethoven does with it.
Then you will see how original this development is, although externally it seems very simple.
How interesting are Beethoven’s transgressions of the rules (of what would be rules to us, if
we were composing), original in every new combination: these heart-rending transitions from
major to minor and vice versa, that seem constantly to be seeking the truth, seeking an answer
(E major – E minor, in bars 9 and 10; B minor – B major, in bar 15; and other harmonic shifts;
see examples). This circling around the alarm-bell tone (bars 15 – 19; 51 – 55) seems to hold
the hero captive:

Example 13.

Example 14.
 45

Example 14 (continued).

These phrasal repetitions suggesting hopelessness (bars 15 – 19; 51 – 55), this sudden
broadening of the melody, followed by an abrupt move in the music’s intonation and harmony
back to the point of departure, as if throwing the hero back (bars 48 – 51) – one feels that it
could not have been done any other way. One feels how unswervingly the author is led by his
clear prototype, how carefully he follows the slightest changes in it. These original decisions
made in defiance of the rules are the result of following the prototype (even if in some small
detail) to create music which holds you captive and is emotionally convincing to the utmost
degree.

It is worth telling a relevant story here. Once we heard an amateur musician playing the
introductory bars of this piece (which in fact do not yet contain any aspects of the ‘destiny
motif’), not in simple octaves (left hand), as it is indicated in the original score, but as if it were
in arpeggio:

Example 15.
 46

In this interpretation, he seemed to be preparing the alarm-bell sound of the music, the sound
which has crystallized out of its central motif – its fulcrum – as though he has anticipated it.
Actually, this man was absolutely right in his intuition. (Many people perform this composition
lyrically and not dramatically; they are distracted by its name - Moonlight Sonata - which did
not originate with Beethoven.) This picture conveyed the completeness of the image in his
consciousness; this person seemed to know from the very beginning of the composition the
acorn and the tree that would grow out of it. Such recognition of the image is the best evidence
of the precision of the author’s depiction, i.e. of that merging with the object that is transmitted
to the performer.

That is not all though. The most marvellous of any such observations (when the author is led
by his prototype) is the absence of ‘seams’ in dramaturgy. All musical phrases flow out of one
another; it happens so naturally that it is very difficult to say something about the skeleton of
the composition without looking into its architectonics. We might exaggerate and say that a
good composition is difficult to dismantle. Only the composer himself knows, like a
neurosurgeon (but not automatically) how many nerves he had to sew in order for the hand to
move, to animate it. A composition written by the will of the inner voice takes us away from
thinking about such things. When music is played, the listener seems to be unable to notice
any structural frame. Only when we take a closer look at the structure are we surprised at the
simplicity and clarity of the methods of working. All links usually show real genius in their
simplicity, and they create the impression of a seamless structure because, on the one hand,
they are unusual and on the other hand they are simple. At this moment you realize that the
true creativity of the composer is revealed through these segments of seams in the dramaturgy;
that the blocks that we consider fundamental in the dramaturgy of a composition belong to the
craftsmanship phase in art, to what is supposed to be something solid. Personal elements of
creation, which produce a specific taste of coffee, are in the details, in the seams, and are
something that at first sight appears to be secondary. What is important, however, is that it is
impossible to so tangibly express the subjective taste of coffee if you have never tasted it
before. In other words, this is impossible without merging with the object of cognition during an
act of the creative process. Only the artistic method of cognition allows the originality of a
person to express itself to the full. For this reason, signs of originality or the author’s authentic
creativity, as well as those indicating that the composer knows the artistic method of cognition
of the object of creation, should not be looked for in the ‘closed’ segments of dramaturgy (e.g.
in the melodic periods, introductions or conclusions - cadences). One should look for them in
the open (insignificant at first glance) zones (i.e. in links, in the development, in the approach
to the climax, etc.). This is why we shall examine those parts of the form of a composition that
reveal the composer’s manner and method of writing in the following analysis of the structure
of musical dramaturgy. If a composer does not see the object and does not merge with it, he
will not be able to create this seamless dramaturgy.

Link
Any person, regardless of his musicality and tastes, will immediately recognize the composition
called For Elise (a bagatelle in A minor, WoO 59 by Beethoven). The music that flows from the
first two brook-like sounds, grows by waves of ‘arpeggiated bass chords’ into a rivulet, which,
 47

carried by its melodious sounds, flows up (bars 3, 4, and 5), then goes down (bars 11, 12, 13
and 14), or spins in one place like a whirlpool (bars 7, 8, and 9):

Example 16.
 48

Let us now look at the construction of the dramaturgy of this unforgettable piece, which remains
in the memory of the listener as one monolithic whole.

First the composer shows us the melody, i.e. he makes an exposition of it (bars 1–9). Then
follows a short – sixteenth – rest, and the composer repeats the melody with precision yet
again, in order to fix it in the memory. Next comes a modest development of it: the melody
descends, taking larger intervals (the sevenths in bars 11, 12 and 13.) After the development
of the melody, the composer again returns to its original appearance; now, however, he must
prepare it, unite it with the previous development in such a way that the seams between the
two parts of the form are not felt. He will construct this link of elements that are already present:
the imitation of the arpeggiated bass chords (swaying upwards by octaves in bars 14 and 15),
and then a prolonged spinning in one place on the initial two sounds, which creates the
impression of a search for direction (bars 15 and 16). In fact, the composer’s intention here is
to return to the E of the fifth octave in order to unfold from it once again into the melody. This
path toward the goal discovered by Beethoven is the simplest and most logical (without
introducing new elements) and the most effective one, creating a very convincing, meaningful
and complete picture. The swaying in octaves on E emphasizes the aspiration toward a single
sound, and the prolonged spinning that somewhat imitates the swaying suggests the
impression of a brook. Simply to make a link, however, one could have used some small
passage upwards to E. For example:

Example 17.

Or perhaps one could have constructed the swaying, not by imitating the arpeggiated bass
chords with octaves, but by using the basses (chords) themselves:
 49

Example 18.

Both these decisions would have obvious seams, since they would lead us away from the
aspiration toward the single sound, from which the brook starts. In the first case, this would
damage the connection between the motif of swaying and that of spinning. It would be far less
logical and perfect. In the second case the intensity of the movement towards E would suffer
and the movement would be slightly delayed.

To connect the first episode with the return to the main motif (refrain), the swaying is no longer
necessary because the last chord strikes the E, and thus the movement of the music here is
concentrated on the spinning. But Beethoven stops for a moment at E (bars 38 and 39) in order
to emphasize once more the impression of the transition from the source to the brook and then
to the rivulet. This stop is very logical since, on the one hand, the episode is contrasting enough
to the refrain and a bridge between them is needed; yet a too highly developed link, on the
other hand, might lead away from the goal. Thus, the link here is also very smooth and has no
visible seam:
 50

Example 19.

When connecting the second episode to the refrain, the composer constructs the link as if he
would like to approach E in a different manner. With the ‘arpeggio’ on A minor he goes up, and
comes down from there to the necessary note by a chromatic scale. The stubbornly repeated
A minor chord of the accompaniment plays the role of the source, while the passage plays the
role of the brook. Thus, we no longer need spinning, and this passage refreshes the music and
streamlines the movement. This headlong course is necessary for the final rhythm, i.e. for an
effective completion of the composition:
 51

Example 20.

As we see, all links correspond to the course of events; each of them fulfils its function most
effectively. These functions do not attract the attention of the listener; the links are invisible,
and the continuous and natural flow of music is not damaged. If we do not deliberate on all
these building blocks, the composition as a whole will seem indivisible. You will not even notice
that there was any link there, as though the piece was born this way, as a whole. This
impression is the best evidence of the presence of the artistic method of cognition, or the
merging with the prototype in this composition.

This example of Beethoven’s work demonstrates the fact that links bring into focus a
composer’s orientation either towards some formal (random) connection between events (as
was the case when we wanted arbitrary to change Beethoven’s link), or toward a very concrete
link. To put it more simply, for a composer this link is either something abstract and relative, or
something concrete and unequivocal. It is impossible to make an unambiguous decision about
punctuation without the criterion of a concrete connection. Only when a composer is following
the object is the link between events absolutely unambiguous to him. An author will not put a
comma where he feels and is convinced of the necessity for an exclamation mark.
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Development
To demonstrate exactly how a composer’s inner voice follows his prototype and how the
graphics of punctuation appear in a composition, we shall take a famous piece from the Ballet
des Ombres heureuses in Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Eurydice. It is so free in its form that it
is sometimes simply called Melody. This music develops as a result of the composer finding
new variants of phrases every few bars which could, in general, be classified into: affirmations
or sentences with a ‘comma’ at the end (like phrase 1); prayerful exclamations or sentences
with an ‘ellipsis’ (like phrase 2); interrogative sentences (like phrase 3); and conclusions or
sentences with a ‘period’ at the end (like phrase 4):

Example 21.
 53

Example 21 (continued).
 54

When you begin listening to this music, you involuntarily get the impression that neither you
nor the composer yet know where this is heading. Each new step (phrase) does not give a
feeling of roundedness within the space of the composition (even after a completed period) so
that later a repetition of phrases could occur and create the impression of an emotional
symmetry and logical narration. Just at the very end is the form rounded off in such a way that
only two self-sufficient long phrases are left to create the impression that “now we know where
we are” (figures 5 and 7):

Example 22.
 55

The force of mutual attraction between these two long phrases (and between the phrases that
they contain, which is most important,) is so strong that one wants to prolong the music by a
few more rounds, repeating them several times. The melody seems to have found its goal and
meaning in this way. Generally, this music remains in the listener’s memory due to this period,
and not at all because Gluck repeated it twice in a row, but because the phrases within it are
one piece, they cannot be separated from each other. They sound like an incantation which
can be endlessly repeated without its magic dimming. What does this psychological effect
imply?

Let us rewrite the Melody so that instead of the new interrogative phrase, just discovered by
the composer (figure 5, tranquillo, preceding in two variants phrase 4, which concludes the
period), there is an analogous phrase to the already known phrase 3a:

Example 23.

This phrase also marks the beginning of a drop in energy leading to the conclusion of the
musical period and is interrogative as well, thus the course of events in the music does not
change. The further development could be continued in the same way, using elements already
present. For example, after the next new interrogative affirmative phrases of broad intervals
could be followed by previous interrogative phrases of narrow intervals, similar to those in the
 56

example that we have invented. New links (e.g. phrase 6) could also be used, leading to the
decisive climax:

Example 24.
 57

Example 24 (continued).

The work would achieve a formally rounded shape made of already existing elements. Why
did Gluck not choose this solution?

In bar 12, the composer comes across a phrase (at number 5) which, as the most beautiful
and memorable of them all (the elements of bright lyricism, tenderness, prayerfulness and piety
– the breathtaking descending of the seventh – are being summed up here), creates the
fulcrum, the mood of the music. Without this phrase there would be no further discovery,
namely long phrase 7. It also consists of the same fused elements: here it is the unexpected
stop on the low C-sharp note, when the phrase is repeated, that takes our breath away. Let us
once more look at the form of the piece. During this half-improvised development of the music,
the composer finds, at the end of the musical period, a marvellous phrase with the designation
tranquillo and, as if having sought out a low note on which it would rest, he concludes the idea
(the period) with the help of phrase 4. The thematic development begins with new phrases and
is interrupted by the memory of the tranquillo phrase, which, seeking for a low supporting note
in its variations and found it in the middle, does not now stop the development of the music (as
was the case the first time). On the contrary, it seems that, having failed to finish the idea it
ascends to some peak by linking phrase no.6. From here the long culminating phrase
(constructed mainly on the development of phrase 7) begins in broad waves of emotional
surges – espressivo – and brings the musical development to a close:
 58

Example 25.
The musical idea is completed, although the timing implies that the development of the idea
does not correspond to its presentation; the wave of the development is too short (it should
 59

be broader than the wave of the exposition). Thus, it might have been logical if this cadence
had been followed by a short coda built on, for example, phrases 1 and 2, which would have
completed the music in time, at the same time providing it with the necessary emotional
decline. For example:

Example 26.
Instead, the composer prefers to repeat the entire upward sweep towards the climax. Why
does he choose to do so?
 60

Because he again remembers his touching tranquillo phrase which would not leave him in
peace. It has become something essential for this music. It reveals some characteristic detail
of the image, some moment of piety from which he cannot take away his eyes. This vision of
the composer’s is transmitted to the listener: he is unable to forget this phrase and the whole
course of events that automatically follows. He cannot help repeating it as though it were an
incantation. All the other phrases seem to be forgotten, dissolved in a fog. Only this remains.
Would it have been possible to arrive at this musical decision if the composer had used a
method other than that of merging with his prototype?

In general, when we talk about the artistic method, it should be mentioned that there are signs
that indicate the ability of a musician to ‘hear’ the musical object. (This, naturally, is far from
merging with it; however, it may be considered as the first step towards it.) Everyone who has
ever been confronted with the task of harmonizing a melody - a student’s exercise in harmony
- knows that it can be carried out in two different ways. The first method is to hear the harmony
in your mind, which corresponds to the melodic pattern. The second one is to choose chords
in a purely rational manner, i.e. to choose those potential chords, calculating them in one’s
head, which contain a concrete note of the melody and are appropriate to this context. The
first method is the musical method and is that first step towards creativity or the ability of a
musician to ‘follow the image’. The second one is the non-musical way, which rather resembles
a mathematical or technical approach. It is of little use in artistic creation, since it does not
contain the criterion of the ultimate truth. Indeed, if a student carries out a task of harmonization
in the second way, he arranges the chords more or less at will if the number of theoretically
appropriate chords is bigger than expected. The rules that we use in solving tasks are not
absolute criteria of correct or incorrect, right or wrong music and of the logic or illogic of its
movement, they just serve as points of departure or an aesthetic framework. True creation
never follows such linear paths. For this reason, in evaluating the creative potential of a
student, this kind of a given creative miniature is entirely adequate. It is the best indicator of
the creative potential of a person because it is restricted. Here, as in the aforementioned open
segments, like links which are conditioned for a composer by a random or non-random
connection between parts, the personality will show itself at its best. Other components, which
would allow the student to hide behind a rule or, in this particular case, craftsmanship, will not
distract an objective observer from seeing the essential, the true way of thinking of the student
in question: his creative approach.

To prove our point, we are going to give an example of harmonization. Here is the melody:

Example 27.
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In the beginning, each bar here contains one completed phrase, and each of these phrases is
finished as we can see in its own key (C minor, A-flat major, C major, G major). Then the
phrases are lengthened, each taking up two bars. The melodic phrase in the last bar of the
period, the cadence, recalls the second bar; however, the D points to the return to the principal
key: C minor. Therefore, there are various possible solutions of harmonization. We can reason
by analogy with the second bar and, taking D-flat major as the common chord, effect a
modulation from A-flat major back to the principal key, C minor. Or, if we employ the method
of calculating all possible chords here, we can use the F minor triad (or also the half-diminished
7th on the second degree of C minor, which is similar in its function and sound, but more
tense), or the diminished 7th on the seventh degree, or else some derivative chord of B-flat
major. Without hearing the sound of these chords and their actual acoustic relationship to one
another in your head (and without playing them on an instrument), but only through a pure
weighing of all pros and cons, we would most probably choose the second chord in our list:
the half-diminished 7th on the second degree. Why? Because according to the rules it will do
best for completing the music in this cadence. After A-flat major, its minor sound prepares the
listener very well for the coming C minor, and being sufficiently far from both the A-flat major
chord and the following C minor chord, it creates the impression of an independent chord which
is in its proper place. Its function is logical because it is a chord of the subdominant function
that is placed between the submediant and the dominant seventh chord. In addition, because
it is not a triad (which would be too simple, too commonplace), but a seventh chord, its juicy
sound creates the tension necessary for the conclusion, i.e. for the cadence.

Why then did... Chopin choose the D-flat major chord? For this exercise in harmony is indeed
Chopin‘s Prelude in C minor, op. 28, no. 20:

Example 28.
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What made him decide on this musical solution? Was it mere likeness to the second bar? Or
are there any arguments in favour of the D-flat major chord? Could it be that we missed
something? Did we not observe all the rules?

Let us take a closer look at the D-flat major chord in this context. As a subdominant of the A-
flat major, it seems to be logical to this new key (this harmonic shift from C minor to A-flat
major), but it does not blend well with the C minor. Firstly, it turns into the so-called ‘Neapolitan
chord’, which sounds too exotic, is a bit harsh and offends the ear. Secondly, when it changes
into a modulating chord, friction occurs with the neighbouring D-flat and D-natural notes. (The
ear hears an illogical ascension from D-flat to D-natural with the subsequent regression down
to the C). Although the composer averts direct false relation by means of the initial E-flat as an
embellishing tone in the dominant seventh chord, it is essentially there, slightly confusing the
listener. Thirdly, the chord fails to conjure up a functionally flawless glide towards a new key
as it prescribed by the laws of modulation (i.e. there is no sensation of a boat gliding out into
the sea from a tiny harbour. The impression is quite the opposite, as if we have been suddenly
thrown into the dominant, like a boat, which falls off a cliff into the sea).

Well, it wasn’t us. It was Chopin, who wreaked havoc with all the good old rules.

Just what inspired him to choose this solution to the problem in this particular piece?

Let us look at the context of the composition. The music moves with the slow and uniform steps
of ordinary triads, which creates the impression of a funeral procession. The composition is
short, schematic; events have no time to develop broadly, and every chord, like each step in
the procession, must be carefully considered and intensive. The rhythmical immobility of music
(each bar has the same rhythmic pattern), a certain degree of iciness, as if the hero is
paralysed with grief, creates the impression of a deep desperation, without the slightest
glimmer of hope. The logic of the moving of the chords in this music thus lies not only in the
logic of the harmonic sequence, but in the logic of the whole character of the music, music in
which there is no room for tenderness and closeness, which, on the contrary, sounds alienated.
Looking at it from this perspective, the solution with the distant D-flat major will not seem
illogical, and the exotic sound of this Neapolitan chord will not seem alien - and the boat
plummeting off the cliff will not create the impression of a miss or a shot that failed to hit its
target. Only now, we are able to see that the music was intended to be this way, that it has its
own iron logic. Only now does it become absolutely clear that it would have been impossible
to come up with this solution (the choice of the distant and alien D-flat major chord), only with
the help of theory and not hearing the whole course of events in your head. If we do not
inwardly follow the prototype, if we do not have the criterion of truth, and if we do not hear the
real sounding of music (and of these particular chords) in our heads, we shall never guess how
this actually should have been done, i.e. we shall not find this optimum solution.

3.2.2 Criteria of the Absence of the Artistic Method of Cognition

Unfortunately, however, following the rules (both conventional and a composer’s own rules,
with which the composer hopes to compose effectively, as in our example of the magic table
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of chord tension), is still quite a popular phenomenon in the contemporary practice of

composing, and one of the most serious mistakes. This phenomenon is the result of a number
of factors. Blind faith in knowledge, in craftsmanship as an aspect of any occupation, thus also
of art, is quite wide-spread, and at the same time there is a lack of understanding of the fact
that it did not hinder the great composers, but came to their aid in their musical aspirations.
Today, however, it most often happens otherwise: a blind adherence to certain laws of musical
composition, for example in methods of polyphonic notation (canons, inversions or the
retrograde motions, etc.), does not help music to get off the ground and take flight. Moreover,
it becomes a goal in itself, leading you far away from real flight. The composer’s toolbox, as
we have already discussed in the chapter about the creative process and insight, is the
necessary condition to realize the idea, the basis of professionalism. But it is not the creative
fulcrum or goal of music. Rules and laws in art are relative and cannot be applied universally
as some sort of panacea.

Another matter is the search for new ways and means of expression in music, as well as
numerous experiments connected with these. They also often become goals in themselves for
an immature composer, because in his search for originality (which should not be sought
intentionally), he concentrates not on the object of art, but just on the means of expression. In
such a case, the sequence of events – the cause and effect – is violated.

But how does it happen that even a mature composer, not a student, becomes confused about
these things – the cause and the effect? What is the reason for such a delusion?

While we are still students we usually manoeuvre between two extremes. We either rebel and
are negligent in our studies, possibly even failing to acquire a thorough knowledge of our
subjects (which reveals itself later, when we become independent composers) or we are so
eager to learn, cramming all the time, that there is a danger of never being able to escape from
the clutches of knowledge and rules. Where is the golden mean to be found? The baggage of
knowledge alone does not automatically lead to true creativity. Besides, the same book read
by many people can be a source of great knowledge for one person, whereas another can be
totally indifferent to it. Each person gleans information in different ways.

It is here that the delusion arises: a well-read and, as a whole, intellectual person is often
perceived by other people as clever, gifted and... creative. We accidentally hold up as equals
a well-versed composer and a talented and gifted creator, a rebel by nature. Someone who
knows the rules of the game, however, is not necessarily a good player. (This has happened
quite often in the history of music, when strong theoreticians turn out to be weak practising
composers.) A person becomes a true player in the area of composing only when he feels the
very game, when he becomes free of the rules and is able to use even a stencil to do a trick
and find a loop-hole to enter new dimensions, i.e. when he is able to move completely freely
in his universe of sounds and to inwardly hear its harmony. Therefore, we would like to give
some useful advice to all those who wish to become composers. As psychologists recommend,
talk quietly to yourself at night. Confess to yourself what is the most important thing that you
cannot do without in your life. If this is too difficult for you, then ask yourself the following: what
in my life fills me with true joy and creates an authentic state of happiness? Only if the answer
to both questions is “music and composing music” then you should enter this difficult and
demanding business. No other argument will ever justify your choice.
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And now we shall turn to a discussion about the criteria of an absence of the artistic method
of cognition in music. What do they consist in?

Naturally, we will not give concrete examples of existing compositions. These criteria can be
analysed theoretically.

It is not difficult to imagine a piece in which rules dominate. We see many similarities, some
imitative - ‘à la’ - moments and very few original solutions. We feel that the composer wishes
to stay within the framework of familiar techniques or familiar building blocks, i.e. those closed
segments of the form about which we wrote above. Thus, he moves as if according to a pattern,
clumsily, almost in the way it is described in books on the analysis of form. Why is the composer
afraid of making bold, independent decisions instead of using clichés?

Recall what we said about the difference between the scientific and the artistic method of
cognition. In science, contrary to art, the subject of cognition is opposed to the object of
creation. This is what happens with composers who see no difference between scientific and
artistic cognition and make their decisions in a similar way to that in which they are made in
science. Their object lies... in front of them. Any cognition of it is carried out via some sort of
measuring: first, using carbon paper, we draw the head of a horse. Then we shall measure
how many times its body is larger than its head. Next we shall attach legs to it; oh yes, what
does the length of the legs depend on? And finally, we shall affix a tail to it, more or less
luxuriant, depending on the length... of its legs. A piece of graph paper would come in handy...
The drawing then will come out really well.

Do you see the point? A horse drawn in this manner involves not the least bit of creativity. And
this has nothing to do with the rules. If a composer is afraid of searching, if he, for example,
for a whole recapitulation uses the entire exposition notated backwards, note by note(!),42 and
in his creative activity in general tends to move whole blocks of musical form here and there,
horizontally and vertically, it is clear that he lacks an orientation towards art. Such a composer
will use all possible tricks (of which we probably are not capable, and therefore will not be able
to enumerate in full), in order to avoid finding himself in the ocean and losing sight of the
beacon (or the mesh of the graph paper). What is, for a creative person in his merging with the
object, simply adventurous sailing under the stars, is for this other composer tantamount to the
‘ninth wave in unknown latitudes’. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are composers that
turn creation into an exercise in harmony that they solve with the help of the second method.43

Another example of such an approach would be when a composer seems to overcome

obstacles in musical dramaturgy at every step. In such a case, various inaccuracies, illogical
and mutually exclusive moments arrest our attention. It seems that the composer wants to
break out of the clutches of rules, wants to be original, but does not know how. For example:
at the beginning of a composition he exposes the musical material, but having moved forward
to the development stage suddenly... repeats the exposition stage (?!). Sometimes it happens
that a composer makes such mistakes over and over again throughout the whole composition,
as if reaching an impasse in his thinking, and thus totally confuses the poor listeners. And
listeners finally lose patience: suddenly it becomes hard to breathe in the hall, seats start
creaking and you hear people nervously blowing their noses...

You might say that such a composer suffers from a lack of knowledge. But in our opinion he
lacks an artistic method. A fairly large number of people of little ‘literacy’, i.e. those who had
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no systematic education in music 44 have engaged in musical activity in the course of history.
A good example of this is the wonderful Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. (Numerous
composers were inspired to orchestrate his compositions, including Maurice Ravel who was
fascinated by his Pictures at an Exhibition. The high quality of Mussorgsky’s music is
indisputable.) Even though he had some gaps in his musical education (due to which some
composers - his friends - often took his musical innovations for a lack of knowledge and
amateurism), his inner voice led him faithfully along the path of creation. He had a very artistic
orientation in composing. This orientation in general is a crucial thing: it is either the door
labelled ‘Music’, or… And finally, a would-be composer should not study dramaturgy (although
it is also important), but first of all artistic cognition!

One can, however, be even more refined in one’s contrives. Why wrack your brains with
dramaturgy, such a difficult matter, when you can let the performer...improvise? Ask musicians.
Even among professionals, a lot of people believe that any improvisation is also a composition,
a piece of music of no lesser significance. Well, perhaps it is a composition, written by God
Almighty and Mr Chance, but not by the same composer. Collective improvisation has become
quite popular these days; a composer now resembles a croupier rather than a player. At the
beginning of this process the framework of improvisation was relatively rigid; the game was in
the hands of the composer. The farther we went, the broader became the framework, and we
ended up in a situation in which the composer did not intentionally foresee the result of such a
work and was not even able to do it and to be responsible for his composition. Frankly
speaking, he lost his right to be called the author of this opus. (In the above example of
Beethoven, we showed that the quality of a composition does not depend on a motif, i.e. the
thematic material of the composition, but rather on its dramaturgy.) If the performer creates a
development in a composition, he is responsible for the old and the new in it, for its informative
contents, and guarantees the presence of insight in the composition. He or they, therefore,
become the true authors of the composition. (In a similar manner, a composer who created a
composition on a motif of another composer, a paraphrase for example, will be judged for his
opus, not for the motif).

As you can see, when the artistic method of cognition is present within the creativity of a
composer, his music enriches us and leads to new discoveries. In the opposite case, we only
deal with the restoration of existing and familiar images.

3.3.1 Criteria of the Presence of Insight

Using the example of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, we related the story about the musical
amateur who intuitively guessed the course of events in the composition, as if he knew the
acorn and the tree that would grow out of it. Such a picture, which is complete ‘from roots to
flowers’, allows us to speak of the cause and effect in the composition. (If the reader is
acquainted with the philosophical-theological studies of Teilhard de Chardin, he will know what
we are going to discuss below.) We will clarify our idea: if a new object or prototype was clearly
seen in a composer’s mind during the moment of insight, this cause will be reflected in the
whole composition. From the very beginning until the very end, all movements of music will be
 66

so purposeful, so logically clear, at times so extraordinary and original that this will provide a
pretext for talking about the whole composition from the perspective of the effect. As de
Chardin said, however, the cause of a tree is especially evident not in its bark, or even its
leaves, but in its flowers and fruit, i.e. at its top, at the end of the process. Thus, the cause of
a composition - or the ‘truth’ - is best reflected at the ‘top’ of it, in the approach towards its
culminating point. Insight that flashed in a composer’s mind organizes and builds his
composition so that it moves decisively towards the climax, as towards its goal. For this reason,
the cause, which permeates the entire composition (it is not by chance that the musical
amateur, whom we have described, saw it in the first bars of the Moonlight Sonata), is
especially visible in the approach towards the climax. Take note! It is often seen not at the
culminating point itself, but in the movement towards it (as though this was the moment the
author grasped the most essential part of his new prototype). The high point, both in an old
and a new object, is expressed in the same way: we see it as a cluster of energy, as the highest
pitch or the highest level of loudness in the musical context, or a sharp harmonic tension, etc.
This apex alone is not sufficient to reveal the specifics of the new object. The ‘smell’ and the
‘taste’ of this new object can only be sensed when the picture is rounded out in the mind of the
listener, and when the author puts down his main trumps, as at the end of a card game. (To
round out the picture, in this case, means to complete the presentation of the old and the new
in music: it means to carry out the juxtaposition of associations that connect us with already
familiar objects - in a similar way as a symbol does - and those, which can distinguish this new
object from an old and familiar one. In other words, you should taste coffee before you say to
yourself, “Hey, this is coffee.” As you see, the movement towards climax is the crucial moment
of a composition. If you fail at this point, the listener might not be able to see a rounded picture
of the composition in his mind and no vision of the image from roots to flower will appear to
him). However, you are only able to round out the picture if you have these trumps. But how
can you, as a composer, know what your trumps are if you have not experienced the moment
of illumination?

Thus, we see that the movement toward the climax is the main indicator, convincing us by the
power of the music itself, of whether the composer has experienced a moment of insight or
not. What does this movement look like when we consider the image to be the most complete?

Its main characteristic is its inner intensity. It can be compared to a heavily compressed coiled
spring or a string that is stretched to breaking point. Here, in the bars that appear right before
the apex, the energy of a composition is concentrated to the maximum degree, and for this
reason the denouement – already the climax itself – appears with such a persuasive force that
it is not possible to imagine it any other way. The explosion in the result will always be as
convincing as the force of a spring that has been compressed. It is impossible to place two
exclamation marks at the end of a sentence (the culminating point itself) if the sentence does
not comprise a corresponding charge of energy. Whether the climax is emotionally convincing
or not depends, therefore, on the strength and harmony of the approach. Here the ‘running
jump’ should correspond to the ‘running start’, i.e. ‘ebb tide’ should correspond to ‘high tide’.
For example, if the ascent to the apex was intense, the ebb tide will be abrupt and definite. If
it took time for the climax to ripen and it required much effort and energy, the wave of the ebb
tide would be broad, unhurried and regal. (One note will be insufficient as an apex; we shall
need a whole culminating zone.) Thus, it is sufficient to see how well these ebbs and high tides
correspond to each other in order to tell whether the composer has experienced any
illumination.
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It is important to state that it is impossible to teach anyone how to use the recipe of some
abstractly successful movement toward the climax in any composition. Each composition
requires a new solution of the movement, just because it contains a new image, specific to this
particular composition. But this is not the only reason. Writing the movement towards the
climax always depends not only on certain separate parameters of the composition, but also
on its structure in general, on all its details. For this reason, the movement towards the apex
cannot be repeated in any composition as some kind of schematic approach. It can only be
composed in a sense of the word ‘insight’ and in accordance with the whole composition, down
to the smallest detail.

Now let us take a look at how this was done by famous composers. We are all familiar with the
music of Peter Tchaikovsky; for example, with his ‘Moderato’ (number 10, ‘Scene’, in the
second act) from the ballet Swan Lake. We shall examine the part that leads to the first climax:

Example 29.

To show in more detail what is so special about it, let us rewrite it and do so in two variants:
 68

Example 30.

Example 31.
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Formally, both examples fulfil the function of the climax: we reach the apex at the culminating
point (the highest note), and then, in either event, we lead the listener to the ebb-like discharge.

Is this, though, really a coiled spring? And how relatively easily and ingeniously, i.e. with such
insight, does Tchaikovsky do this in connection with his clear prototype: it is merely an abrupt
and totally unexpected tonicization to the C major, so distant from the key B minor, as though
it has been cast into a strange land and then followed by the completely despairing cry of a
calling motif at the apex...

Under the same flag the events whirl, also approaching the main climax, only here the staying
on a strange land is swinging much more intensely. It finds no secure stop – as though failing
to reach its cherished target – even having surged to its peak (the highest note F sharp),
therefore the climax slides to the ebb-tide that is striking with the power of the ninth wave:

Example 32.
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Example 32 (continued).
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Example 32 (continued).
We would like to cite yet another example, also familiar to many of us. We have all seen, at
least once, the film Death in Venice by the genius L Visconti. The music of G Mahler, primarily
the famous Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, is used in this movie. We will prompt your
memory (see example below), although it would be better if you listened to a recording than
read the score:

Example 33.
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Example 33 (continued).

Example 33 (continued).
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The music moves in a slow and stately manner, as though the composer is performing a
magical rite over each phrase, over every separate sound, as though he is afraid to touch this
tender rosebud that is opening its petals so carefully, little by little. From the first bars the
mysterious and seemingly flickering sounds of the harp prepare the unveiling of the idea of the
composition: in the touching pp and molto ritenuto, from a mere two notes the music just
blossoms into the beautiful and shining F major chord. Phrases formed from a few tones move
forward very carefully and shyly, halting continually, as if drawing their breath for the next step.
The musical texture here is so transparent that you feel the air moving in the distance and see
dewdrops shed by the harp.

And how painful, how wounding sounds the minor erupting into this idyll (the bars immediately
preceding figure 1 and following):

Example 34.
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Example 34 (continued).

What a string of confessional notes of prayer, striving upwards by broken phrases, you hear in
the part of the first violins. What a smothered screaming in these unstable harmonies of light
and shade, which are waiting and searching for their resolution:
 75

Example 35.
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Two internal forces move this music: one draws the sounds upwards, as if towards the light;
the other turns a drop into a fully ringing major chord, perfect in its harmony. And in the
movement towards the climax of the composition, these forces unite: suddenly, in morendo,
ppp, and ritenuto, as though in expectation of the main event of life, the musical texture shrinks
to a single C, which is even emphasized in the first violins by the indication crescendo-
decrescendo with vibrato. And with still greater tenderness (the composer’s note reads as
follows: “with the most intimate movement of the soul”, “even more slowly”), its magical
transformation into the chord takes place. And a few bars later, the coiled spring of the climax
begins to reveal itself: the breathing of the phrases gets more and more rapid, they ascend
with growing boldness and decisiveness (bars 90-93), and a single sound sharply and
passionately breaks through poco a poco crescendo to the dizzying height of the A of the sixth
octave. This sound, like a burning ray of the sun among harmonies alien to it, subjugates and
eventually turns them by its own consolidating force into the prophetic F major chord. The
decline from the apex no longer wriggles with eighth notes, that have been so shy before, but
marches decisively with quarter and half notes, along the sounds of this majestic chord and
around it.

Example 36.
 77

Example 36 (continued).
 78

Example 36 (continued).

The wave of the ebb-tide, broad and triumphant, fills your pupils with glitter and light. This was
that ‘truth’, and the refined ear of the sensitive artist L Visconti grasped it: during this musical
climax, the main character sinks exhausted to the ground by a fountain and starts laughing.
He is laughing silently, crying, laughing with the laughter of one who at this moment knows -
knows the world, beauty, aspiration to happiness and a divine calling. Yes, it happened. It
happened – that which was worth living and suffering for and becoming acquainted with.

3.3.2. Criteria of the Absence of Insight

You, dear reader, already know that without insight there is no creation. But the leap in thinking
for different composers (as well as in different pieces of the same composer) can vary. Not
every talented personality is this genius, outstripping humanity by centuries. We know that at
all times, in every era, there were far fewer geniuses than merely talented people who also
had a rebellious nature. And this is quite natural. Thus, we shall not require the impossible,
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that every composer should resemble Bach or Beethoven. The insight of Mr Miller may be
more modest than the insight of Mahler. What is most important is that it is present at all. By
enumerating the criteria of the absence of insight, we would like to help a truly talented
composer to choose the right direction for searching in his creative activity, and probably to
heighten the demands he makes on himself and his art.

How then do we hear the absence of insight in a composition?

We hope you recall our note about the cause being heard everywhere throughout a
composition. The same principle is applicable to the opposite, when nothing that is really
unambiguous stands out anywhere in it. The lack of obligatoriness of these musical
phenomena, as well as the indifference of the composer, is obvious. The impression we get
from a composition that lacks insight is that it could be rewritten in different variants and nothing
in it would change. Why does this happen?

Recall yet again Osho’s words about the flute and the obstacle of the ego. If a composer has
never experienced any insight he may rewrite his composition every morning from scratch.
Today, he thinks that this way is good, and tomorrow he seems to have found a better variant,
because in these moments his composition is judged by his ego. The caprices of his mood and
the influence of outside opinion will continually confuse his ego. Because this ego is like a tidy-
looking person with neatly combed hair whom his relatives and friends, as well as he himself
under their influence, wish to see. Ego is a distilled personality afraid to speak the language of
the inner voice for fear of appearing insane, and which is afraid of looking ridiculous if it is in
danger of showing an unsympathetic trait of its character. Therefore, obedient people cannot
ever reveal themselves to the full and leave the framework of their egos. Only rebels who
refuse to do everything ‘right’ are able to ignore their egos and become a piece of hollow
bamboo. And when a composer becomes a piece of hollow bamboo, a flute through which the
music of God’s will passes, and when he himself has no opinion about the object, then he
knows the direction. Therefore, insight gives a composer the knowledge of where and how to
move in the realization of his intention. Without it, his composition is mere craftsmanship.

This is especially true for the climax of a composition. We have already discussed that the
movement toward the climax and the culminating point itself can be written in such a manner
that, formally, it will fulfil the function of the apex but will contain no compressed coiled spring,
no internal cause. Sometimes composers feel it; but let us take a look at how they try to conceal
it.

There are many musical scores in which everything related to the climax is made ‘nailed down’:
the composer (forgive us for this rather crude but apt expression) kneads the music to the
climax like dough, in order to create that indispensable thickness, the supposed intensity of
the compressed coiled spring. After including all possible instruments in the orchestra – after
the bells and the tam-tam (!) – the pipe organ breaks in, which of course does not summon up
any more intense sound and, in fact, does not contribute any effect other than noise. (This very
much recalls a person’s resort to force, when it is clear that he has no other arguments at his
disposal). And in the midst of all the heavy artillery he has let loose, the composer for some
reason still continues to play the harp and the celesta, as though arrows and tomahawks could
carry any weight in a chorus of tanks and mortars. Of course, in addition to all the above-
mentioned thunder and lightning, each separate instrument here plays at the top of its highest
register; and after ff comes ffff. As even that is not enough. The composer lets all the groups
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of instruments play lots of notes: the strings throb as though in a fever, and at a breakneck
pace play their complicated passages; the wind instruments try to drown one another out; the
drums beat; the pipe organ trumpets with all its manuals in all its stops. Ah, what a climax! In
fact, it is pure aggression. This reminds us, we beg your pardon, of Viagra. Indeed, there is
nothing natural about it and nothing grows from the inside, from within the kernel of the
composition itself. Such a climax does not convince and does not kindle your senses, but just
drags you by the hair.

Other attempts, however, are also being made to find solutions. If a composer has no more
inspiration or internal power to realize the necessary approach to the apex, then his climax,
unexpectedly for everyone, shoots as if from a cannon and, quite often, simply in order to kill
a fly.

Sometimes, a composer’s mountain-climbing spirit is flagging and he has simply given up

before reaching the peak. His narration then lacks the essential. It passes us by, drumming
with its hooves like the headless horseman.

Dear composers, please remember this! Remember the responsibility that you take upon
yourselves. The listener spends his own valuable time to come to a concert and listen to your
music. The musicians live with your music during long rehearsals and concerts. Please
remember all of this before you decide to give birth to your child.

4. Artistic Approach, Style, Period

We could end this book here. We have made our most important points. But the subject of
creative activity cannot be reduced solely to the matter of composing skills, since it contains a
historical aspect as well, if viewed in a broader context. Then a few more essential issues that
require adequate understanding and solutions arise.

At the beginning of the book, when we discussed creativity, we noted that it is not sufficient to
add to or change something in the existing stylistic system of expressive means, as it is not
enough to add chilli to pastry dough in order to consider the new product to be actually new
and creative. Following this pattern we can only spoil the tried and true object, but not create
something new and better. We should emphasize this idea: the stylistic system of expressive
means is born not by its simple invention or by a combinatorial imitation of other composers’
styles: no, it originates from within the creative personality, from the potential of its originality.
The style, that is, the language in which a creative human being speaks, takes shape in
conformity with ‘what and how’ this creative personality expresses its art. Indeed, in every
epoch there have been a large number of composers, some of whom are already long-
forgotten, who, like Haydn and Mozart, composed music in the spirit of their times, but,
nevertheless, never passed beyond the bounds of mediocrity. Only composers who managed
to express their profound personal essence have remained in the memory of the ages. Their
language has become the standard and has set the tone of the times.
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Does not matter how much history has taught us, in practice we constantly forget about this.
For example, a great number of modern European composers, not even giving a thought to
the ideas and moods that gave birth to Expressionism, continue to speak this language in their
music; the only difference being that they add ‘spices’ to their products from time to time. Their
language is determined not by their prototypes and that unique personal path along which the
reflection of the prototype travels, but, on the contrary, someone else’s style serves as a shell
for expressing their thoughts. How this paradox appears, and why its fruit is not immediately
visible, is the issue we intend to discuss below.

There are three major terms in musicology: artistic approach, style and period. These terms, if
they are correctly understood, may become for you, dear reader, the three ‘whales’ on which
the world of music rests. We are forced to use these terms here; however, it should be noted
that in discussing this issue we do not intend to cover in our short chapter a world of questions
related to them. This belongs to the area of musicology. Our goal here is much more modest.
Thus, we shall use the aforementioned broad terms with some restriction reducing their
contents in order to clarify the flow of our thought. Additionally, we should note that these terms
are used differently in connection with many issues, and we are going to explain our
understanding of these terms45 right away to avoid confusion.

The first term – the artistic approach – includes all that is related to the content in music, and
answers the question: “What?” The second term – the style – defines everything related to
means of expression in music, in the broad sense of the word (in other words, language), and
answers the question: “How” (although implying, as we shall see later, the question “What?”).
The third term – the musical style period – shows the correspondence between the former two
in a given epoch, i.e. it defines a certain period of time in the history of music. Naturally, when
we talk about approach and style, we intentionally separate the contents from the form and
talk about them as individual phenomena, although it is clear to everyone that the contents
cannot exist without a shell, and no abstract shell can exist without corresponding contents.
But we do this in order to provide the necessary explanation for certain complex phenomena,
for example those that occur in transitional periods between eras or stages in the work of a
certain composer.

We are sure you understand, dear reader, that the notions of the artistic approach and style
are somewhat analogous to those of the musical object and what we have called its
materialization, but in a different format. Obviously, we should discuss them in more detail.

When we talk of the “Romantic artistic approach”, we imply that the composer will give
preference to feelings in his composition, with their ephemeral nature and mutability; that he
will be inspired by nature and scenes from daily life; that the composer will notice details of an
object, rather than see it at a ‘long shot’; that he will be concerned with sentimental moments,
such as parting with a beloved person, or feel affection for insignificant things in life that are
dear to him, rather than be occupied with mankind as a whole, etc. Yet, the objects of his
interest may not be lacking in revolutionary pathos. The author may be concerned with the
injustice and oppression of the people, the way Lord Byron was (remember his struggle for the
liberation of Greece). Romantics always take the side of the weak, but they fight against this
injustice romantically, without concrete programmes and real ideals. They do it according to
the dictates of their heart, with banners and songs, foreseeing the death of their heroes and
mourning them in advance. When we recall typical Romantics in music – Schumann, Chopin,
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Liszt, Wagner and others – we shall immediately think of Schumann’s rebellious Davidsbund
spirit; the Polish banner in Chopin’s polonaises; stormy, nationally passionate Hungarian
rhapsodies by Liszt, seen against the background of their Album Leaves; dances and brief
lyrical sketches (mazurkas and nocturnes); preludes and fantasies. This is the image of a hero
with a kind heart, touching with his lyrical pathos and his poetry. The hero’s world is not quite
real. It is either fabulous and legendary, or fantastic and religious.

As you understand, we are not speaking about how all this is expressed in the works of a
specific composer, but merely listing the motifs and interests of a composer which might be
the contents of his art, i.e. may become images of his compositions. Like the word ‘plot’, which
tells us nothing about the form or genre of a work (for example, whether it is a story or a novel
or a novella), the term ‘artistic approach’ does not directly suggest any framework or means of
expression. If we wish, we may, even in the 21st century, imitate the moods and images of the
Romantics; no one forbids us to rebel and to dream romantically in this scientifically-minded
day and age. Naturally, people of different eras speak differently, according to their spirit of
time, even about eternal topics. For this reason, our romantic dreams will only resemble earlier
ones (as the Neoclassical approach was only an imitation of the Classical approach). But we
are not prohibited from imitating somebody else in our dreams and to follow suit. It only
depends on us, what we notice and distinguish in our times as the most essential things and
matters of greatest concern to us.

When we say ‘style’, however, the terminological framework of the application of this term
somewhat narrows. By style, we imply the totality of means available to express a particular
content, i.e. the artistic approach. In other words, the approach is already set and the contents
presuppose the employment of certain means of expression, which have developed over time
into a system (it includes the notions of the genre, form of composition and many other building
blocks, starting with a melody and ending with a harmony in cadences). Style is precisely ‘how’,
i.e. by which means a composer has expressed his romantic nostalgia for the faraway
homeland, how he conveyed his fabulous, half-illusory world. In the notion of a composer’s
style, a music critic reads or recognizes the particular world of a composer: exactly Wagner’s
world and not that of Haydn that is embodied in Wagner’s style. When we speak of style it is
impossible not to imply the artistic approach that corresponds to it, because a particular style
emerges in order to express a particular composer’s world, and not the world of any other
composer. Thus, it can be said that the notion of style obliges us. The dissonance of the style
with its artistic approach is visible, if both have developed to a degree where we can speak of
them from the perspective of a certain historical epoch, i.e. from the perspective of the musical
period. For example, if a composer uses new, contemporary means of expression, but his soul
remains faithful to the old ideas and moods, his music sounds unconvincing and implausible,
showing a trace of sad irony. Imagine a composition written in the Romantic style, but Classical
in its approach: how strange any attempts to balance complex Romantic harmony, splashes
in tempo, and a variety of its texture with classical elegance and symmetry will appear. In other
words, four bars you should play lively and as fast as possible à la Schumann, and also four
more bars moderato… If a composer grows out of certain means of expression in his contents,
he will continually break the framework of style and be unable to remain within its boundaries.
His music will sound illogical, even neurotic in places. This is often the case with compositions
written at the turn of an era, for example, between the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This
phenomenon may portend the arrival of a new style, as is often the case with either early or
late works of some of our great composers. This is possible, however, only if such new
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contents explode the old form. It also happens that a good old form is applied to shapeless
and obscure contents, in the hope that it can imbue them with the necessary solidity and
conviction. Indeed, the pathos of Expressionism uttered its last gasp long ago. It was heard
when post first world war misery produced terrible disillusionment in everything, disorientation,
a complete absence of ideals and searing loneliness. At that time, poverty and unbelief
provoked a change of attitudes, also toward music. It could no longer remain sweet and
pleasant to the ear. Down with these melodies! All this is nothing but a face lifting for a dead
corpse. Music is not obliged to embellish the dreadful reality. There is no need to lie and
pretend that faith exists. The loneliness of the lonely, like the Steppenwolf... Or like Zarathustra
uttering Nietzsche’s words... Like A. Leverkuhn from Thomas Mann’s novel ‘Doctor Faustus’
(Schoenberg was his prototype) who said that music which awakens interest is more valuable
than beautiful music. This is why Expressionism begot those broken phrases, which grew into
a total absence of melody (in the former sense of the word) and twelve-tone music. The
wounded soul required acute dissonance in expression, which led to total dissonance:
serialism. Music that let in no ray of light was supposed to sound abrupt and unfinished, dry
and dull. But this was happening long ago. We have long forgotten the state of the mute scream
shown in the famous painting by E Munch. However, we continue to compose music in the
style of Expressionism. Formerly, the soul of the listener was filled with trembling and froze in
terror and pain (Berg), or suffered silently and stoically (Webern). Now sated and prosperous,
it suffers from boredom in these tattered and beggarly clothes. This is why many people, even
those who are very musical, do not like modern music: they associate it entirely with this
phenomenon and intuitively feel the irrelevance of the word to the idea.

A similar incongruity of phenomena is often evident when new styles are taking shape and
when a composer does not fully understand what is happening. It may thus happen that
somewhere in the middle of a composition written according to the principles of twelve-tone
technique we suddenly see a whole fragment of music in Purcell’s style (not a quotation); or,
in a harmony built on fourths and seconds, we come across islands of major and minor chords
here and there (this resembles for us a person who first speaks German, then suddenly
recalling a certain French expression switches to French; and who will probably speak Polish
next). One cannot build a new style from pieces of existing styles according to the principle of
a mosaic. This would be an artificial solution, which lacks inner necessity and logic as well as
new contents. Only a profound inner need to express your own content reorganizes all former
means of expression into a new and elegant system, as though we suddenly entered the three-
dimensional universe from the two-dimensional plane. Everything here is the same way and
not the same way at the same time. Only then do quantitative changes lead to qualitative ones.
Only in this manner can we achieve convincing music. Therefore, we can only repeat what we
have already said: If a child perceived the sun as being not exactly round, he would most
probably draw a house that is not exactly straight... The tendency towards systematizing,
towards style in music, therefore, expresses the presence of a certain, perhaps initially difficult-
to-characterize artistic approach as the main orientation in creative activity. If this orientation
is absent, we get a picture which gives away the composer’s wish to appear modern. This wish
is insincere, however. It does not follow immediately from his actual inner motives.

We consider this issue to be so relevant at present (given that composers often base their
creative activity on various musical theories and not on life experiences) that we would like to
demonstrate how a new style, let’s say the Neoclassical style, arises. What was the rationale
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for calling this new style ‘Neoclassicism’, and what reminds us of Classicism here: was it the
style or the artistic approach?

If Prokofiev had been inspired by Mozart’s ‘harmonic scheme’, based on the T-S-D principle
(i.e. features of his style that we roughly expressed here), we would have forgotten about
Prokofiev long ago. No matter how passionately he would have imitated Mozart or Beethoven,
broadening or breaking the boundaries of Classicism, no matter how many new themes he
might have expressed, he would still have been imperfect and uninteresting. (Any modern
composer has mastered Mozart’s style and is quite aware of the way it is structured, but only
an unprofessional one will consciously try to imitate it.) Firstly, his compositions would have
been treated on the basis of comparison, being put in the same category as representatives
of the "Viennese Classic". His style, thus, should have been called Classicism, rather than
Neoclassicism. Secondly, they would have been nourished with juices different from those of
the 18th century and would not have been so full of life and so enthralling. Much of what the
masters of the Viennese Classic considered significant would have been left unnoticed by the
composer. Thus, this Prokofiev, if set against the background of the history, would not have
created anything unique, significant, and would not even have become a second Mozart (as a
talented composer who lived in the same epoch could have become), but just some ‘Salieri’. It
is interesting to listen to, for example, the Magic Flute, but it is boring to listen to an opera à la
Mozart. (Likewise, it is entertaining to listen to the opera Wozzeck by A Berg, but it is not
entertaining to listen to an opera in the style of Berg.) The composer who travels along this
path does not take into account the simple fact that it is only possible to achieve the same
artistic perfection on the condition that the respective style corresponds to its artistic approach.
This correspondence is determined by the world outlook of the epoch. Thus, it is clear that
Prokofiev was inspired not by the form - or the style - of Classicism, but by the clarity and
simplicity of the images of Classicism, the elegance and harmony of its manifestations. He
took the classical artistic approach as a basis for his work, enriched it with features of his time
and created his own artistic approach and style called Neoclassicism (which is actually quite
different from Classicism).46

Thus, when we speak about a certain style, we should not forget the artistic approach that
gave rise to it. One more matter that should be remembered: the style defines a particular
system, but not separate means and methods of expression. There are many concepts in
circulation that attempt to define the totality of means of expression but are not adequate to
this role. We speak, for example, about atonal music, meaning a style that is non-tonal, i.e.
does not conform to tonal thinking. However, what is the use of such a definition? Indeed, it is
the same as saying non-Beethoven or non-Romantic. Does the style become any clearer in
the light of such a term? Likewise the term ‘minimalism’. Is such a superficial trait as the
minimum (if compared to the past) of means of expression or thematic material capable of
characterizing this entire style? Perhaps the time is ripe for musicologists to work a bit on these
definitions.

The final term – the period – is even narrower application than the previous two, and expresses
a certain artistic approach and a corresponding style that had already taken shape within the
framework of a concrete historical era. That is to say, that when we mention the period of
Romanticism, or just Romanticism, we mean the 19th century in music, with its characteristic
artistic approach and style. We cannot speak of the period without having turned the last page
of the era, which is followed by completely different phenomena. Before the turn of the era we
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may see the following picture: composers, in accordance with their prototypes and the world
outlook of their time, compose works, the totality of which determines the style of, say,
Tchaikovsky, the style of Mendelssohn, the style of Mahler, etc. There are quite a number of
these individual compositional styles within this era (indeed, similar themes and moods are
expressed differently by each artist, through the prism of his individuality). If we were living in
it, we would be inclined to perceive their distinctions, rather than their commonalities. Having
turned over that last page of the epoch, however, and looking at the era from above, similar
features and similarities in styles, which may already be generalized and brought under a
common denominator, become definitively clear to the observer. It then becomes possible to
speak of a certain Romantic style as such, in its rounded-out form. Hence, then and only then
do we pronounce the word Romanticism, understanding by this the phenomenon of the entire
era – a period in music.47 In other words, when we add the word Romantic or Romanticism to
the style of a certain composer or a certain time, this means that we are viewing it from the
perspective of the period. The word Romanticism (as a period) already implies both the style
corresponding to this era and its artistic approach.

The period is a closed concept, like a historical fact. Nothing can be extended or turned
backwards. One may not, for example, speak about Romanticism in the Renaissance period,
even if we encounter what appear to be similar phenomena. In such a context, we could apply
the concepts of sentimentalism, mannerism etc., but never Romanticism. (It is not acceptable
to use concepts – not the word itself, which may be understood in different ways, but the very
concept – that came into existence later, to denote phenomena of earlier epochs. This would
be like using the words “a pistol” and “a safe” in a film script about the Stone Age).

By the same token, just as there was no Romanticism before the 19th century, there will be no
Romanticism after it. And thus it serves no purpose for a future composer to strive and
compose music in one or another style of the past, as we see in the case of Prokofiev. He will
enjoy no real success in its creation, nor will he find a grateful listener. The attempt to revive
the past during the Renaissance, to dress and talk like Cicero, did not lead to the birth of Cicero
or Ovid. Only the names of those who transgressed the framework of imitation and who actively
interpreted their own age in their creative efforts, like Leonardo da Vinci and Shakespeare,
have remained in our collective memory over time.

Therefore, dear composers, you should seriously contemplate how and whom you should
follow. If a composer, for example, emulates the style of such a composer as Philip Glass, he
may, provided that he tries to be true to his own ‘I’, even become a Mozart emulating Haydn.
But if he today, blindly and stubbornly, follows Schoenberg in his style, he will not have the
slightest chance to become a second Schoenberg. Do you feel the difference?

Thus, let us emphasize the main idea of this part of the book: artistic approach, style and period
are concepts that come exactly in this order. They cannot change places, in the same way as
it is impossible to change the places of the object in the creation of art and the means for its
materialization. Style is rooted in artistic approach, and the two are relevant only to a certain
era, because it is not various theories but life itself that determines the significance of a
composer and his music in the face of time. What is primary and what is secondary here is not
a philosophical question but a practical and historical one.
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5. The Composer’s Goals

Dear composers, and all who wish to become composers!

At the beginning of our path, we ask ourselves a number of questions related to this profession
and do not always know towards what we must orient ourselves in order to find out whether
we should compose at all. Sometimes we consult someone about this; such advice can,
however, often be wrong, since those down-to-earth’s often know little about creating art and
use methods of assessment that are inappropriate to composing. How do we know then, what
our starting point should be?

If you already have had this quiet dialogue with yourself at night, when you asked yourself
“Should I compose?” and if you answered, “Yes, nothing in the world will make me happier
than this communication with the Spirit during a creative flight and insight, and nothing will
make me more unhappy than the absence of this flight,” and if the answer to this essential
question was: “Yes I should, since only composing music will make me truly happy in life,” you
do not have to worry about whether you will succeed in this or not. You do not need to wrack
your brain over profits or losses from the products of your creative activity, to worry about your
career in the negative sense of the word, or to think about fame and public recognition. All
worldly considerations will then mean nothing to you. You already have a justification for your
creative activity, and it is the best justification ever. You will then be able to compose music,
even if it is rarely performed and listened to, or even if it is not required at all. You will create
both if you are able to support yourself by it, and if this should prove impossible and you should
have to buy sheet music instead of your breakfast, you will do that in positive circumstances,
if you receive recognition and your circle of listeners is large, and also when even your closest
friends do not understand you. All this is so, because the goal of your art will be art itself. To
create will be a goal in itself for you; this will make you act independent, ignoring influences
and the opinions of other people.

Like true love, which cares neither for money nor for public opinion, your true love for your art
will require neither earthly goods nor fame. When you have understood what a miracle it is to
experience the state of creating which has been granted to you from above, you will be grateful
for it and not ask unnecessary questions like “Will I become a Beethoven?” It is not your task
to answer these questions. You should trust the forces that are already guiding you along this
difficult path. If you, however, begin your creative path by trying to define whether you are a
big or a small quantity, then everything along this path will be different, and you will probably
never have a chance to correct this. You will never write a single inspired bar. Composing has
never been easy or profitable, or even actively supported by society, at any time. Thoughts
about prosperity have always distracted rather than assisted true creativity. Fame and
recognition have usually been matters of chance, and there is no need to speculate whether
this work is easy. Just think how difficult it is sometimes to combine our everyday lives with
this capricious muse, which sometimes visits you at night, on the eve of an important meeting,
when you just need to get some sleep. Therefore, composing is not a profession in the ordinary
sense of the word: it is a calling. Those composers who treat it otherwise become disappointed,
even if success seems to accompany them in the beginning. Sooner or later they feel that they
are in the wrong place, that all this surpasses their capabilities, torments them and becomes
boring. For them, the creative process gradually turns into a routine, sometimes even into far
too difficult and unpleasant labour, as is often the case when a composer executes some
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commission. In the end, creating in general becomes for them a fulfilment of a commission,
which one must be done with as soon as possible. There is no joy of being to be found in this.
Could someone consciously choose such a life? A person for whom creating is his true element
and not his job, will not be able to keep from revealing his own originality and artistic streak,
even when fulfilling the most trivial tasks that require no creativity. A person for whom to create
is not a goal in itself but, say, just a way of satisfying his pride, will be burdened even by
minimum effort towards ‘flight’. Not only in ordinary daily situations, but also in his art, he will
be quite satisfied with well-rehearsed professional techniques and stereotypes. He will remain
unaware of the search and risks of the true artist who is always open to the new. To an outside
observer the result of his creative efforts will appear to be an endless rewriting of the same
script of his life.

We can only pity such a person. He has chosen the wrong profession. He does not really need
music or composing. He suffers. What does a sick person do? As Sigmund Freud said, he
sublimates. He tries to find a sphere of activity parallel to the one in which he is involved, in
order to find a replacement for what is unpleasant and unnecessary to him. There are many
such spheres or ways of sublimation. There is, for example, a type of composer who, when
possible, willingly accompanies his concerts with long discourses about Adam and Eve in his
life and work - as if one can think that such verbal ‘creativity’ is as important as music itself. A
composer, who for some reason does not wish to submit to the rules of the game which is
called composition, begins to muster arguments, such as: “It’s a new kind of aesthetics” and
“This has nothing in common with old concepts” etc., as if the goal of the composer were to
philosophise. It is much more important to express these new aesthetics in your work, leaving
theories to music critics. If a composer has an inner need to support the impression made by
his music with explanations of its aesthetics, it means that the composition itself sounds
unconvincing and arguable. Had these new aesthetics been heard clearly, but were simply
unacceptable to the listener, the latter would have resisted it actively and showered the
composer with questions. A composer should not replace music with any other form of art, if
anything at all. May you speak a language of your own! No theories, no slogans have ever
made up the truth of art. Its criteria are only to be found in life and art itself.

Conclusions
Composing, like any other art, has long been considered a sphere of knowledge close to, say,
alchemy. Yet, along with the development of science, we have involuntarily raised everything
that is connected with it to the status of the absolute. It very often happens today that we solely
accept the scientific approach and cast of mind, forgetting that before science there were other
forms of cognition. We often overestimate the significance of science, confusing in our minds
divergent levels and types of thinking. Not everything created scientifically is good, and not
everything that has no scientific form is bad. Each area of human effort towards perceiving life
has a right to its own existence if it corresponds to its subject. In this respect, science and art
each go their own way. Therefore, my appeal to you, dear composers, is: “Be once again
alchemists and not chemists in music!”

A Davidof
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1 J Vibert, Painting and Its Techniques, from the Russian translation, Arts Academy U.S.S.R., Moscow,
1961, p.21.

2 It is useful to consult Osho’s Art is Not a Matter of Skill.

3 We sincerely hope that this remark will not be taken as hostility on our part toward women
composers.

4 Let us note in passing that, according to our observations, many of these composers are not even
capable of hearing in their mind the would-be acoustic result, since their musical ear is quite often not
highly enough developed. They are sometimes incapable of distinguishing their own piece from
another composition when it is being performed. So what does it have to do with the sphere of music
as the art of sound?

5 C Dumont, Beethoven, translated from the German, Ex Libris Pub., Zurich, 1978, p. 206.

6 It is possible that this type of thinking goes back to the theory professed by the Austrian music critic
Eduard Hanslick (see below).

7 This point of view probably arose from a wrongly interpreted saying that the score of a good piece
of music visually reflects its perfection. Many began to believe that its perfection consisted solely in its
visual appearance. This meant that it was enough for a composer to create an appropriate and logically
convincing compositional structure of a work for it to contain all the necessary attributes of perfection.
In all probability, this notion gained wide currency due to the appearance of Thomas Mann’s novel
Doctor Faustus, which exercised a strong influence on the European mind. This, however, did not
happen without the ‘baton’ of Theodor Adorno, who was Thomas Mann’s musical advisor. The novel
contains a discourse on contemporary musical aesthetics, and we shall cite this ‘fatal’ passage in its
entirety: “he spoke of the mere appearance of musical notation, and assured us that a knowledgeable
person could get from one look at the notation a decisive impression of the spirit and value of a
composition. […] he sketched for us the enchanting pleasure which even the visual picture of a score
by Mozart afforded to the practised eye; the clarity of the texture, the beautiful disposition of the
instrumental groups, the ingenious and varied writing of the melodic line. […] in all time composers
had secretly nested in their writings things that were meant more for the reading eye than for the ear.”
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, The Modern Library, p. 60-61.

8 It should be noted, however, that this fate eventually awaits all such contemporary pieces of music,
since their artificial elitism quite literally scares away the listener.

9 In: E P Fischer, Another Education, translated from the German, Ullstein, 2001, p. 387.

10 As you understand, dear reader, this is impossible, and we are simply trying to emphasize the
difference between these two fields.

11 H Hesse, Steppenwolf, Penguin Books, 1965, p. 38.

12 It is worth mentioning here the theory of Eduard Hanslick. In attempting to raise music from a
matter of simple sense perception to elevated aesthetics (as though from feelings to The Feeling which
is ‘within you’), he emptied the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, having concerned himself
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exclusively with the material shell of the work, forgetting about spirituality in music. As a result, he
reduces the idea of music to a kind of aesthetic game of acoustic forms, roughly speaking, to scales
and modulations accessible only to an expert. In the heat of his argument, he does not even hear the
voices of the creators themselves, as they talk about their art. When Beethoven was asked about the
meaning of his D minor and F minor Sonatas he replied: “Read Shakespeare’s Tempest (…).” (cited from
E Hanslick The Beautiful in Music, Novello, Ewer and Co, London & New York, 1891, p. 85). Beethoven
trusted the listener, no matter how uneducated the latter was. Hanslick draws the following conclusion
from Beethoven’s words: “It is often alleged that Beethoven, when making the rough sketch of a
composition, had before him certain incidents or states of mind. Whenever Beethoven (or any other
composer) adopted this method, he did so to smooth his task; to render the achievement of musical
unity easier by keeping in view the connecting links of certain objective phenomena.” (ibid., p. 84).
This sounds almost the same as if a prophet told Hanslick about the Trinity, and Hanslick answered
him: “Well, it’s only to smooth your task for you; I know that in fact you believe in Manitou!” And as a
result of such research we arrive at the following conclusion: “There is no greater and more frequent
error than to distinguish between beautiful music, with and without a definite subject. (...) All
compositions are accordingly divided into full and empty champagne bottles; musical champagne,
however, has the peculiarity of developing with the bottle” (ibid., p. 74). Certainly, there is no
champagne of music without a bottle. This does not, however, explain the origin of the empty bottles
of Hiller, Heller, Haller, Held, Hummel, Hauer, Hasse, Feld... as well as many others! They come from a
reverse sequence of events: not from the content of music or from the spirit to the form, but on the
contrary, from the form to some kind of content. This happens only with a composer who has the
bottle (or the swan) for contents, and for whom all the rest is just “to smooth his task”.

13 We often hear arguments that are meant to convince the listener that in the arts (and this is
considered to be an advantage), the artist discovers a truth that has been already discovered and
confirmed by science independently of him. Thus, science and art complement each other ostensibly
in the search for truth. This approach reminds us of the practice of telling the future from coffee
grounds. Every individual sees the design in the cup that he wants to see, and almost attributes a spirit
to coffee akin (at least) to that of a human. In fact, this ‘coffee effect’ is purely coincidental, even if
these patterns actually remind us of something objective. Art is never concerned with the cognition of
such things as time, mass, state of matter or the appearance of the astronomical space. Art is not
equipped to grapple with such subjects and answer such abstract questions; it is never concerned with
something that is too ‘cold’ to be processed by the sense organs. (There is no comprehension in art
possible without ‘touching the object‘, about which see below.) To think that Arnold Schoenberg, when
discovering the twelve-tone technique, was contemplating the principle of uncertainty of matter like
Werner K Heisenberg, although expressing it in different means, is as naïve as to see the proof of the
existence of God in the theory of relativity. Such issues in art are totally irrelevant; there is simply no
place for such objects of cognition here. Those who understand art in this way see the technique of
the artist only as the goal of art, rather than his musical object.

14 Reiner Maria Rilke. "Ich fürchte mich so vor der Menschen Wort". From ‘Poetry’. Philipp Reclam
jun., Stuttgart, 1997, p. 20. Translated from the German by W. Fiodoroff.

15 Musical sensibility, as an innate sense of the human being, can be compared to the sense of humour.
We make a similar comparison between symbolic thinking and the sense of humour in chapter 2.2.
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The underdeveloped sense of music (sense of humour, or symbolic thinking), or even a total lack of it
in certain people reminds us of what happens to animals, a dog for example, when it is looking at a
photograph. It sees the paper and various colours. It sees convexities, if there are any. It can lick or
sniff it, but it cannot capture in its mind what is depicted on the photograph. It cannot break through
the material shell of this object, as the person we speak about does not see the object of art behind
its material matter. Why some people lack this sense is a question that should be addressed to
psychologists. (We beg the reader not to take offence at this comparison. Sir Isaac Newton was a
wonderful scientist, but had no understanding of symbolic language, the language of the apostles,
which as the story of the Newton's box shows, was his main interest for many years. On the other
hand, a lot of artistic people completely lack the ability to think logically.) An interesting fact, however,
is that musicians engaged in so-called light music, or music for entertainment (rock, pop and
sometimes jazz), are well aware of musical sensibility. The specific features of this kind of music require
that those who make it to be musical. If it is not the case, the product of their creative efforts is rejected
by the listener immediately. Thus, there is no chance or sense for them in hiding behind any musical
theories or philosophies: they must convince the listener by the practical result.

16 For a long time, we contemplated how to make this ‘other world’ comprehensible to a person who
has never practised art, and we came to the conclusion that this state could best be described as the
touching of the individual soul, like a rivulet – and the cosmos, on the level of the spirit, which is like
an ocean. The stream into which the creative human being falls (will be discussed below) is precisely
this oceanic Spirit.

17 In the first place, the quantities of the spirit do not submit to calculations, as do mass and energy.
This could be compared to asking the kinds of questions that were asked in the Middle Ages such as,
“How many devils can dance on the head of a pin?” In the second place, there is no need to measure
the Spirit, thinking that we might define an absolutely new quality of it in this way. Art knows that “as
above, so below”.

18 This merging, as a state, can be compared with the feeling of empathy in a human being. Some
people have it in great measure, while it is almost totally absent in others.

19 The word ‘pregnant’ is not a coincidence. The notion of creativity that originates from creare
includes, in addition to the meaning of creation, such meanings as conceiving and giving birth.

20 Arthur Honegger, I, the Composer, Translated from the German, Atlantis Pub., Zurich, 1987, p.90.

21 In passing, let us mention the following, quite widespread phenomenon: there are composers and
artists who begin their creative efforts not in their souls but in their hands, assuming that the truth
and a clear and complete image of their work will appear to them during the creative process. But, no
matter how complex and individual our creative laboratories are, we can boldly affirm that the spiritual
begins in the soul. To think that your hand itself can be a medium is as naïve as acting contrary to this,
i.e. to force yourself to create.

22 We might put it as follows: when merging with his prototype, a composer experiences a certain
emotional state that he subsequently tries to resurrect, also as a state, in the listener’s soul by his
music. This is why we call a composer a guide who leads the listener. Therefore, the stronger the
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impression (as a certain kind of state) that music makes, the easier it is to speak about the image it has
created.

23 Recall what naïve people do when they do not follow the spirit of the Bible, but the letter. The
Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is understood not as the symbol of the unity of wholeness-
materiality-immateriality (where materiality is God in the flesh – Jesus Christ), but as some kind of
family. This gives rise to a discussion of family relations in the Trinity. People begin, in all seriousness,
to consider questions such as: “Who is closer to God: Christ or the Holy Spirit?” (This was the source
of the schism of the church into the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches.) Let us reflect
upon the damage caused by Islamic law, oriented toward legislative analogies in the Koran, when a
hand or even the head is cut off only because somebody was prosecuted in this manner for a similar
crime in the Koran. Many contemporary sects fall victim to the same kind of misconception: they take
excerpts of words and thoughts out of the context of the Bible, as a page might be taken out of a book,
and base their understanding of the whole system on these excerpts. The result is that the words “to
fight for the truth” are understood not in the meaning of “to strive to reach it” (primarily within
yourself, i.e. to fight with yourself), but as a battle cry for fighting with others in the name of religion.

24 When people say that only science is capable of an objective vision of things and that only science
gives a comprehensive picture of the unity of the world through abstraction, we always remember
refutations of this that are common in the East: science deals with causes and effects that converge
on the human being as the initial and end points of all evaluations, of all scientific results. As was the
case with alchemy, art knows that the “laws above are the same as below” (in the language of science,
the same may be expressed by stating that micro- macro- and mega-worlds operate according to the
same laws); because art, in the individual manifestations of its objects, has experienced this unity of
all existence as a state, and in this state it rests on and is rooted in the divine. And nobody argues about
which is more earthly – the divine or the human. The picture of scientific cognition can be represented
as a human being looking through a “chink in a door”. The room never gains a comprehensive
appearance. Art, however, lets us look at the room from above, or from within, with the help of its
method of cognition.

25 One can probably hit the target without aiming, so to speak; i.e. unintentionally discover something
larger than one has anticipated without even being able to evaluate one’s new prototype. It is,
however, unwise to rely on this, as it is unwise to rely on paying your debts with the million dollar
winnings from a future lottery.

26 According to our observations, many people follow the motto “I can create no worse (!) than this
or that artist” in their creative efforts and do not at all understand that the requirements here are
quite the opposite: one should not imitate, but break away from existing images. This fundamentally
wrong attitude leads a composer to a general well-known system of values, with its typical artistic
imagery and means of expression.

27 Osho, Art is Not a Matter of Skill, translated from the German, Osho Pub., Zurich, 1996, p.20, 8, 30.

28 Naturally, the force of this leap in consciousness during the experience of insight varies. We should
not assume that each new composition is required to discover completely new worlds. Even
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compositions by composers who were geniuses are not master-pieces to the same degree. However,
without truth discovered during the insight, there is no composition as a whole.

29 Psychologist J E Arnold noted quite correctly that solutions in a creative activity must be synergetic,
i.e. they imply not the addition but multiplication of values; the value of the result of a new solution
must be larger than the sum of old concepts. (We have already defined this as qualitative
restructuring.) The act of combination always leads to mere addition.

30 Here the criteria must be understood as something relative. We have already said that the scientific
method of proof is not applicable to the arts.

31 From A Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin, rough translation from the Russian, Collected
Works, Vol.4, Moscow, 1960, p.79.

32 The gusli and the balalaika are traditional Russian instruments; the first one is similar to the zither
and has a certain elevated status (it is even considered to be a symbol of poetry), while the other one
resembles the mandolin and is a much more folksy instrument.

33 It is not by chance that the oral transmission of music from one generation to another has such a
long tradition. It preserves the spirit of music. Indeed, its written transmission, however sophisticated
the recording may have been, always fails to take something into consideration; much can be lost or
distorted when reproducing it. Notation has many relative or subjectively measured parameters
(dynamics, tempo, agogic, etc.), which do not submit to precise measurement or transmission.

34 We are all familiar with the phenomenon in which a favourite piece of music can affect us differently
– or not affect us at all – depending on its rendition or on our own spiritual state (in fatigue or sickness
for example). This proves the crucial importance of openness to the musical object and our readiness
to perceive it.

35 Here several words about arrangement are called for. An arrangement is often the work of two
authors: of the one who composed the music and the one who arranged it. Applying the
aforementioned criteria of an image, one can see that an arrangement, as a piece of music, resembles
the work of a performer. It can remain true to the image of the music, even if it contains new additional
details; it may also, consciously or unconsciously, deviate from it to a smaller or greater extent. These
last deviations might approximate the arrangement to another musical genre, such as a paraphrase on
a theme by another composer. They can also destroy the image completely, even if the notes are the
same. In the case of a work containing deviations, the image of music may remain identical to the
original, but it can suddenly acquire a completely new format. It may shrink (which is bad), or become
enlarged (which is good, as in, for example, arrangements of J S Bach’s organ music, written for
orchestra by L Stokowski). The quality of the arrangement, and this is very important, depends on a
very significant factor, namely, the goal of the arranger. Is his intention to preserve the image of the
original work or not? If the goal of the arranger, for example, is a meditation on classical music, there
will be no active listening to classical music here (the aforementioned act of volition of contemplating
or recognizing the image is absent). The arranger is not at all concerned with the image of the music.
He will intentionally cut out and mask everything beyond the range of mezzo piano. Thus it happens
that in this context passionate Puccini is feeding crumbs of sugar to flocks of beautifully singing birds
of paradise, the voices of which ought to incline us to meditation. Or a philosophical composer such as
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Beethoven, in his profound lyricism, will suddenly babble like an ordinary brook among the grandiose
sounds of the forest. But if the purpose of the arrangement is to transfer the image to the sound of
another instrument in order for this image to shine with new and previously unseen colours that will
make it more palpable, the result of the work may be very convincing, as we see in arrangements by
Ravel and Shostakovich, as well as in some by Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov and others. It depends on the
arranger in his guise as a creative personality with his intentions and creative potential, where and
how he will move: towards the idea of the composer, preserving the original image of the music in
accordance with his talent, or away from this image and towards his own goals.

36 Here we do not speak of the works of young composers, who, while learning, inevitably copy
someone. This is quite normal and acceptable. Great composers have many sheets of scrap paper
showing their paths of development.

37 It is not a coincidence that envious people were unable to forgive Mozart his gift of creating marvels.
If he had only been a better craftsman, more refined, more successful, but no. He dwelt on a different
plane, in a different dimension. He did not write, but created. His power lay in this magic, in a realm
that is a mystery to many people. Moreover, how easily he opened and closed this door, entered and
exited as if without any effort. He did not reflect about how other people painfully give birth to their
creations. Mozart, being little more than a big child, would have dropped composing right away had
he found it so difficult. To him, creation was a state of inspiration and obsession; i.e. an interesting and
adventurous quest. Trusting his own nature, he trusted laws that were not created by him. And this,
like Archimedes’ principle, thrust him upwards.

38 Such notation is quite acceptable in music where the timing and pitch are flexible, subjectively
relative.

39 Translated from the German, Scherz, Bern-Munich-Vienna, 1985, p.17.

40 We shall now slightly digress from the narration and add a few words on a typical problem that
arises between the composer and the performer. It often happens that a performer becomes
disappointed if a composition does not allow him to demonstrate his virtuosity to the full. He will then
begin to reproach the composer just like a jealous wife reproaches her husband. The composer,
however, as we now know, does not compose his music for separate groups or instruments in the
orchestra. He simply finds the optimum instrument to carry out a task, though sometimes he can be
mistaken. His choice must also be in compliance with the technical possibilities of his times. And if he
had the choice of replacing the whole symphonic orchestra with a single instrument that could
reproduce all this and even more, he would immediately do so. Moreover, a composer composes music
not intended for a specific performer (although their collaboration in creating music is often quite
useful), but music that has been sent to him from above by insight. He is often not able to say why he
wrote exactly in this way. Thus, we would like performers to remember more often that their point of
view is different from that of a composer; a performer views a composition with the eyes of a creature
fighting for its own well-being, whereas a composer sees it from the divine perspective, which is
intended for all living creatures, so to speak. In this marriage of the composer/husband and the
performer/wife, the wife must be reasonable and understand that even the husband does not have
the last word...
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41 This term is conventional; we use it intentionally, in order to make the following narration clear.

42 In this way, the composer wants to tell us that he returns to the original state of affairs of the
exposition, but in an altered form. Masters of polyphony expressed similar messages in backward
movements of a short melody, and thus it was easily perceived by ear. In the case concerned, it will
not be perceived by ear, which proves that the composer cannot hear his acoustic result in his head.

43 In connection with this, we recall the words of F Chaliapin: “I realized that copying (…) had nothing
to do with art. I realized that the essential thing in art is the feeling, or spirit - the word by means of
which the prophet was summoned to set aflame the hearts of human beings, and that this word can
be expressed in colours, lines, or gestures, as well as in speech.” (in S Neef, The Russian Five, translated
from the German, E Kuhn Pub., Berlin, 1992, p.256.)

44 We have already said that knowledge or musical education as such is not the key factor of success
in the creation of art. The most important thing here is the rebellious nature of a personality which
goes against knowledge and stereotypes of thinking related to this knowledge. In addition, each person
selects information in his own way. For this reason, we write the word ‘literacy’ in inverted commas,
emphasizing the relativity of this term.

45 A similar understanding of the terms prevailed in articles by musicologists in the former USSR (for
example by A N Sochor). In Russian these terms are as follows: художественный метод, стиль,
направление. Having failed to find an English equivalent for the first term, we decided to use the
definition that is close to the original – the artistic approach, or briefly – the approach.

46 In contemporary musical thinking, we often encounter, unfortunately, the phenomenon of “form

for form’s sake” in the bad sense of the word (not the aestheticization of the very forms, but rather a
faith in a certain structure that is independent of everything and is a bearer of information in itself). In
other words, we encounter the prevalence of structure over the meaningful whole. We would term
this faith and tendency the naïve revolutionary approach of a romantic. All such independence and
naïve abstraction exists only in a composer’s head. In fact, abstraction is a mere tool, with the help of
which real objects (or objects that might become real) are set into relation. Furthermore, art, as we
have already mentioned, never needed the object ‘coffee as a number’, but rather please ‘the number
as coffee.’

47 The word Romantic appeared in print earlier in connection with Beethoven. Its semantic, however,
was different from that of the term Romanticism.

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