debunking creative myth(s)

I have a young composition student who is (IMHO) overly preoccupied with the idea of ownership of musical ideas. At our last meeting, Student X showed me a lot of music written during a trip abroad. With each piece, X invariably criticized it for relying on a melodic idea that appeared in an earlier work of X’s.

We discussed this and X made reference to the old saying,

Good composer’s borrow; Great composer’s steal.

This statement bothers me on different levels and I was especially troubled to hear it said with such certainty from X. I tried to tell X, in no uncertain terms, that that particular statement is completely unhelpful to a person exploring any creative discipline because it propagates a stifling perspective on the compositional creative process.

The statement implies a hierarchy of creative prowess, by separating the so-called “great” composer from the others via a composer’s ability to hide their musical reference points. X, as young, 12 year old composer, believed the statement to mean that if a composition’s influences are audible, then the work is not good. I tried to explain that a historically informed listener CAN find the influences of the past on all so-called “great” composers. (And that the most important listeners to BE historically informed are composers themselves.) In our society, it is the uninformed commentators and the propagators of the myth of the creative artist as “great” or “good” that hinders the creative spark in many young people.

beginnings

I had my first violin lesson as a Suzuki-parent yesterday. As an active college teacher, working towards deadlines measured by the weeks and months of semester calendars, it was a strange and somewhat nebulous feeling to be explicitly reminded that this learning process (for both my daughter and me) will be measured in years. I felt like I had been thrown in a deep pool, far away from the solid edge to grab onto.

Of course, in the abstract I recognized that the process is my daughter’s first experience with an instrument and that beginning at the beginning is the only place for her to start. In the actual moment of beginning however, I underestimated the emotional effect that this beginning would have on me as I too learn the instrument from scratch. I am a trained brass player, in the habit of grabbing a trombone and beginning to blow. The first lesson, introducing how to properly hold the violin so that it resembles a balanced extension of my shoulder, rather than a fragile piece of wood gripped tightly by my jaw and neck, brought the enormity of the process home to me.