Creation Process

Musical Act of Creation as a Process

Composing music can be seen as a complex of emotions being transformed into musical form. The ability of the composer to be in touch with his unconscious emotional complexes is essential to the process because emotions are the unifying element that joins us all, composers and listeners.

The artist, in general, sharing the same reality as the rest of the people, brings back from the depths of the collective unconscious the complex of emotions generated by that shared reality. He, then transforms it into language of the specific art that all of us can access in our consciousness. The resulting piece constitutes our path to the emotions originally experienced by all.

A number of overlapping stages are included in the continuous process of musical creation:

Within the composer's unconscious a complex of emotions builds up and seeks an outlet for expression, for communication to others in musical form.

The composer's ability to generate musical forms from his stored up knowledge and identify an overall pattern the forms will take, operates unconsciously. This has been called "the creative imagination providing a conception."

A small scale musical form becomes the result of the still unconscious transformation of the current of the basic emotion by the composer's ability to identify and generate forms. This has been called "the creative imagination providing inspiration."

Larger forms emerge from the composer's ability to consciously spin the "inspiration" and are repeatedly checked by the unconscious faculty for their success in fulfilling the requirements of the original conception. This has been called "the technique building up the overall form under the control of the creative imagination."

The other emotions of the complex are transformed into other small-scale musical forms, spun into larger forms while the basic emotion is developed. The inspiration that the technique works on is continually provided by the creative imagination.

On a large as well as a small scale, musical form is simply an expression of emotion while technique, on any scale, is simply the means of achieving this expression.

A growing collection of musical examples has been provided to illustrate the views above and are accessed from multiple entry points: The Musical Dictionary of Emotions, The PianoPics Alphabet, and The Musical Phrase Interpreter.