Music and Inspiration

by Harvey, Jonathan; Downes, Michael; Downes, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780571200252
• ISBN10: 0571200257
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Faber & Faber

Summary

Inspiration - the factor common to all composers throughout musical history, in whatever period or place they have worked, whatever style they have embraced; yet never before has it been the subject of study. Here, one of Britain's foremost composers, Jonathan Harvey, draws widely on the writings of many composers in an effort to understand and define what inspiration really is. His choice of material is wide-ranging, aiming to chart what it is that composers from different backgrounds have in common and how the concept of inspiration persists within otherwise very different musical cultures.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
The Composer and the Unconscious	p. 1
The Need for Inspiration
Preparation for Inspiration
The Experience of Inspiration
The Composer and Experience	p. 37
The Everyday World
Artistic Experience
Autobiography
Inspiration, Technique and the Compositional Process
The Composer and the Audience	p. 79
Pleasing the Crowd
Defining the Audience
Composing for a Single Person
Composing for a Nation
Composing for the World
The Composer and the Ideal	p. 125
Order
Unity
Aspiring towards the Ideal
Paradise in Music
Postscript	p. 161
Notes	p. 167
Bibliography	p. 179
Index	p. 183
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter One

The element of mystery -- a sense that something miraculous, beyond rational explanation, is taking place -- is a crucial component of the experience of inspiration for most composers. Some have found the whole experience so enigmatic that they are not even sure whether they are able to describe it adequately. Varése, for example, wrote that `the composer knows as little as anyone else about where the substance of his work comes from', while Delius wrote that `I, myself, am entirely at a loss to explain how I compose -- I know only that at first I conceive a work suddenly, thro' a feeling.' Fortunately for our purposes, other composers have been less bashful in their attempts to account for the experience of inspiration: they have described it in numerous different ways, but the quality of mystery is a common factor in nearly every account.

    The need for this element can be expressed in psychological terms, by suggesting that inspiration requires the involvement of the unconscious mind: it cannot take place at a purely conscious level. In one sense, of course, it is anachronistic to refer to the `unconscious minds' of many of the composers whom we shall discuss, since it would not have been a term familiar to those working before the mid-nineteenth century: a composer writing before this time tends to refer to his `spirit' or `soul', rather than to his `unconscious'. This difference of terminology is not important, however, since the continuity between the understanding of inspiration displayed by earlier and later writers is clearly apparent. The twentieth-century notion of `the unconscious' may be used to describe the hidden, mysterious, irrational activity of the mind without undue distortion of the ideas of earlier composers.

    The involvement of the unconscious is a necessary component of inspiration, then: in Wagner's words, `The poet is the knower of the unconscious.' This does not mean, however, that only unconscious activity can be described as inspiration: this would be an excessively narrow definition. Inspiration is often the result of a collaboration between unconscious and conscious mind, or between the internal workings of the composer's mind and outside influences upon him. Later chapters in this book will consider occasions on which the outside world has acted upon the composer's unconscious: here, though, we are concerned with unconscious inspiration in its purest form. Because of its very inaccessibility -- because the external world is almost entirely absent from the process -- unconscious inspiration is the most unknown, the least understood part of the composer's activity. As Honegger wrote, `It is a manifestation of our unconscious which remains inexplicable to us ... an impulse for which we are not, so to speak, responsible.'

    The experience of inspiration is profound, other-worldly, sometimes unsettling, as numerous composers have testified. Many have felt that they have two sharply contrasting lives: the mundane, everyday life, and the mysterious, spiritual life of inspiration. A series of letters written by Tchaikovsky in June 1878 expresses this feeling well:

She [the Muse] leaves me only when she feels out of place because my workaday human living has intruded. Always, however, the shadow removes itself and she reappears ... In a word, an artist lives a double life: an everyday human life and an artistic life ... Sometimes I look curiously at this productive flow of creativeness which entirely by itself, separate from any conversation I may at the moment be participating in, separate from the people with me at the time, goes on in the region of my brain that is given over to music.

The `life' of inspiration may proceed in an entirely different direction from the everyday life. As Tchaikovsky testifies, the mood brought on by unconscious inspiration may be wholly different to the mood that external circumstances would seem to dictate: `Without any special reason for rejoicing, I may be moved by the most cheerful creative mood, and vice versa, a work composed in the happiest surroundings may be touched with dark and gloomy colours.' The composer's existence is perceived as more sharply divided than that of the average human being. This is because his hidden, unconscious aspect is an essential component of his work, and therefore intrudes into the conscious life to a greater degree than is the case for most people.

    Musical inspiration activates and brings to light areas of the psyche that are normally deeply obscure, and it is frequently an overwhelming, ecstatic experience. It is so intense that many composers have found it hard to comprehend it as coming from `within' themselves. Rather, they have described it as an experience that takes them over, of which they are almost passive observers: in Tippett's words, `It is outside our control ... it lives us rather than we live it.' Stravinsky's remark that `I am the vessel through which Le Sacre passed' -- suggesting a view of unconscious inspiration as almost a force of nature, overwhelming the innocent composer -- is one of the most famous descriptions of this experience, but it is certainly not the only one. Mahler wrote of his Third Symphony:

Try to conceive a work so vast, that in it the entire world is mirrored -- one is, so to speak, only an instrument on which the whole universe plays ... In such moments I no longer belong to myself.

Sibelius describes a similar experience:

When the final shape of our work depends on forces more powerful than ourselves, we can later give reasons for this passage or that, but taking it as a whole one is merely an instrument. The power driving us is that marvellous logic which governs a work of art. Let us call it God.

    The urge to compose is often experienced as instinctive, physical, unstoppable: the mere human being is left powerless in its wake. Because of its urgency and compulsive quality, it has frequently been compared to the more familiar instincts of the body: eating, breathing, even childbirth. Rakhmaninov, for example, wrote:

Composing is as essential a part of my being as breathing or eating; it is one of the necessary functions of living. My constant desire to compose music is actually the urge within me to give tonal expression to my feelings, just as I speak to give utterance to my thoughts. That, I believe, is the function that music should serve in the life of every composer; any other function it may fill is purely incidental.

Roger Sessions links the impulse to create music to the earliest instincts of breathing, a comparison that recalls the original etymology of `inspiration':

If we consider musical sound from the standpoint of the impulse to produce it, we find that in a very real sense and to a very real degree this impulse, too, is rooted in our earliest, most constantly present and most instant experiences ... much of our melodic feeling derives from ... a vocal impulse which first of all is connected with the vital act of breathing and is subject to its nuances.

Elisabeth Lutyens provides an interesting female perspective on this matter. These comments are taken from a letter to her mother, who had urged her to `let the composer rest' so that she could concentrate on the needs of her family:

If artists could let their art rest and didn't suffer from the divine discontent which demands expression like labour demands a confinement, there would never have been any art at all ... It is an urge as strong as the urge to love, labour and have children, which has and will always surmount all vicissitudes.

    As these last comments show, inspiration is a very personal, individual, even intimate experience, and the way in which it is described varies according to the character of the composer who experiences it. Despite these differences of inflexion and emphasis, however, there is a considerable unanimity between the descriptions cited: inspiration is not only a subjective experience, it is also an experience that composers have in common. Whatever the other differences between them, composers are united by this fundamental aspect of their creative life: without it, most have felt, they can create nothing of any real worth.

The Need for Inspiration

Most composers have admitted that they require the aid of unconscious inspiration in order to complete a work to their own satisfaction. While some have been reasonably sure that they would receive inspiration on a given occasion, for others it was such an unpredictable visitor that they felt themselves unable to accept commissions in case the unconscious refused to come to their assistance within the required period. Smetana took this view, for example, while Berlioz, though forced like many to accept commissions for financial reasons, disliked doing so because he could not predict the arrival of the inspiration on which he relied.

    The need for inspiration has been expressed by composers of very different periods, styles and artistic temperaments: it seems to be an absolute requirement for composition, not restricted to those composers we would immediately expect to rely on instinct. Schoenberg, for example, is sometimes caricatured as a cool-headed, cerebral composer -- yet he wrote, considering both the simple and complex in music:

Only one thing is certain ... without inspiration neither could be accomplished. There are times when I am unable to write a single example of simple counterpoint in two voices, such as I ask sophomores to do in my classes. And, in order to write a good example of this sort, I must receive the co-operation of inspiration.

Wagner -- whose enormous musical output suggests that he was nothing if not industrious -- wrote in a similar vein that `I must have time and leisure to wait for inspiration, which I can expect only from some remote region of my nature.' Elsewhere, he wrote in relation to Tristan and Isolde that `People say, "Go to work, then all will be right." Very well, in its way, but I, poor devil, lack routine, and if ideas do not come to me of themselves, I cannot make them.' Dvorák took a similar point of view, disdaining the idea that music could be produced to order: `You imagine composing as altogether too easy a matter; it is only possible to start when we feel enthusiasm.'

    Some composers have seemed able to compose fluently in almost all circumstances, but even these admitted that they were bedevilled at times by failing inspiration. This was often due to the nature of the particular piece on which they were working. Mozart, for example, blamed the instrument for which he had been commissioned to write -- the `high-pitched ... and childish' mechanical organ -- for the lack of unconscious aid he felt when writing his obstinate but magnificent Adagio and Allegro :

It is a kind of composition which I detest, I have unfortunately not been able to finish it. And indeed I'd give the whole thing up, if I had not such an important reason to go on with it. But I still hope I shall be able to force myself gradually to finish it. If it were for a large instrument and the work would sound like an organ piece, then I might get some fun out of it.

Richard Strauss is often, if misleadingly, seen as a twentieth-century version of the Kapellmeister , able to spin out music almost by craft alone. However he, too, was capable of finding composition irksome if the nature of the piece was not to his taste: he wrote in relation to the Alpine Symphony , composed while waiting for the next libretto, that `I am toiling away at a symphony, which I find rather less amusing than shaking down cockchafers.'

    For some composers, the wait for unconscious inspiration has proved frustratingly unpredictable. Mahler, for example, confessed that:

In art, as in life, I am at the mercy of spontaneity. If I had to compose, not a note would come ... One summer ... I made up my mind to finish the Seventh, both Andantes of which were on the table. I plagued myself for two weeks until I sank back into gloom as you well remember; then I tore off to the Dolomites. There I was led the same dance, and at last gave it up and returned home, convinced the whole summer was lost ... I got into the boat (at Knumpendorf) to be rowed across. At the first stroke of the oars the theme (or rather the rhythm and character) of the introduction to the first movement came into my head -- and in four weeks the first, third and fifth movements were done.

In this case, Mahler was in the unusual position of having written the `interludes' to his symphony -- the `Nachtmusik' second and fourth movements -- but not the main substance they were intended to prop up. The way in which the principal material emerged and the speed with which it was eventually completed suggest that it was in some sense already fully formed in the unconscious: the epiphanic moment on the lake was one of revelation rather than invention.

    Mahler's gloom in the weeks preceding the revelation suggests a typical experience of compositional sterility: the belief that one has been permanently abandoned by unconscious inspiration. Many composers have reported similar experiences. Haydn was subject to depressions during which he was `quite incapable of finding even a single idea for many days thereafter'; Brahms `could fall sick with longing for a new fresh strain'; while Smetana wrote of the world of imagination as `veiled as though by a mist of depression and pain'. Weber wrote of his experiences of sterility:

Shall I ever again find a single thought within me? Now there is nothing -- nothing. I feel as if I had never composed a note in my life, and that the operas could never have been really mine.

Even Mozart could write that `If people could see into my heart I should almost feel ashamed. To me everything is cold -- cold as ice.' This was written in 1790: a year of uniquely slender production for Mozart, bearing only six works, one of which was the piece for mechanical organ referred to above. For many composers, the sensation of sterility becomes increasingly prevalent as they reach old age. The aged Rameau declared that `every day I acquire taste, but I have no more genius', while Rossini admitted to a `state of ever-increasing mental impotence ... music needs freshness of ideas; I have only listlessness and rabies'. Elgar, too, confessed that after his wife's death, `The old artistic "striving" world exists for me no more.'

    The feelings caused by the conviction that sterility has descended are profound: they may be compared to the belief reported by some religious mystics that they have been abandoned by God and hence deprived of all spiritual refreshment. St Teresa of Avila wrote of one such experience:

Her reason is reduced to such a state that she is no longer mistress of herself and can think of nothing but her affliction. Far from her Sovereign Good, why should she desire to live? She feels an extraordinary loneliness ... all company is torture to her. She is like a person suspended in mid-air, who can neither touch the earth nor mount to heaven. She burns with a consuming thirst and cannot reach the water.

If the composer's idea of inspiration can be related to a religious model, then so too can the opposite: the feeling of sterility and abandonment is experienced by the composer as painfully as by the mystic.

    These sensations, however unpleasant, are not without purpose, though: for St Teresa, as for many composers, they needed to be experienced and conquered if the true intensity and elation of the union with God/inspiration was to be realized: the periods of greatest sterility have often immediately preceded those of the profoundest inspiration. Composers, too, have suggested that the feeling of illness brought about by sterility is a necessary component of true creativity. Puccini argued that `sickness' was essential to the creative process -- he wrote, prophetically as it turned out:

I am afraid that Turandot will never be finished ... When fever abates, it ends by disappearing, and without fever there is no creation; because emotional art is a kind of malady, an exceptional state of mind, over-excitation of every fibre and every atom of one's being, and so on, ad aeternum .

Honegger argues that inspiration, as well as sterility, is necessarily a temporary experience:

Do you really believe that one who creates with the spirit, who is the individualist type, keeps for any length of time the possibility of surviving, of giving himself to his art, of writing music?

    Unconscious inspiration is clearly held up by many composers as a sort of totem: without it there is no `true' music. When inspiration does arrive, it is treated with reverence and trust, even worship. Countless composers have displayed a belief in the infallibility of the assistance offered by the unconscious. For many, music that was the result of inspiration was inevitably `right', regardless of whether the composer himself understood the reason for its correctness. Tchaikovsky, for example, wrote that when he experienced the `somnambulistic condition' of inspiration:

Everything that flows from one's pen is ... invariably good, and if no external obstacle comes to hinder the creative glow, the result will be an artist's best and most perfect work.

An absolute trust in the rightness of this inspiration was necessary, as Wagner argued:

Imperious Necessity ... drives the artist to that fanatical stubbornness wherewith he cries at last: So it is, and not otherwise!

Such attitudes are not restricted to the Romantic period, where we might most naturally expect to find them. Schoenberg wrote that `One must be convinced of the infallibility of one's own fantasy and one must believe in one's own inspiration.' Webern expressed a similar point of view -- `Trust your inspiration! There is no alternative' -- while Stockhausen wrote that `The essential is what inspiration tells you.'

    This absolute conviction in the rightness of unconscious inspiration has been described by many composers as `instinct': this, rather than the lesser virtues of craftsmanship or intellect, is the essential mark of the creative artist. `Instinct is infallible. If it leads us astray, it is no longer instinct,' argues Stravinsky; while Debussy, similarly, claims that `Neither long experience nor the most beautiful talent ... instinct only -- as old as the world ... can save you.' Ravel, too, argues that the importance of craftsmanship and `will' (or intellectual control) in the creative process has been overvalued, at the expense of instinct:

The principle of genius, that is to say, of artistic invention, can only be established by instinct or sensitivity. [There is] a fatal, and relatively modern error, an error that leads people to think that the artistic instinct is directed by the will ... In art, craftsmanship in the absolute sense of the word cannot exist. In the harmonious proportions of a work, in the elegance of its unfolding, inspiration plays an almost unlimited role. The will to develop can only be sterile.

    There is a striking consensus among composers that unconscious inspiration -- or instinct -- is both a necessary part of the creative process and an infallible guide when compositional decisions have to be made. It is exciting, intoxicating, lucid, as seductive and sometimes as fatal as a siren, wayward, elusive, yet essential and infallible to the point of divinity. Unconscious inspiration is the shared experience on which composers rely: how, then, do they seek to ensure its arrival?

(Continues...)

Copyright © 1999 Jonathan Harvey. All rights reserved.