Technology and the Composer

Abstract

Invention, in music, is often subject to prohibitions and taboos which it would be dangerous to transgress. Invention must remain the private, exclusive property of genius, or at least of talent. Indeed it is hard to find any purely rational explanation for it; by summoning up unpredictable results out of nothing it escapes analysis. But is this nothing really the total void appropriate to miracle-workers? And does the unpredictable come to exist in a totally unpredicted context? Invention cannot exist in the abstract, it originates in contact with music of the past, be it only the recent past; it exists through reflection on its direct or indirect antecedents. Such reflection concentrates naturally on the spiritual approach, the mental mechanisms and the intellectual development displayed by the work it takes as its models, but it concentrates also on the sound material itself, without whose support music cannot exist; musical material has evolved over the centuries, providing for each age a typical sound profile that is continually renewed — slowly perhaps, but inevitably. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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