As a graduate student in composition at New England Conservatory, I learned that when structure was clearly and strongly established in a composition from one perspective, coherent and intriguing musical relationships would be found in many additional and unforeseen ways. It is the richness of these corollary structures that lead a work into the realm of true art.
To ask a composer to explain a composition may stimulate an interesting commentary on his/her thought process and intentions. However, once a composition is complete, the composer is just another analyst. A work of art belongs to the world, and can sustain vast interpretations.
To understand and master performance skills, to write or produce music of depth and importance, or to become an entrepreneur in the business of culture – there are many paths that provide structure to the course of music study. Likewise, there are many paths an individual may choose to contribute to the global art of music while sustaining a career in the arts.
A well structured education will create a vastly broader ability to comprehend ideas and opportunities beyond the specific focus of study. Inspiration comes more easily to those well prepared to receive it.
Few schools provide the education one needs to comprehend and enter today’s music industry. McNally Smith is focused on exactly this, while providing solid fundamentals that are essential and timeless in music education and in the liberal arts.
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Thanks for this, Harry:
"...Once a composition is complete, the composer is just another analyst. A work of art belongs to the world, and can sustain vast interpretations."
For my purposes, I substitute the word “composition” for “painting” and "composer" for "artist", but the meaning remains. Sometimes I like to imagine art has less to do with re-presenting the artist's whole cognitive intent and more to do with the (dare I say) “miracle” of creation.
As an artist, I notice my “cognitive intent” is often not very “whole” anyway. I don’t pretend to have everything figured out ahead of time. Though I sketch and write and contemplate, I do not consider every angle prior to the creation. If this were my goal, I would never create anything more than scribbles and annotations. It is the very act of putting my hands to work that yields results far beyond me. The place of being “in” the work or “in” the art is for me the most exhilarating, unexpected, and altogether satisfying place to be.
Sometimes my ego wants me to pretend that every interpretation offered about my work was part of my original intent, foresight, and genius. Sometimes what was not in my mind explicitly as I worked was alive in trace amounts, and sometimes the subconscious emerges without my permission. Proudly, these happenings can be credited to my individual artistic sensibility.
Sometimes, however, the work itself presents inherent qualities I could not have expected in a thousand pages of preparation. This is when I know the work has taken its first breath. This is how I know it is going to live — this is the miracle of creation.
What I have to remember is that I can take credit and embrace vast interpretations for a different reason: because I dared to create. This is my offering. My offering is for you — for you with eyes to see. Now I stand aside and let it live. Now I become just another analyst.
-Adam
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