Instinct and Intellect

The activity of composing music is always a battle between instinct and intellect with each as a check on the other. I don't know about other composers, but one lurking concern with me is always whether I have not, inadvertently, managed to compose something that is very like another piece of music. If I have unconsciously plagiarized someone I hope that it is Prokofiev and not Prince, Salonen and not Scriabin. Paul McCartney went around for months, sure that "Yesterday" was a melody he had heard somewhere as his instinct had produced something so well-crafted it was hard to believe it was not already composed by someone.

It is one of the functions of the musical intellect to examine what you are composing for traces of another's work. But you have to start with instinct because that is what can explore the unknown. For many composers they access instinct through improvisation, but that usually doesn't work for me. In my case, ideas sometimes just wander through my mind and inspire me to follow them up, on an instrument, in a pencil sketch, or with music software.

The intellect also is of considerable assistance in working out the form and structure of the piece, though my sense is that I need to access a lot more instinct in that area as well. So, instinct and intellect, both essential to the compositional process.

One thing I have been enjoying lately is allowing my instincts free rein in the area of sketching. I got some colored pencils recently to add to the graphite ones I have been using and, almost without thinking about it, the first thing I did was to create a small abstract sketch, followed by several more. These are pure instinct and quite fun. Here, I will, risking great personal embarrassment, put up a couple.

Now, of course, there is virtually no technique or craft involved, I am just fooling around with pens and pencils, but that is the whole point. It is nearly 100% instinct. An idea, with a contrasting idea. But I rather like them and I like creating them. Now I know why Schoenberg spent a significant amount of time learning to paint. It develops different creative channels.

I have been a musician for over fifty years, so I have so many layers of listening and playing and so many years of studying music from every conceivable angle that it is pure pleasure to do something, notionally creative, that is completely unconnected to music. And that hopefully will feed back into my musical creativity.