Micro Music Laboratories – Quality Standard, Scientific Fundamentals of Music Aesthetics - Reversal of the Reality of Creating Music

Analysis of
Conventional Composing

The Sounding
Results of the
Conventional Technique of
Composing

The Creative
Accomplishment in
the Inaudible Field
of Music

The Nature-Given
Reality of Creating
Music

The First, Creative
Musical Spark

The Wholeness of
the Musical-
Creative Idea in Its
Unfoldment

The View-Point
of Conventional
Music Analysis

The Basis of
the Conventional
Technique
of Composing

Lack of Inner
Hearing as the
Starting Point
for Composing

The Abstract
Diversity in the
Unity of Music

The Conventional, Unalive Technology
of Composing

Reversal of the Reality of Creating Music

In the conventional technique of composing, the motif or the melody always seemed to be the first thing the composer noticed while listening inside, and it was assumed that he formed the sequence around the motif or the melody, and then determined the harmony.

In this view of limited musical education however, the inner reality of natural composing was turned upside down. The result of such deficient insight into the true process of creating music was homophony, in which the motif seems indeed to be allowed some life of its own, in which, however, such an independent life does not really exist.

Thus, an inner abstract musical reality, which is the natural basis of what is heard inside, was not at all taken into account in the conventional technique of composing.

The effect was presented as the cause; and upon this pseudo-cause a corresponding pseudo-effect was build with the understandable aim of presenting in a certain coherent order, as a pseudo-whole, the parts which had been heard inside, of the whole which usually had not been heard inside.

Hence, a series of tones which had been heard inside was combined with the artificial system of an added-on technique of composition, but the very underlying order had not been recognized.

The nature-given reality of creating music is exactly the reverse: the first to exist in unity, and to expand in manifold ways, is the harmony and, within it, the logic of the composition. The last to be brought to life in the mind of the composer is the tone. It is the end of his process of creating music and represents the physiology of the composition. Thus the tone is the finished product, something external, final – and from here there is no musical further.

In the mechanics of the thinking process of a composer, the inner abstract knowledge of harmony is the first thing to exist. From the harmony emerges, as the first creative spark, the comprehensive vibration of the harmony-technique: the inner breath of the composition.

From this comprehensive vibration of the harmony-technique, the more limited, large waves of the sequences expand and move as smaller waves, as melodies and motifs, towards the shore of the musical sound-space.

Only in this last phase of musical unfoldment, in this outermost range of music, the element of musical sound arises, the composition which can be heard within.

That, which naturally seems significant to the inaccurate listener and observer, are only the smallest, limited waves and a certain arrangement of small waves, i.e. the motif and the melody.
The larger waves, on which in turn the smaller waves travel, are beyond the scope of the limited observer.
Therefore, the sequence as such is not recognized, let aside the harmony-technique on which it is based, or even the harmony which is fundamental to them all.

The conventional lessons on composition developed from the ignorance of the true, inner, natural process of composing. It resembles the attempt to create fire from smoke, smoke being but the outermost, most passive expression of fire.

Just as, from smoke, the presence of fire was deduced, even if one could not see the fire, likewise, from the inner hearing of series of tones the existence of a real composition was deduced. Consequently, one combined tonal patterns, constructed a formal, logical sound pattern from a collection of musical elements and thought oneself to be able to “compose.”

Here, the historical development of our analytical thinking comes to light. But this way of approaching the living reality from outside – corresponding to the method of modern science – does not touch the inner reality of the true creation of music at all.
As the expression “creation of music” indicates, one creates something diverse from an originally existing entity. This process of creation can be compared to a tree growing towards multiplicity, as an expression of that single seed which contains this whole multiplicity already in a latent, abstract form.

“To compose” literally means “putting together,” and corresponds to the assembly of an artificial tree by joining together the roots, trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves, and presenting them as the “tree.” Such an artificial tree does not breathe life; it will not blossom, and the study of such composition is a waste of time.

<< >>

Reference work: Peter Huebner – Natural Music Creation – Music Theory
© A A R E D I T I O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L 1982