Understanding music?

[Cato]

Have you guys done much creative writing?  Because I have, and I can verify that sometimes a character we create does things that surprise his/her creator.  That's because much of the creative process happens "under the radar" of our conscious minds.

Quite right!

And the same is true therefore of the composer: the themes, motifs, etc. which intrigue him at the beginning may intertwine and develop along the possibilities of their own musical DNA, ignoring perhaps what the composer had initially intended.

JoshLilly: What if your dog wants to trot over and visit us?  Would you stifle your dog's free will?!   0:)

[longears]

I hate when characters just want to sit on the sofa and smoke cigarettes.

And yet that describes one of my favorite short stories by Salinger!

I'm trying to figure out how imaginary people can have a free will.

The writer creates a character who is a certain sort of person with a set of values and skills and character traits, etc., and puts her into conflict...then sits back and sees what happens.  A literary character has exactly the same "freedom of will" as most people, whose choices are rarely free but mostly determined by circumstances of class, character, experience, conforming to expectations, etc.  Perhaps our only real freedom is in striving for enlightenment to choose our own values and principles which henceforth determine our choices...?

I like these analogies of literature and music.  Riffs in fiction and poetry--heck, even essay--are very similar to jazz improvisation, letting imagination roam within certain constraints and seeing where it takes you.  And I imagine that's very similar to the process of musical composition, say, in developing a theme or discovering various ways you can fit together a jigsaw of motifs.

[Fëanor]

No. I have zero, none, nil formal music education, I don't play any instrument and I can't read a score. The only thing I do is listening to music. And enjoying it.

Ah, Florestan,

On this, at least, we certainly agree and have it all in common.

[Florestan]

Ah, Florestan,

On this, at least, we certainly agree and have it all in common.

Not only this: I love Schubert too, brother!   

[Ten thumbs]

As a creative writer myself, I have found it it not so much a sense of free will in my characters that drives a storyline away from that originally intended but a kind of inner logic in the situation that I had not originally seen. I confess to always keeping myself open to these insights. In the same way thematic material contains germs that may force themselves on the composers attention leading to new avenues of development or restatement. Structural integrity is in my view the grounding of great music so any freedom needs to be more apparant than real.

[jochanaan]

The nonexistent "character" didn't do anything, surprising or otherwise. There is no physical body with which to do things. It means you did (or wrote) something to surprise yourself. Which is kinda creepy. Stay away from my dog.

But we creative types spend much time in the kingdom of Imagination, which is nearly as real to us as the "real" world.  We know the difference; we just refuse to judge the kingdom as less "real" because it only exists in our minds and our readers'.

Your dog is in no danger from me.  In the Kingdom of Imagination someone might do many things to him/her; in the real world, very few of us creative types eat dog.

Perhaps the kind of deep musical understanding we seem to be avoiding discussing requires a willingness to enter into a composer's Kingdom of Imagination.

[karlhenning]

Your dog is in no danger from me.  In the Kingdom of Imagination someone might do many things to him/her; in the real world, very few of us creative types eat dog.

Though some here have been known to put dog on