The First Performance of Music
The Naturalness of Creative Hearing
The Cognizant Composer
Beyond the Experiment
The Bridge from the Musical Creator to the Interpreter
Creative Music Listening
Before
the competent composer writes down the score he hears his musical work in
all its diversity within himself. Only then he defines the instrumentation
to reproduce outside the music he has heard within.
The composer experiences the music, which he hears inside, as something completely
separate from the score. The development of a score, the draft for the external
realization, then is a mental act of will of the musical creator in
contrast to his original inner hearing.
A composition originates without any particular effort of the composer's will. It grows within his mind as a natural expression of his enlivened fantasy.
The
music, which the composer hears within, is the original language of his own
feeling and thinking; and, accordingly, the music of his inner sphere unfolds
only within his own world of feeling and thinking.
In this respect the composer is the first listener of his music before he
writes it down or performs it; and, while writing it down, he no longer experiences
himself to be creating, but rather "hearing" and "cognizing."
The field of composing is by no means a field of outer instrumental experimentation; in its essence, it is the experience of a clear and distinct inner hearing. And only when the inwardly-listening musical creator intends to communicate to others what he has heard within, the art of composing requires the solid knowledge of a practical technology to perform his music.
Only now the musical creator requires a clear knowledge of notation to write down the score with complete confidence, in order to create a bridge on which his inner original musical impression can, in its purest possible form, find its way to the interpreter. Quotation