Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T04:08:07.645Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Compositional Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Edison Denisov
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In analyzing any composition, we retrace certain moments in the creative process. It is wholly unimportant whether the work arose through the conscious application of some compositional principle, or purely intuitively (in which case we presume that the author himself ‘didn't notice’ it). If we can observe an underlying principle, it has an objective reality, and we are therefore fully justified in investigating it and regarding it as part of the compositional process. The deeper we penetrate the musical fabric of a work, the more subtle and profound are the principles we uncover. By its nature, genuine analysis seems almost a reconstruction of the original process of composition. It is true that we are often unable to establish the order in which various principles arose in the composer's mind; but this, in the long run, is not really essential.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 105 , June 1973 , pp. 2 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1. ‘Debussy and The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (Interview with A. Malherbe)’, in Claude Debussy (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1964), p.192.Google Scholar
2. Stravinsky, Igor, Dialogues. (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1971). [Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), p.15].Google Scholar
3. de Schloezer, Boris, Problems of Beethoven's Style (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1932), pp. 314–15.Google Scholar
4. de Schloezer, Boris, op.cit., p.302.Google Scholar
5. (Moscow: Sovietskoye Radio, 1970). [Presumably a translation of Jacques Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1945)].Google Scholar
6. Sergei Prokofiev, Autobiography—Materials, Documents and Recollections, (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1956), p. 41.Google Scholar
7. Webern, Anton, The Path to the New Music. [Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Co., 1963, ed. Willi Reich, p. 15. (Translation by Leo Black)].Google Scholar
8. Boris de Schloezer, op.cit., p.207.Google Scholar
9. Schoenberg, Arnold, Harmonielehre. [Vienna: Universal Edition, 1966, ed. Josef Rufer, p. 502].Google Scholar
10. Stravinsky, Igor, Dialogues, p. 228. [Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), P.20].Google Scholar
11. Dialogues, pp. 221–222 [Expositions and Developments (London: Faber & Faber, 1962), pp.99–100].Google Scholar