Musical Generation

Music suffers in discussion more than most arts. The difficulties of grasping the workings of an art whose materials of sound are intangible, elusive, and ephemeral are increased by the usual practice of employing physical and other alien metaphors to convey the activities of musical creation and appreciation. It is common to hear even musicians speak of constructing a composition, as if music were an object to be structured by joining together tones, chords, or melodic elements and arranging them in acceptable order by conformity to established metrical and formal patterns. The very word for the creation of music, compose, incorporates the same mythical assumption of the musical work as a thing, a piece that is put together out of pre-existing materials. The creative process, difficult to understand in any art, is even more recondite in the musical one