Looking for inspiration

This lecture is an exploration of the processes behind the creative act of composing. Up to the 1960s much musical analysis was concerned with ‘what’. What happens at a particular point in a musical work and how it fits into the whole. In that kind of model exceptions to the ‘rules’ are noteworthy but they stay as exceptions. That’s the kind of musical training that I experienced – where rules exist and musical content largely works within those rules, and music stopped at the Second World War. The rules were derived by theorists who had spent many years studying the ‘masterpieces’ and certain incontrovertible truths were established, and one learnt the ‘norm’. On the other hand, since the 1960s increasing attention has been given to understanding the effect of the musical idea, the ‘intention’ of the composer, the ‘social context’ against which the work was written, and the significance of the ‘compositional gesture’