Abstract
This practice-led paper will examine two aspects of the creative process in composition. Firstly, the problem-solving aspect [Craft 2000] in which creativity is a process of forming rather than a search for novelty. The paper will explain some of the key decisions made during the composition of Morning Music (heard in the Saturday evening concert) as the composer negotiated the choices available within the pre-compositional material of the piece. Morning Music marks a nascent attempt by the composer to interrogate assumptions that underpin mainstream Western art music practice, prevalent amongst which is a well known hierarchical model of musical creativity that splits composer and performer roles into, essentially, creative and re-creative [Goehr 1992, Wishart 2002]. Through adjustments to notational practice Morning Music begins to try to redress this split by raising the performer’s consciousness of their interpretative decisions, ‘waking them up’ as Cardew would put it. [Cardew 1961] The second aspect of creativity to be discussed, therefore, is a collective rather than an individual one [Burnard 2012, Hargreaves et al. 2012]. The discussion is widened to include examples of my work from 2009 to the present day illustrating ways in which my notational practice has changed to harness the performer’s interpretative agency and to try to foster a more equal and collaborative composer/performer relationship through the medium of the score. Notation will be considered here, not as a passive ‘recording’ medium, but as an important engine of the creative process for composers and performers.