Creativity and Musical Values
Composers and performers make countless decisions each day while creating their work. These choices are rooted, consciously or subconsciously, in aesthetics and priorities they have encountered throughout their lives. Such values can often be expressed in dualities: beautiful or sublime, poetry or prose, “authentic” or experimental, individual or universal, popular or underground, facile or meticulously-wrought, free or predetermined, Classicism or Romanticism, economy or virtuosity, art or entertainment—to name a few. Through reading, writing, listening, viewing, discussing, analyzing, and reflecting, we will examine how musical values have played out in a wide range of eras and styles, both classical and popular, and how they persist in our time. We will also design our own creative musical projects exploring these ideas.