Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy

Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy
Chapter 6: Composition

• Imagery describes what perception cannot
  
• The brain always works through abstract hierarchies, connecting ideas with a web of relations rather than storing a single data bank for a specific subject
  
• Composers' brains group notes, chords, and progressions with such relations
  
• [My own deduction] "Categorization circuitry" is essentially what is needed to build a computer capable of composition
  
• A soloist draws upon a vocabulary of sounds a phrases that comprise a musical language
  
• In terms of improvisation, a brain can't generate complex, far-reaching structures enough to improvise a piece of significant depth [but perhaps a computer can?]
  
• Mozart mapped out the structure of his compositions before filling in the details (this is great news, because it's how my program is designed! So at least I know this method is workable!)
• Scores can limit the capacity of composers (this again is good news: my program is not bounded by traditional scoring)
• Intelligence comes from neural networks
  
• "It is memory that is the composer's workshop"
  
• "The phenomenon of musical ideas arriving full-blown in the composer's mind is called inspiration"
• "[The soloist] works from a vocabulary of sounds, and a kind of grammar for juxtaposing them, that has become his musical language"
• "Musicians work through a hierarchy of ready-made movements. Thousands of patterns of scales and arpeggios and chord progressions are deeply channeled in their nervous system"
• "[Mozart] began by mapping a composition's structure. Only later did he go back to fill in supporting voices and embellishments that could be written in any number of ways without changing the basic character of the piece"
• "Music notation tends to discourage complex melodies and rhythms"
• "By promoting abstracted, hierarchical thinking, the score can seduce composers into a theoretical, unmusical approach to composition"
• "In the end, intellectual power of any kind arises from the laborious creation of networks of neurons"
  

These constitute the notes I took on my reading today.