Listen to the Music

Listen to the Music

   The Atlantic Monthly recently featured a piece on creativity and whether two people working together were more creative than just one person.  One example given were John Lennon and Paul McCartney and their competitiveness with each other.  When John wrote about his childhood playground (Strawberry Fields), Paul countered within a few weeks with his playground (Penny Lane).  What was even more striking, however, was John's admission in an interview that neither he nor Paul could read or write music, at least not notation wise.  

   There have always been those who could perform songs but couldn't read or write the music (Elvis and the Temptations come to mind),  those who could perform, read and write their own music but couldn't write hit songs (as examples, Barry Manilow and Hall & Oates, this despite Darryl Hall having graduated from Julliard), those who could write hit songs for others but didn't perform ( Burt Bacharach or better yet, the Funk Brothers who wrote for Motown and had more number one hit songs than the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and Elvis combined!), and those who were simply created as a fake band such as the Monkees (they did try their own music later on but once they refused to sing Neil Diamond's Sugar, Sugar, their contract was ended and they disappeared in obscurity; a new fake band, the Archies, took Sugar, Sugar to number one).  Some artists were great composers but couldn't write lyrics (Richard Rodgers joined with lyricists Hart and later Hammerstein, as did Elton John only gaining early fame when he joined with Bernie Taupin).

   Of course, these are artists from a bygone era and don't take into account many of today's fields such as hip hop or top artists from other countries such as India or Brazil.  And many of today's artists are indeed moving off on their own and doing it all...Pink, Beyonce, Taylor Swift (funny enough, Christy McVie, at 71, announced that she will rejoin Fleetwood Mac for a grand tour...she wrote more than half the material for the band's top-selling album of its time, Rumours).  In Greece and eastern Europe, young conductors Konstantinos Diminakis and Liana Isakadze are more than rising having already caught the world's attention for their virtuosity.  

   But as a general rule, many musical artists find their composing abilities diminished or gone by the time they hit 30, almost mimicking the pattern of sports athletes.  There are exceptions to this, of course;  Beethoven was 60 when he died,  Mozart 35, with both still composing (Beethoven was deaf, by the way).  But overall, looking back at the classic songs, from musicals to rock, most music was written by those just turning 21, and perhaps stretching until they turned 28.  Generalities, sure.  But what is that?  Does, in fact, our creative spurt peak that soon (this is a common criticism in the world of Apple, that the creative people that so drove Apple are now in their mid-30s and 40s and not giving way to the new creativity of the young employees in their 20s).

   Still for some, the creative spark seems to be far easier for some than for others.  Paul McCartney said that most of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band came from a poster for a circus he happened to see (on the poster were Henry the Horse, Mr. Henderson, Bishop's Gate, etc.).  Many of John's songs came to fruition in 30 minutes or less (Mick Jaggar was stunned when John, frustrated with all the jabber around his living room, left in frustration, only to return 30 minutes later with a complete version of Help).  

   I bring these examples up because no matter the field, there will always be those naturally gifted.  Michael Tilson Thomas of the San Francisco Symphony has an excellent series of DVDs titled, Keeping Score.  In it, he details and reinterprets many famous compositions, from Tchaikovsky to Vivaldi, making so many changes to the original works that the symphony keeps two transcribers on hand to present the new versions to the orchestra.  Konstantinos Diminakis does much the same and critics are stunned at how brilliant his observations are (both conductors feel that they are merely redoing the music to how the original composer, be it Mozart or Vivaldi,  meant it to be played).

   So what is that?  Do these few hear something entirely different that the rest of us (much as some see more colors, in some cases, hundreds of thousands more colors)?  And is that from training (but how to explain prodigies)?  Is it from studying and hours upon hours of practice?  Is it from cultural and societal events (much music came in response to the Vietnam war...but if it were just war, where are the volumes of music in protest today)?  Is it limited to just certain generations, certain fields?  Why are other fields such as painting or science not as affected?

   Our ears are such delicate instruments, taking sound and turning it into electrical impulses from vibration, passing through ever more delicate hairs to be interpreted by our brain (a captivating camera view of the workings of our ears can be seen on the National Geographic DVD, Inside the Living Body).  But they are delicate...one estimate is that 40 minutes of loud noise in a night club will cause permanent damage to those hairs, much as concentrated sound such as ear buds produce if played too loudly.

   We all age, noticing the physical changes and perhaps a few slips in memory as well.  But do we have just a limited window of creativity, independent of the rest of our body?  Are some things simply on automatic biologically?  How do you feel...do new ideas keep popping up in your daily life, new insights, new observations?  And if not, why not?  Perhaps that spark we take for granted is merely another area to keep in practice, an area to keep challenging and pushing.

   When John Lennon was asked if he could do it all again (this interview was well of his been assassinated) what would he do differently and he said, "rewrite the entire Beatles catalog."   This stunned the interviewer who then asked about the song considered one of Lennon's signature songs, Strawberry Fields. "Oh god yes," he replied, "especially Strawberry Fields."