The Musical Mindset: Everyday Evocation

Musical Notes - Image in the Public Domain

Guest Post by Maria Rainier

Just as different colors can inspire certain moods, various types of music evoke feelings, memories, visions, and states of being. As humans, we’re inherently sentient, but music is a way to deepen your connection to yourself and to the world around you. Music has the power to evoke everything that is deeply human.

There are infinite ways to be creative with music, and each one can teach you something new about yourself – how you interact with the world, how sound can express your individuality, or what you can awaken in others with your music. From looking at the black and white notes on a sheet of paper, it’s almost impossible to think that anything creative could come of it. Personally, my musical training was a roadblock to my creative flow until I decided to learn expression from the music itself. I found that performing could still be an expressive medium and that, in order to succeed, I had to let my creativity enliven the inanimate notes on the page.

Creativity and Responsibility in Classical Music

I look back on my classical training as a bright period in my life, but there was a point at which I became consumed by the idea that performing a musical piece did not allow for creative expression. I wanted to be me on the stage, play the piano my way, and create music exactly the way it sounded in my head. But that didn’t make for responsible interpretation of pieces that had distinct historical characteristics and specific requirements for performance. Some music even had performance annotations written for every note, making me feel like some kind of piano robot. I was studying music because I was a creative, passionate person who needed to make something new every day in an effort to feel fulfilled. Playing someone else’s music wasn’t creating anything new. Or was it?

Waking Up

My professors consistently encouraged enlightened, researched, responsible performance. As far as I was concerned, this meant knowing a composer’s dates and which period he or she fell into. But then I discovered the music of Joaquín Rodrigo. Hearing a recording of his famous Concierto de Aranjuez for the first time, I felt as if I were hearing someone explain my feelings in accurate, almost painful detail. The same sensation occurred, intensified, when I listened to his collected works for the piano. I ordered scores from Spain and began to learn the music, and it was almost as if I had written it myself – I could never express myself so eloquently in notes, but Rodrigo had the talent to do it. The music was familiar to me in a way I couldn’t explain, and yet every time I played it, I discovered a new way to construct meaning and art.

Understanding Creativity

I’ve had similar experiences since then with other composers’ pieces, such as Schubert’s impromptus and Bach’s French suites, but it was Rodrigo who unlocked my ability to understand a composer’s feelings and intentions as expressed in written music. And it takes creativity to recognize how a piece of music should feel, what it should construct for the audience, and what the composer intended to evoke. Once I focused on the goal of the music, I was able to interpret it according to my own creative impulse in a way that honored the composer’s performance guidelines. I learned that finding a deep connection to written music was the first step to injecting my own creativity. While learning music, I play it as many different ways as I can to determine the clearest medium for conveying its purpose. It’s like tweaking the volume and pace of a voice recording to optimize clarity. Once I know what’s being “said,” I can interpret it both responsibly and creatively.    

The Life Lesson

Even if your everyday actions are predetermined – by your boss, by your family, or even by your motivation to build a successful career – you can still express your creativity. Your schedule may be written out in black and white, but it still has something positive to say about your life and you can amplify that with your individual creativity. Maybe your 60-hour work week conveys that you’re highly motivated to succeed, dedicated to providing for your family, or committed to a passionate life goal. Use your creativity to express that, and the work hours in your schedule will come alive. Your “audience” will identify with your everyday evocations and recognize you for the creative soul inside. 

November’s Monthly Muse guest post is written by Maria Rainier, a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, researching areas of online degree programs. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

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