. . . I think the listening
experience is extraordinarily
complex, spontaneous, intuitive, naïve, and sophisticated, all at
the same time, and that the composer already participates in the listening
experience in the process of composing. And I believe that the component
of naïveté is at least as essential a part of it as any of
the others. Here is what the Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar has to say
about creativity in science [in Pluto’s Republic]:
Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon—provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain.“Clear and candid” listening is the “generative act” in composition. . . .
George Perle
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