Composers on Mathematical Music
Subtext 9647091


. . . 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



Composers on Mathematical Music: A Subtext Poem

Other Work by John Greschak

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