Ulvi replies to me:

>>I find amazing that some people have to believe that great art is created
>>in hot blood.  ...
>
>...  But we can add that any creative activity is an emotional experience,
>and when the creation has as much intrinsic greatness as we find in great
>music, the experience must have been that much more emotinally intense.
>The emotions felt by the composer, though, probably had nothing to do with
>the emotions stirred by the piece in most listeners.  ...

Consider someone who's just finished writing the first movement to a
substantial piece.  As far as anyone can tell, the movement is a downer,
but the composer felt really good once he finished.  The composer begins
the next movement (a scherzo) depressed as hell because the ideas aren't
coming very quickly.  Nevertheless, I suspect that when the composer's
done, he'll be happy again until, of course, he begins the next movement.
Anyway, I don't find it beyond possibility that a composer's emotions
writing have to do mainly with how well the writing is going, although a
composer may have (though not necessarily has) undergone some emotion that
pricked the writing in the first place.  In short, Ulvi's Brahms example
seems reasonable to me.

A sustained piece of music differs from, say, a short lyric poem or a song.
One cannot get through the process in one go.  That is, inspiration or
emotion alone doesn't carry you through.  In any one measure, a composer
has to think of many things.  A friend of mine - I think a very good
composer indeed - recently completed the draft of a concerto.  I asked
him what he thought about it.  He didn't tell me about big emotions, but
of ways he was going to revise part of this measure or that, whether to
extend a passage, revise three movements into two, or ideas impossible for
his soloist.  That is, his mind was mainly on his craft and his emotions
related to issues of craft, separate from whatever emotional character he
wanted the music to have.

I find the "head-heart" split - intellect vs.  emotion or art vs.  craft
- a bit simplistic.  I've seen very few people other than adolescents or
monomaniacs actually exhibit this behavior.  It's part of the Romantic
inheritance: Reason bad; Feeling good.  In its present form, it's one of
the worst notions we currently hold, mostly because it's not even true.
Each informs the other.  We can feel strongly about ideas and powerfully
analyze feeling, both to constructive result.  Besides, if I hear a work
that moves me deeply, I have no way of knowing for sure how the composer
feels about it.  He may have wrenched it out of his gut or simply tossed it
off.  I'm interested primarilly in the result.  If I get the result, if the
music stirs me (emotionally, intellectually, or both), it seems a bit
ungrateful to demand the composer's biographical catharsis as well.

I agree with Ulvi.

Steve Schwartz