As a pianist and composer, I'm going to attempt to offer some sort of
coherent opinion on the subject.  I do not think that feeling emotion
is necessarily required to write emotionally stirring music, or even
well-written emotionally stirring music.  I think as a whole, the creative
process is hard to quantify in terms of how much emotion is required, or
when, or what kind, or what depth, and I want to stress that it's different
for every artist.  Sometimes a mournful (or cheerful) theme that I'll make
up will actually spring out of a mood.  On the other hand, often, the
nature of the music being created is being dictated by lyrics that have
already been written by someone else, or the fact that there's a rehearsal
tonight and the piece to be played hasn't been started yet.  No particular
emotion other than worry about the possibility of being yelled at, but that
doesn't mean the music that's frantically scribbled down over the course of
the afternoon can only convey a sense of being frenzied and disorganized
(like its creator).:)

Cole Porter said "My sole inspiration is a phone call from a producer."...
Rachmaninoff is supposed to have snapped, in irritation, at a woman asking
him what inspired him to write all those beautiful melodies in his second
concerto:  "five pounds." (Anyone feel free to supply the exact quote and
whether this story is believed to be true...I do not recall the source.) At
any rate, the overall tragic tone of the first movement of that piece, as
we all know, did not spring directly from his depression after the
disastrous premiere of his first symphony, rather, it was not written until
he _overcame_ his depression through intense therapy.  One can argue that
he was inspired by his previous mood (to use rather rough language, I
apologize for my ineloquence); and that is quite possible, and lends
credence to the "recall" argument.

Others may point out that it while Rachmaninoff may have drawn on life
experiences as inspiration (although I thinks that's probably rubbish, this
is just for purposes of illustration), this situation illustrates the need
to maintain a healthy emotional distance from one's work in order to create
well.  I think that the vast majority of composers and performers are
emotionally involved in their work in varying degrees at different times,
and sometimes it has a direct effect on the quality of their work, and
sometimes it does not.  Emotion can be a positive or negative force when
creating or performing or practicing, or sometimes it can be an outside
element which we ignore because it is not immediately useful for the task
at hand.

I do not think that emotion is extra-musical.  You do not need to read a
critical analysis of Tchaikovsky's Sixth to hear the gloom and despair in
the last movement.  Different people might describe the emotion conveyed in
different terms, and most people will hear it while not necessarily feeling
it, but I find it hard to argue that it is not, to use a most generic term,
"very sad." To use a much simpler example, minor chords sound sad and major
chords sound happy, don't they? An oversimplification, but when teaching
music theory I find students have little trouble determining whether an
isolated chord in root position is major or minor after having heard this
generalization.

Apologize for the long post.  Let the invective flow...

Michael Cooper
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