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From: jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Rhino / rock's limits / jazz snobs / creativity
Message-ID: <3004@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Oct-83 14:06:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekecs.3004
Posted: Tue Oct  4 14:06:45 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Oct-83 06:31:29 EDT
References: <1114@unc-c.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 26


   Perhaps the attempts to define creativity are not themselves creative
because they have never been created in the first place! Not by me, anyway.
Where did you get the idea that I did?

   The idea that these older works are still alive simply because somebody
took the trouble to archive them ignores the most important point: Why did
they bother? Loads of music (in a "classical style") that you never hear was
written and published between, say, 1850 and 1900. Most of it survives only
in attics and musicologists' shelves. But some of it is alive, having a large
and enthusiastic audience. Why? Not simply because their composers were good
publicists (although some of them were). Not by luck. But because these
composers were creative enough to come up with something that generation
after generation finds interesting. (Well, some of each generation, anyway.)
Remember that there is a difference between being alive and merely surviving.

   As for 'newness or the lack of it' and self-contradictory sentences, try  
reading it this way: "The date of composition has nothing to do with the
creativity that went into a piece of music." That in no way contradicts the
statement, "The fact that these pieces ARE STILL ALIVE at this age is proof
enough of their composer's creativity." And the latter statement is not an
attempt to define creativity!	


                                          Jeff Winslow