The Ivory Tower Syndrome

The Ivory Tower Syndrome

I once attended a lecture by the late, great Ray Bradbury, who knew

he was addressing an audience of young writers. What he had to say

was essentially that, if you wanted to be a writer, you just read and

read and eventually it would start to come back out.

I somehow understood what he meant at that time, which was this;

many people have the idea that if you want to write music, for

example, you would go and shut yourself off in some ‘ivory tower,’

hoping that you could come up with a bolt out of the blue. By shutting

yourself up in an ivory tower and not listening to other music you

would be able to create something absolutely new and would not be in danger of copying someone else’s work either directly or by accident.

Now shutting their selves in an ivory tower is not what the great

composers of the past did. Even Beethoven had his influences and they are quite obviously traceable and evident throughout the different periods of his composing. Beethoven revered Handle, for example and called him the ‘Master of the Masters.’

Now Beethoven was famous for ‘breaking the rules’ of musical

composition and this has led many people to ask; just what rule or

method did Beethoven follow to produce his masterpieces?

Well it would seem to be music the way that Beethoven liked to hear

it.

So, after duplication of many different styles and works, the next and

very important step is deciding what you like and don’t like. After all, in music and art, as in all things, it’s your opinion that matters.

One cannot go on, relying on the opinions of ‘authorities,’ and hope to

produce anything of real value. The great contributions in history were based on an individual point of view and not the result of a group agreement or following the latest trend or fashion.