Notes to a Study of Musical Inspiration

Though inspiration is quite a polemic term, it still seems the best word to describe one of the essential conditions of composing music. In a phenomenological approach, composing can be understood as taking things from the world and manipulate them to create something that did not exist drawn from some previous existing context. Inspiration is, then, the act of capturing impressions from the world, converting them in expressions — either artistic works or something else.

Inspiration, in this framework, should not only be understood in the classical senses of furor poeticus, enthousiasmós, afflatus or other concepts that treat the phenomenon as a mere (and often mystical) “reception” of artistic forms. Phenomenologically, it might be seen as an attribute of perception, in which intuition and intentionality work together, by means of what in phenomenology literature is called disclosure (or Erschlossenheit, in husserlian terms): an openness to the life-world that allows to take some phenomena as objects of conscience, and so, a necessary condition of the act of composing.

Intentionality and intuition work together even in the most (supposedly) “rational” or “unconscious” creative processes. One cannot simply isolate her perception or act purely out of consciousness when working in a composition. So, both aspects being present in the act of composing, there is no question about whether there is or not inspiration. According to this logic — and, of course, proposing a more philosophical understanding than the common sense use of the term — it is a matter of grade, rather than of of nature, to consider the proportion of intuition and intentionality present in creative acts. That means that all of them have to be “inspired”, i.e.: have to take creative breath from the world around.

If we try to trace an archaeology (in the foucauldian sense) of the phenomenon of inspiration, referring to statements and fragments of discourse throughout different epistemes, we will find many references of similar approaches that divide the phenomenon in its intentional and intuitive aspects. Some of these references are: 1 - The greek term fantasia, is employed by Aristotle as a faculty that mediates between sense-experience and thought, and differentiates between fantasia aisthetiké (perceptive imagination), fantasia bouleutiké (volitional imagination) or logistiké (reproductive imagination). Perception and decision are taken as parts of the same phenomenon (fantasia or imagination) that is responsible for our intentional acts. 2 – In his model of human mind, John Locke suggests that ideas associate in form of resonances, as strings that vibrate by sympathy. Inspiration would be a natural and somewhat aleatory association of ideas that could culminate in a sudden unison. Locke’s two terms wit (the ability to perceive unities and differences in groups) and fancy (contraction of fantasy, the ability to elaborate inventions) are in a sense respectively analogous to Aristotle’s fantasia aesthetiké and bouleutiké. And both pairs of concepts keep many conceptual aspects in common, also respectively, to intuition and intentionality.

That may lead us to conclude that the phenomenon of inspiration — treated as a necessary condition of the creative act — is a combination of an intuitive openness to the world with a directedness towards worldly objects that can be transformed or dislocated to be converted in a work of art. This conscious directedness is called ‘intentionality’ in phenomenology terms, but this should not be confused with ‘purpose’. Intentionality, though always conscious, is not necessarily conducted towards a pre-defined goal. That is just the nature of creative acts in general, and of music composition specially. A composer, although having plans and formal projects, could never know exactly what her composition would be like before getting involved in the process of composing it, to the very end. Otherwise, composition would be just a matter of accomplish a rigorous plan without any deviations, and that’s almost never the case.

Here is the role of intuition — the opposite of analysis, in a bergsonian view — better understood. According to Bergson (and Deleuze readings of his), intuition is opposed of analysis in that the first operates in motion, while the second can only catch immobile objects to cut them in their constituent parts. As composing is in itself a process, intuition is the best concept to describe the more or less unconscious micro decisions taken during this process. Why choosing this or that notes? Which criteria are responsible for the many thousands of subtle choices we make while writing a simple melody? Where did the preference for a timbre better than any other come from?

And here we get to the point of our proposition of inspiration as a condition of composing. It is the combination of these operations in motion with de intentional and well-known decisions that form this condition. But, one could argue, inspiration in the common sense of a ‘mysterious reception’ could just be substituted for intuition alone, without need of the intentional counterpart. That’s exactly the turning point of our proposal of a different and useful meaning of the term inspiration in a phenomenological perspective. There is no possibility of human action without intentionality, on the contrary, it is intentionality itself that defines what can be called action in human terms. So, being intentionality a true attribute of human action, and being composition an act, inspiration is the relationship between intentionality and something that can not be analysed: intuition, then.

The principles of this approach are better explained in our thesis ‘Compor no Mundo: um modelo fenomenológico de compor música’ (Composing in the world: a phenomenological model of composing music). Inspiration, in the referred model, is one of the essential aspects of composing music. These are divided in ‘internal’ aspects — those dealing with the very act of composing (material, processes and form) — and ‘external aspects’ — those that make the link between composer’s intentionality and intuition (“inspiration”) and the lifeworld around (“context”).