Instinct and creativity

It is certainly an interesting topic.

Bettinelli, regarding creative instinct, wrote...

"A kind of intuitive musicality, fascinating and at the same time unexplainable."

Some insights provided by the excellent composer and teacher taken from his book: "Musical Composition":

"What is musicality in its multiple manifestations?

What meaning can be attributed to expressions of a thousand facets that can appear early on or in those who are totally unaware of musical matters, only to sometimes suddenly disappear without a trace, as in the phenomenon of certain child prodigies?

And why is it that many great performers, highly cultured and well-prepared, cannot put together two notes of their own invention?

On the contrary, however, it can happen that a mediocre "piano bar" pianist, musically illiterate, knows how to improvise, along the thread of famous songs—predominantly American, or their own—with an extremely refined, surprising, and every time different harmonic taste—which excludes rote memorization, as I myself have been able to observe."

Thank you, Frank, for remembering the great Bruno Bettinelli and for quoting one of the most interesting passages from "Musical Composition."

Instinct and creativity are inseparable, creative instinct or, if you prefer, instinctive creativity.

One never finishes studying harmony, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration, etc., but without this stimulus of creative fantasy

we are unable - as Bettinelli says - to put together two notes of our own invention.

Interesting, I only know Bettinelli by name, among other things

Xenakis wrote:

Interesting, I only know Bettinelli by name, for that matter

I bet if you had mentioned Donatoni... you would have said the opposite

... besides, being traditionalists has never paid off.

Jokes aside, I invite you to listen to several of his works, especially those from his younger years... where his musicality (more free) seeps through every pore.

You will be amazed at how one can be original (and MUSICAL) without inventing who knows what.

Frank wrote:

I bet if you had cited Donatoni...you would have said the opposite