You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In 1896, music critic Arthur M. Abell, who was the European correspondent for the now defunct Musical Courier, conducted a series of interviews with the major composers of the era: Brahms, Puccini, Humperdinck, Grieg, and Richard Strauss (Nass, 1975).1 Almost uniformly, they described inspiration as an experience of ideas coming from outside the self, often from a divine spirit. Brahms stated that inspiration was a condition in which the conscious mind is in temporary
abeyance, “a trance-like condition — hovering between being asleep and being awake.” It is as though the experience comes from without while the person is in a passive state, a transitory state in which active cognitive processes are set aside so that something new may enter awareness. While listening is surely not an act of musical inspiration, it does require a transitory passivity and receptiveness, a willingness to take in something new from without.
A state of open receptiveness is not the only condition for what might be called an active listening process. Kris (1952), in his theory of creativity, posits that after a state of adaptive passivity (the inspirational phase proper) there occurs a state of reconsolidation and elaboration. In addressing himself to