malik@galaxy.DEC (Karl Malik ZK01-1/F22 1-1440) (09/10/84)
Subj; Stravinsky's composing technique The following is from a book I'm currently reading - thought some of you might find it interesting. "....I went off into a corner soon to be joined by Stravinsky himself, and we began musicians's talk until I got up the courage to ask him how he composed. At which he took me to his workroom, and showed me a large book of blank pages into which short fragments of musicial sketches, roughly torn out of larger sketch-pages had been pasted. Since the original sketch-pages had been different papers of different qualities and colors and the musical fragments (sometimes only two or three notes) had been written on staves that were hand drawn, often in quite fanciful curves, the scrapbook itself gave a very arresting visual appearance. This was the workbook for 'The Flood', which I don't think had yet been been performed. He proceeded to explain how he chose fragments from his sketches, tore them out, reshuffled them in different orders until he found one that satisfied him, and then pasted them down. I was genuinely surprized to learn of such an unexpected way of composing, of which, if I had not known whose music it was, I might have had doubts as to the results..." Elliott Carter (from 'The Music of Elliott Carter' by David Schiff) - Karl