Musical Finding: Between Discovery and Creation

Joseph Moore (Amherst College)

Musicians often use the language of finding and discovery. In 1921, and referring to his new twelve-tone method, Arnold Schoenberg told his pupil: “Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years”. And Paul McCartney once described waking up with the melody to “Yesterday” fully formed in his head: “I went to the piano and found the chords to it, made sure I remembered it and then hawked it round to all my friends, asking what it was... I couldn't have written it because I dreamt it.”

Yet the idea of finding a musical method, setting or solution doesn't sit well with the natural thought that, like works of art in general, music is created: brought into existence by the musician, not lying out there to be found or discovered. (Indeed, this tension animates an old debate in musical ontology between Platonists, who think musical works are discovered abstract structures, and anti-Platonists, who insist works are created entities.) Here I'll explore in greater detail the ways musicians talk and think about musical finding in the hopes of finding a good way to resolve, or perhaps productively live with, this tension.