How Do They Do That?

This week on ProetryPlace: at richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com:  About composers and the writers.

Blog 7: How Do They Do That?

     I popped a CD into my Bose music system a few days ago while attacking the ever mounting clutter in my home-office. I thought it might be relaxing and it was. But listening to solo pianist, Jim McDonough, play songs from the silver screen—Ice Castles, Evergreen, Brian’s Song, A Time for Us to name a few—a question hit me. How is it possible, from a collection of roughly 100 pitches, to derive a seemingly infinite variety of melodies?

     Then I did the math. Depending on how one chooses to define melody—say a group of four or five pitches in any order from the total of 100—one calculates that tens of millions of such groups  are possible. Having put our minds at ease on that matter we may ponder a more mysterious issue: the creativity of composers who conceive these melodies, counter melodies and harmonies to invent music that delights our ears, challenges our minds and touches our souls. How does their muse sing to them? I cannot calculate an answer.

     A few days later I listened to an audio-tape while I hurried my daily walk in advance of an approaching thunderstorm.  The short story, Voluptuary, by Peter DeVries came up first. From the first sentence  DeVries had me hooked, and on through the story of a teenage lesson learned he kept me amused and interested. It was not just the unusual plot but his delightful use of the language that kept me nodding and smiling through the brief 26 minute read. How did he manage to invariably select exactly the right words?

     There are about 250,000 words in the English language. About half are nouns, and one quarter are adjectives, that part of speech that some writers avoid like pariah. Surprisingly, verbs, the energizers of engaging writing make up only 15 percent, while the remaining 10 percent comprises conjunctions, prepositions and all the rest. How does the writer select just the choice morsels and most satisfying combinations from this vast smorgasbord?

     Rather than a concern for too few possible permutations as arose regarding the composers’ choice, perhaps we might worry about the writer having too vast a selection. Writing can instruct, persuade, inspire, enrage, sadden, elate and on and on. In the best written or spoken works, the essayist, the fiction writer, the poet or politician (think Gettysburg Address) favor us always with le mots justes, the right words or phrases at just the right time and place. With never a sour note.

Richard Allen Anderson      < :- (     ProetryPlace Blog 7     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com

The poetry of Richard Allen Anderson, Another Season Spent, is available at Underground Books in Carrollton Georgia and online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Vabella Publishing.