# Ignorance & Creative Innovations



## Minona (Mar 25, 2013)

An interesting Orson Welles interview reveals how creative innovations sometimes derive from ignorance of the rules:






...and after a few minutes here:






(Upto 7 minutes in, he mentions how this confidence came from a strange upbringing of continuous praise and encouragement.)

I suppose Modest Mussorgsky is a case of how this might work for music (although I might be corrected on that).

I suppose this Welles quote is along the same lines:

_ "I don't believe in learning from other people's pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, innocently, as though there had never been anybody."_

Another interesting thing Welles said is that the essentials of any craft can be mastered/understood very quickly with the right kind of direct teaching.

I've mentioned my belief about this in another thread (because having studied books on African music, techniques and concepts stretched across many whole chapters could have been shown to me in a matter of minutes). I wonder how this applies to CP music, and also different genres. Mozart's teaching of Thomas Attwood seems to show extreme efficient teaching (as does his 'Succinct Thoroughbass School'). Attwood, though not a genius, turned out to be an extremely competant composer in about two years!

(I see Orson Welles as a true genius of the C20th tragically undervalued at the time. Not being able to make films (due to an inexplicable lack of backing) was like snatching music paper from Beethoven and forcing him to scratch what he could on toilet roll.)


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

The success of teaching in masterful regard depends on exceptional intelligence and application of the student. Takes two to tango IOW. Of course, there are some who enjoy undermining this "higher learning" process by saying or intimating that any monkey could do that.

Re Orson Welles, his earlier writings and interviews are the best. Later, he became quite ordinary with a great many caustic assertions usually done in an ***-kissing hot stove format.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Haydn has often been quoted as having said that in the extreme isolation of Esterhaze he was "forced to be original." Of course, as has been said, you need the facility of genius to be original in a way that matters.


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## Minona (Mar 25, 2013)

Vaneyes said:


> Re Orson Welles, his earlier writings and interviews are the best. Later, he became quite ordinary with a great many caustic assertions usually done in an ***-kissing hot stove format.


I've watched most of his interviews and the 'sketchbook' series and he seems quite consistent across the years (at least as consistent as he is from one moment to the next) except more bitter with age.



GGluek said:


> Haydn has often been quoted as having said that in the extreme isolation of Esterhaze he was "forced to be original." Of course, as has been said, you need the facility of genius to be original in a way that matters.


_"A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong."_ -Orson Welles

However... I'm not entirely sure if Haydn was a 'genius', according to Welles' definition. On being called a genius, he denied it and singled out "Einstein", "Picasso" and "some fellow from China we've never heard of". He considered it an overused term. Perhaps Welles would only consider Palestrina, J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, as geniuses in music, the rest being 'great artists'.


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