| Extraordinary creative activity has
been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established
and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to
this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing
form and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea
that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits is misleading when
it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the science;
Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in
part from a difference in their goal. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal
and end result of the creative act. Innovative science produces new propositions
in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more
coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are
relegated to the role of date, serving as the means for formulating or testing a
new theory. The goal of highly creative art is different: the phenomenon itself
becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a
tract about the behavior of indecisive princes or the uses of political power,
nor is Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a prepositional statement about the
Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What 'highly creative activity
produces is not a new generalization that 'transcends established limits, but
rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly
creative artist extend or exploit, rather than transcend that form. This is not to deny that a highly creative artist sometimes establishes a new principle of organization in the history of an artistic field; the composer Monteverdi, who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a composition establishes a new principle in the history of music has no bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because they embody a new principle of organization, some musical works, such as the operas of the Florentine Camerata, are of signal historical importance, but few listeners or musicologists would include these among the great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro(费加罗的婚礼) is surely among the masterpiece of music even though its modest innovations are confined to extending existing means. It has been said of Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music from the stifling confines of convention. But a close study of his composition reveals that Beethoven overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an incomparable strategist who exploited limits of the rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from predecessors such as Haydn and Mozart, Handel and Bach—in strikingly original ways. |