Virtuosity

I've been thinking about the way virtuosity manifests in some of the arts but not in others. At the risk of sounding like I'm arguing with myself over semantics, I will record my thought process here.

The first thing that comes to mind is a musician. There have been many virtuosic singers and players of instruments, and it seems as though virtuosity is the primary aim of most musicians. A composer can be considered virtuosic. Mozart is the first the comes to mind, but certainly not all great composers are considered virtuosi. Mozart was virtuosic because he was able to construct whole compositions in his head before writing them down, but there have been plenty of composers who have written down equally important, complex, moving and beautiful music without being able to do so without any drafts. I think this is because virtuosity has everything to do with execution and has less to do with the product.

What about the visual arts? There certainly have been painters that one could describe as virtuosic as well as print makers and sculptors, and again, virtuosity in these areas seems to be very important. These media are very dependent on skillful execution. In fact, I'd say that virtuosity was the primary concern up until the 20th century when the underlying concept became more dominant. Photography and film are very different though, and I will address it last.

Writing has an odd relationship with virtuosity. In prose, the only writer that comes to mind is Joyce, specifically in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. I'll never let anyone without at least a masters try to tell me what those books are about, and I certainly would never presume to tell anyone myself. The way he uses structure and language is virtuosic. There have certainly been virtuosi of poetry, and I would consider all of Shakespeare's work to be poetry in this sense since all of his work is written within a poetic framework. So as far as writing goes, virtuosity is possible, but not nearly as requisite as with the musician or painter. Many of the best writers of all time wouldn't be described as virtuosic, though virtuosity does seem more requisite in poetry than in prose.

Virtuosic filmmakers? I don't think I could describe a director as virtuosic. Maybe an actor, but not the director. It doesn't seem to make sense in that field. Virtuosity implies a skill that is immediately applied and applied without the aid of many auxiliary people or devices. Where the painter merely has a brush, the writer a pen, the sculptor a chisel, the director has a whole host of people and devices that are necessary for him or her to complete the product. This relates back to virtuosity having to do with execution. The director oversees the others' execution, so he or she is never virtuosic.

Of course I've saved photography for last. I don't believe in a virtuosic photographer. This seems strange because photography is so reliant on execution. The closest a photographer ever got to virtuosity was Cartier-Bresson, but as talented and as execution-centric as he was, I still don't feel like virtuoso is the right term for him. Allow me to attempt an explanation as to why this is. The camera is a layman's instrument. A painter generally doesn't develop exceptional ability until after a master's degree is obtained. The learning curve in photography is much less time consuming. As far as physically using a camera and executing shots, I doubt I will improve all that much from this point. I've gotten to the point where I don't have to think about using the camera to take photographs, and I've been at that point for quite some time. What I can improve is my ability to choose what photographs to take, but that isn't a virtuosic process.

But what kind of a process is that? If writers, composers, directors and photographers don't have to be virtuosic, then what do they have to be? I feel like I'm looking for another term, a counterpart to virtuosity that will complete this image I am forming of art and artists. The term I will use isn't at all unfamiliar, quite the opposite. The counterpart to virtuosity is creativity. To complete my thoughts on photography, the photographers choice of moments is a creative one. The choice of depth of field, over or under exposure and angle are all creative choices. The ability to change the settings on your camera fast enough to take the photograph before the moment passes is the execution and these things can come to most people with relatively little practice (I expect a couple years at most).

Contrast this to a musician who is already presented with virtually all of the choices between notes, tempos and dynamics. The musicians job is almost entirely execution with some room for creative choices in nuance. The director's job is entirely based on creative decision making, and at this point I suppose we should equate decision making with creativity. Direction requires virtually no time-sensitive execution. Whether a director's actions take more or less time (within reason) the end result is unaffected. This also applies to the composer who can be virtuosic if he or she exhibits the ability of Mozart to simply write out a completed composition, but again, since time is not an important factor in composition, the result is largely unaffected.

Writing is an odd exception to this time based distinction. Decision making and execution seem to be inseparable in the case of writing. I have trouble deconstructing my compulsion to name Joyce the only virtuosic prose writer. It has something to do with the complete emphasis on language manipulation over subject or plot. This is what is has in common with poetry which has a history full of virtuosi. I don't know. I have come up with what I consider a fairly valuable distinction between virtuosity (execution) and creativity (decision making) and how the balance between the two changes according to the medium in question. I think that's plenty to expect from a facebook note. I have grown weary of writing this. Clendenen out.