Beyond the comfort zone

I believe one shouldn’t be too comfortable when listening to really great music.  To appreciate good music, one must be mentally alert, and emotionally receptive.  You can’t be that when you are sitting at home with your feet on a chair.

No, listening to  music is more strenuous than that.  Music is like the poetry;  it is a passion and a problem.  You can’t enjoy and understand it merely by sitting still and letting it soak into your ears.

Sergei Rachmaninoff.  Cited in Bertensson, Sergei & Leyda, Jay (2001) Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p.256.

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New art and the old formulae
An art gathers new material usually by an original rejection of old formulae, a gesture of negation. At the beginning, this gesture is conscious, defiant, it lacks any other reason for existence than the very healthy one that dogma is death. In the turmoil of growth and expansion, this negation and denial loses its identity […]
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