Music exists only in a passing of time, racing past us like the mid-nineenth-century trains Ruskin so hated. It is utterly non-fixed, and to focus on one moment is to destroy the whole. It is a forest that we have to pass through, not a single tree that we can contemplate or capture. But, if hearing and seeing beauty have different timetables they both require a sort of repetition in order to be fully appreciated: music needs to be heard many times, and the visual world needs multiple, if consecutive, seconds of looking. Only in such repetition perhaps can we grasp or hold onto beauty.
S. Hough, Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More, London, Faber & Faber, 2019, p. 225.
– Stephen Hough
Appreciating beauty
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Old into new
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it. — Robert Bresson, French filmmaker J. Butler, Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991, p. 170.
Mozart on rubato in adagiosIn 1777, Mozart visited Heir Stein in Ausburg (1). According to Mozart, Stein had stated that no-one has ever played his Piano Forte as well as I have, and, besides, I always keep correct time. They are all wondering about that. They simply can’t believe that you can play a Tempo rubato in an Adagio, […]
Richter on Bach“It does no harm to listen to Bach from time to time, even if only from a hygienic standpoint.” – Sviatoslav Richter, pianist Monsaingeon, Bruno (2001). Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. Princeton University Press, p.196. Cited at: Wikipedia
Beethoven and the spiderXaver Schydner von Wartensee, in the early days of meeting Beethoven, was curious about a tale he had heard about Beethoven and a spider. Before Schnyder had become acquainted with the immortal Master, he had read the well-known anecdote according to which, when Beethoven was practising the violin in his garret, a spider lowered itself […]
The cleansing power of music“Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, American physician, lecturer and author.
The worker and his object“In all types of creative work the worker and his object become one, man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.” — Erich Fromm
Trombone Shorty on writer’s blockSometimes, I’ll work through it, and sometimes, you know, you might have to make a couple of test bottles or test wines, and it helps you get closer. But if I don’t stop, I might get on the machine here and make five tracks, but I know that they’re not really worth anything. I’m just […]
Widmann on BrahmsWidmann, a Swiss poet, describes Brahms’ performing at the piano: The broad leonine chest, the Herculean shoulders, the mighty head which the player sometimes threw back with an energetic jerk, the pensive, handsome brow that seemed to radiate an inner illumination, and the Germanic eyes which scintillated with a wondrous fire between their fair lashes […]
The Great Collapse (The Boy and the Heron)Composer: Joe Hisaishi Arranger: Greg Smith Title: “The Great Collapse”, from The Boy and the Heron Instrumentation: Piano Solo Available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.
Older version of Molly Malone discoveredA tiny 18th-century book has turned up in Hay-on-Wye containing the earliest known version of Sweet Molly Malone, almost a century older than Dublin’s unofficial anthem. Maev Kennedy, “Tart with a cart? Older song shows Dublin’s Molly Malone in new light”, The Guardian, 18 July 2010. Click here to view article