The effect of art“There’s a phrase I’ve often heard from audience members at popular musicals (but, oddly, never anywhere else): the show, they’ll say, “really took me out of myself”. They are saying something basic and profound about the ecstasy of art, the act of being taken out of one’s normal state to a different level of being. […]
Emerging from suffering“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings
Habit is stronger than willpower or inspirationIn writing, habit seems to be a stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never […]
In critique, then in praise of BachThe dilemma of “old” versus “new” style is evident in the comments of the Johann Adolf Scheibe in reference to his elder fellow musician, Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1737, 29-year old Scheibe write in The Critical Musician: A musical composition must naturally be pleasant and tickle the ear, it must also please the reason … […]
Attaining great heights“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine
Stokowski’s first rehearsal with the Philadelphia OrchestraOn Stokowski’s first rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra: From Oscar Schwar, a fellow faculty member at Curtis who became my friend, I heard the details of Stokowski’s first contact with the orchestra. He would never forget, he said, that Monday morning of October 7, 1912, when an amazingly young and handsome Stokowski, wearing a light […]
Silence, expression, and musicFrom pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death—all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence. After silence that which comes […]
Capturing the experience of being aliveIn attempting to capture something of the experience of being alive, the words themselves must be alive. Words, when living and breathing are like musical chords. The full resonance of the chord or phrase must be allowed to be heard in all of its suggestive imprecision. We must attempt in our use of language in…our […]
From the heart“What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.” — Samuel Coleridge Taylor, English poet, critic and philosopher. Coleridge, Samuel (1856) Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. London: Chapman and Hall, page xlv
Harbouring doves and crocodilesBeethoven, who is often bizarre and baroque, takes at times the majestic flight of an eagle, and then creeps in rocky pathways. He first fills the soul with sweet melancholy, and then shatters it by a mass of shattered chords. He seems to harbor together doves and crocodiles. A review of Beethoven’s First Symphony, Tablettes […]
