Everything Is Connected: The Power Of Music by Daniel Barenboim

Author:Daniel Barenboim [Barenboim, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography: Film, Television, Music, Theatre
ISBN: 9780297856191
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2010-12-09T02:00:00+00:00

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FINALE

Music possesses a power that goes beyond words. It has the power to move us and it has the sheer physical power of sound, which literally resounds within our bodies for the duration of its existence. The power that music has over us has often been the subject of literary and visual works of art, but rarely is it discussed in a rational, physical way. It is difficult to distinguish between the substance of music and the listener’s perception of it. It is probably for this reason that music, since Homer’s day, has sometimes been portrayed as a potential danger to the health of the intellect and even of the will; music was capable of everything from inducing states of Dionysian hallucination to seducing Odysseus and his entire crew away from the completion of their voyage. The educated ear, however, cultivates the ability to separate the content of the music from the feelings one has learned to associate with it.

Music is conceived by and eventually delivered from the point of view of an individual. As a result, subjectivity is an integral and inevitable part of music, although it is not the only one. While there is no such thing as an objective performance, there must be a permanent relationship between subjectivity and objectivity when making music, as there is in life. Even the freedom of speed in music, tempo rubato, cannot be wilfully conceived, but must be in contact with the underlying and uncompromising metronomic pulse (in other words tempo non rubato); it is precisely this constant connection between yielding and unyielding elements that gives the performance of music the richness of being simultaneously subjective and objective. With this notion we are once again confronted with what I would call the moral responsibility of the ear.

Because music only expresses itself through sound and takes place in a given time, it is, by its very nature, ephemeral. What is essential in the performance of music and difficult in life is the ability to start from nil each time. Every time one performs a work again, one must do so with the freshness of a first encounter and the intensity of a last one. It is very difficult to have the courage and ability to start from nothing, examining experience collected in the past and then beginning to think anew, in a different way. It is equally difficult to lend a new experience the effortless, natural qualities of an already familiar one.

I know of no other performing artists who turn their attention so intensely, and often exclusively, towards the past as classical musicians. Finding the music of the past to be timeless, universal and an unlimited source of inspiration, some musicians believe that by limiting themselves to a narrow selection of works from earlier centuries their understanding of them will attain greater depth. I believe, on the contrary, there is a need to be in touch or even abreast of contemporary music in order to keep one’s curiosity constantly alive. The knowledge

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