12.5)

Just finished my first book of the new year. Poetics of Music by Igor Stravinsky.
- http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/STRPOE.html
Great read with much great thought. Some thoughts I pulled from the work while I was reading/thinking.
- Composition is like skimming off the excess when your product is ripe.
- A work of art cannot contain itself.
- The greater the dignity of the angels in the celestial hierarchy, the fewer the words they use; so that the most elevated of all produces only a single syllable.
- The unity of a harmony of varieties.

Much finally made sense when I read this book. The idea of one note coming from an oboe being just as powerful as a full orchestra. The beauty of music is not in the colorful chords it can create (although there is a great sense of awe) for this will pass. The beauty of music is not in the quick passages in a virtuosic piece. (though this is just as stunning). The beauty of music is in the phrase, the motive, the instrument, the diaphragm of the performer/interpreter, the chord progression, the melody, the passage, the repetition, the variety; the beauty is in the mathematical precision from the notes on the page to the performance. That is where music lies. Not in the composers head. Not in the fingers of a soloist. Not in the baton of the conductor. It lies in the idea that is music. The careful deliberate preparation for a single point in time, Chronos, and the succession of moments to follow. Chronos

Much finally made sense.

Futhon