Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.
Daniel BarenboimRead
You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
Interpretation
Understanding music often requires a background in it, which not everyone has.
Daniel Barenboim highlights the importance of context and exposure in appreciating complex art forms, such as music. He suggests that without a background in music, it can be challenging for some individuals to comprehend the nuances of sophisticated compositions like the Schoenberg Variations.
In practice
During a lecture on contemporary classical music, this quote can emphasize the importance of musical exposure.
Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.
For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.
When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it's all mathematics. Yet another might say it's about sensuality, and so on. That's all true. But music is not just one of these things. It's everything all at once.
Playing and listening to music gives you a sense of fulfilment because you have to put everything in you at its disposal.
You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.
The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.
I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.
I think most people gain some sense of how to look at a painting, but no one ever teaches you how to look at a piece of silver.
The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.
[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.
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