Favorite Musical Book Quotes?

Hello people!  I just wanted to share a quote from a musical book that was recommended to me by @Thatguy v2.0 "The magic strings of Frankie Presto" by Mitch Albom about a fictional character (Franke Presto) who was purported to be the greatest guitar player to ever walk the Earth, told from the perspective of music itself, narrating.  Feel free to share your own favorite quotes from books you've read about music!

Quote

1953
_____
"The stage is right behind this door," Hampton whispered.
        Frankie nodded.
        "You get in there, you just make your music.  They can't say no to you, fast as you play that guitar."
        It was a hot day, in a brisk 2/4 key signature [sic], and the tempo was vivace-lively, but sostenuto, prolonged.  Hampton and Frankie were standing outside the Grand Ole Opry, waiting to audition.  Frankie, now seventeen years old, had learned a great deal of country music since arriving in Nashville.  He had also grown two inches and looked less a boy than a young man now.  Hampton told him, "I reckon you ready for the biggest stage of all."
        He'd dressed Frankie for the audition in a gray cowboy hat and a white sports coat with lace trimming.  It cost Hampton a week's pay.  I should note that the mechanic had asked to be Frankie's manager, and, while Frankie didn't really understand the position, he'd quickly said yes.  He liked Hampton.  And seeing that he was feeding Frankie and letting him listen to his radio, Frankie couldn't really refuse.
        "Just play the way you played up in Detroit.  No way they say no."
        "Okay."
        "You the fastest thing anyone ever seen."
        "Okay."
        Hampton seemed nervous.  Another hour passed.  Frankie wanted to knock  on the door, but Hampton refused.  "We don't want to seem pushy.  They'll come get us."
        Eventually, with the sun beginning to set, a man in a suit came out the front door.  Frankie ran up and said, "Excuse me," and asked if someone would be greeting them soon.
        "Auditions wait at the south door," the man said.  "Around the corner.  But they're gone now.  Y'all need to come back next week."
        Frankie glanced at Hampton, whose mouth fell open.  Frankie turned back to the man in the suit.
        "Sir . . . can I get something that says we were here?  For next time?  So we can be first in line maybe?"
        The man looked him up and down and grinned.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card.
        "That's all I got, young fella."
        The man walked away.  Hampton cursed and shook his head.  The wrong door?
        "It's okay, Hampton," Frankie said.  'We can try next week."
        But the old man kept grumbling, upset by his mistake.  He was sweating heavily.  On the ride home, he banged the steering wheel many times.  Then, after turning at a traffic light, he gripped his arm and fell against the door as the car veered to the curb.
       "Hampton!" Frankie screamed, grabbing the wheel and steering wildly.  "What's the matter?  Hampton!  Hey!"  He threw his leg over the man's legs to brake the car with a screech.
        "Oh no, no, no, no," Frankie implored.  He pulled open Hampton's collar.  His eyes were rolled back.  He was moaning.  Frankie screamed out the window, "Help!  Where's a hospital?"
        Minutes later, he was pulling Hampton through double doors, his arms wrapped around the old man's chest.  He kept saying, "You're all right, you're all right," but once inside he again screamed, "Help!" A nurse ran out to assist him, but a doctor with a close-cropped hair and a barrel chest raised his hands.
        "Hold up," he said.  "Y'all need to take him to the colored hospital."
        "Please!" Frankie yelled.
        The doctor shook his head.  "The colored hospital will take care of him."
        "But he's in trouble!"
        "Then you better get moving."
        Frankie's breathing quickened.  He squeezed his eyes closed.  And something inside him snapped.  Perhaps because of Baffa, or El Maestro, or never finding his mother, or any of the many precious things that had been taken from him in his life, he felt a force surging, a noise between his ears, like an angry glissando from one end of the keyboard to the other.
        He would not lose Hampton, too.
        "Now you listen," he said, raising to within inches of the doctor.  "I just came from the Grand Ole Opry.  So did he.  This is an important man."
        The doctor snickered.  "Y'all came from the Opry?"
        Frankie pulled the business card from his pocket and slammed it in the doctor's palm.
        "That's right.  I'm playing there Saturday night.  I will leave you four free tickets in the front row if you take care of this man right now."
        Even as he said it Frankie felt as if he were listening to someone else.  Where did he find these words?
        The doctor sniffed as he read the business card.  It belonged to a high-ranking events manager.
        "You really playin' the Opry?"
        "Look at my clothes," Frankie said.
        The doctor pursed his lips.  He nodded at the nurse.
        "In the back," he said.

And if you got this far, thanks for reading!

Peter

I can't quote any one sentence since the whole paragraph from Hindemith's book is genius:

~ Quotations from a self-proclaimed genius LoL

Any other musical books Y'all would recommend?

On 2/23/2024 at 7:57 PM, Aw Ke Shen said:

Any other musical books Y'all would recommend?

Do you want to read books about music that are entertaining?  Or do you want good educational musical texts about music theory, orchestration, form, counterpoint etc.?

46 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Do you want to read books about music that are entertaining?  Or do you want good educational musical texts about music theory, orchestration, form, counterpoint etc.?

The latter : )

LoL - I looked on my secret bookshelf in my closet and I realized that I have some great musical books in there that not even *I* have read!

"Musical Form and Analysis" by Spring, Hutcheson
"The Development of Western Music" - A History by K. Marie Stolba
"Orchestration" by Cecil Forsyth (only read fragments - quite funny!)
"The Technique of Orchestration" - Sixth Edition by Kent Kennan, Donald Grantham
"The Lives of the Great Composers" - Third Edition by Harold C. Schonberg
"The Virtuoso Conductors" by Raymond Holden
"Twentieth-Century Music" - A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America by Robert P. Morgan
"Counterpoint" - Fourth Edition by Kent Kennan (haven't read yet)
"Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life" - Selected Letters Edited and Newly Translated by Robert Spaethling (haven't read yet)
"Music in the Galant Style" by Robert Gjerdingen (which I'm still in the middle of reading)

And a bonus book that isn't a theory/history text:
"The Music Lesson - A Spritual Search for Growth through Music" by Victor L. Wooten

Enjoy!
Peter

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Musical Form and Analysis" by Spring, Hutcheson
"The Development of Western Music" - A History by K. Marie Stolba
"Orchestration" by Cecil Forsyth (only read fragments - quite funny!)
"The Technique of Orchestration" - Sixth Edition by Kent Kennan, Donald Grantham
"The Lives of the Great Composers" - Third Edition by Harold C. Schonberg
"The Virtuoso Conductors" by Raymond Holden
"Twentieth-Century Music" - A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America by Robert P. Morgan
"Counterpoint" - Fourth Edition by Kent Kennan (haven't read yet)
"Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life" - Selected Letters Edited and Newly Translated by Robert Spaethling (haven't read yet)
"Music in the Galant Style" by Robert Gjerdingen (which I'm still in the middle of reading)

And a bonus book that isn't a theory/history text:
"The Music Lesson - A Spritual Search for Growth through Music" by Victor L. Wooten

I have read only 4 here out of your list!

On 2/28/2024 at 12:06 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

LoL - I looked on my secret bookshelf in my closet and I realized that I have some great musical books in there that not even *I* have read!

"Musical Form and Analysis" by Spring, Hutcheson
"The Development of Western Music" - A History by K. Marie Stolba
"Orchestration" by Cecil Forsyth (only read fragments - quite funny!)
"The Technique of Orchestration" - Sixth Edition by Kent Kennan, Donald Grantham
"The Lives of the Great Composers" - Third Edition by Harold C. Schonberg
"The Virtuoso Conductors" by Raymond Holden
"Twentieth-Century Music" - A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America by Robert P. Morgan
"Counterpoint" - Fourth Edition by Kent Kennan (haven't read yet)
"Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life" - Selected Letters Edited and Newly Translated by Robert Spaethling (haven't read yet)
"Music in the Galant Style" by Robert Gjerdingen (which I'm still in the middle of reading)

And a bonus book that isn't a theory/history text:
"The Music Lesson - A Spritual Search for Growth through Music" by Victor L. Wooten

Enjoy!
Peter

Noted Thanks!

On 2/28/2024 at 10:52 AM, Aw Ke Shen said:

The latter : )

I will just list 2 for each categories haha.

On music theory I love “Harmony and Voice Leading” by Aldwell very much! “Introduction to Post tonal theory” by Straus is great too.

On Form I love “The Classical form” by Caplin, “Sonata Theory” by Hepokoski, 

On counterpoint Kennan’s is an essential read and I also like Jepessen’s book on 16th century counterpoint!

For music history Taruskin’s history is so great, but I have only read the first two volumes and have the other 3 still in my cupboard……

Henry
 

2 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

On 2/28/2024 at 10:52 AM, Aw Ke Shen said:

The latter : )

I will just list 2 for each categories haha.

On music theory I love “Harmony and Voice Leading” by Aldwell very much! “Introduction to Post tonal theory” by Straus is great too.

On Form I love “The Classical form” by Caplin, “Sonata Theory” by Hepokoski, 

On counterpoint Kennan’s is an essential read and I also like Jepessen’s book on 16th century counterpoint!

For music history Taruskin’s history is so great, but I have only read the first two volumes and have the other 3 still in my cupboard……

Henry

Noted. Thanks!

My favourite quotes are drawn from my one true textbook "Bluff your way in Music". A few examples:

Polyrhythmic: Someone who can dance a quickstep to a waltz.

Tchaikovsky: He'd have been rich if films had been around in his time.

Accidental: A wrong note played on purpose. 

A few more. Here's what the book says about Mahler:

Mahler had an incurable ambition to write the longest, noisiest and most expensive symphonies in the world. This he actually achieved several times and not surprisingly, it was a long time before people could be persuaded to listen to them or that impresarios felt like trying to make them do so.

It was suddenly realised that Mahler had not written long, boring symphonies of the Brahms type which you have to listen to carefully from beginning to end in order not to miss the themes, but had, in fact, simply strung together hundreds of attractive little tunes, and it was possible to go into a coma for a lot of the symphony and still get involved when you came to again.

It is possible to switch on the car radio in the depths of Surrey to what appears to be a Mahler symphony well in its stride and to arrive in London and find a parking place with it still going on in a forgetfully energetic way that suggests it might still be in progress at 5.30. It is quite obvious that all conductors get lost during a work like the 7^th which Mr Cooke has now called the ‘Mad’. No doubt someone will prove one day that Mahler was crazy. If not, why did he go to such trouble to write so much when he achieved better results in his short symphonies like the 1^st and 4^th.

ABOUT Bruckner:

"It is generally said that Bruckner was a simple man - practically a Nature Boy, you would gather from some writers. If, after listening to one of his symphonies, you still feel that he was simple, then we must all be gibbering idiots - well, perhaps there is something in that. In fact Bruckner was as deep as the Ocean. He was also an organist and organists are far from simple men. / Another misrepresentation of Bruckner is to bracket him with Mahler. The only thing they had in common was a liking for long symphonies.....(etc)

= = = =

And another couple of definitions:

Pentatonic: Music that can be played on bagpipes.

Perfect Interval: A period of time long enough to queue up for and consume a cup of coffee.

.

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu recommended me a fictional novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera and I happened to find a great musical example/discussion about Beethoven in it!

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15

        This curious melancholic fascination lasted until Sunday evening.  On Monday, everything changed.  Tereza forced her way into his thoughts:  he imagined her sitting there writing her farewell letter; he felt her hands trembling; he saw her lugging her heavy suitcase in one hand and leading Karenin on his leash with the other; he pictured her unlocking their Prague flat, and suffered the utter abandonment breathing her in the face as she opened the door.
        During those two beautiful days of melancholy, his compassion (that curse of emotional telepathy) had taken a holiday.  It had slept the sound Sunday sleep of a miner who, after a hard week's work, needs to gather strength for his Monday shift.
        Instead of the patients he was treating, Tomas saw Tereza.  He tried to remind himself, Don't think about her!  Don't think about her!  He said to himself, I'm sick with compassion.  It's good that she's gone and that I'll never see her again, though it's not Tereza I need to be free of-it's that sickness, compassion, which I thought I was immune to until she infected me with it.
        On Saturday and Sunday, he felt the sweet lightness of being rise up to him out of the depths of the future.  On Monday, he was hit by a weight the likes of which he had never known.  The tons of steel of the Russian tanks were nothing compared with it.  For there is nothing heavier than compassion.  Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
        He kept warning himself not to give in to compassion, and compassion listened with bowed head and a seemingly guilty conscience.  Compassion knew it was being presumptuous, yet it quietly stood its ground, and on the fifth day after her departure Tomas informed the director of his hospital (the man who had phoned him daily in Prague after the Russian invasion) that he had to return at once.  He was ashamed.  He knew that the move would appear irresponsible, inexcusable to the man.  He thought to unbosom himself and tell him the story of Tereza and the letter she had left on the table for him.  But in the end he did not.  From the Swiss doctor's point of view Tereza's move could only appear hysterical and abhorrent.  And Tomas refused to allow anyone an opportunity to think ill of her.
        The director of the hospital was in fact offended.
        Tomas shrugged his shoulders and said, "Es muss sein.  Es muss sein."
        It was an allusion.  The last movement of Beethoven's last quartet is based on the following two motifs:

        To make the meaning of the words absolutely clear, Beethoven introduced the movement with a phrase, "Der schwer gefasste Entschluss," which is commonly translated as "the difficult resolution."
        This allusion to Beethoven was actually Tomas's first step back to Tereza, because she was the one who had induced him to buy records of the Beethoven quartets and sonatas.
        The allusion was even more pertinent than he had thought because the Swiss doctor was a great music lover.  Smiling serenely, he asked, in the melody of Beethoven's motif, "Muss es sein?"
        "Ja, es muss sein!" Tomas said again.

16

        Unlike Parmenides, Beethoven apparently viewed weight as something positive.  Since the German word schwer means both "difficult" and "heavy," Beethoven's "difficult resolution" may also be construed as a "heavy" or "weighty resolution."  The weighty resolution is at one with the voice of Fate ("Es muss sein!"); necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound:  only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.
        This is a conviction born of Beethoven's music, and although we cannot ignore the possibility (or even probability) that it owes its origins more to Beethoven's commentators than to Beethoven himself, we all more or less share it:  we believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact the he bears his fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders.  Beethoven's hero is a lifter of metaphysical weights.
        Tomas approached the Swiss border.  I imagine a gloomy, shock-headed Beethoven, in person, conducting the local firemen's brass band in a farewell to emigration, an "Es Muss Sein" march.
        Then Tomas crossed the Czech border and was welcomed by columns of Russian tanks.  He had to stop his car and wait a half hour before they passed.  A terrifying soldier in the black uniform of the armored forces stood at the crossroads directing traffic as if every road in the country belonged to him and him alone.
        "Es muss sein!" Tomas repeated to himself, but then he began to doubt.  Did it really have to be?
        Yes, it was unbearable for him to stay in Zurich imagining Tereza living on her own in Prague.
        But how long would he have been tortured by compassion?  All his life?  A year?  Or a month?  Or only a week?
        How could he have known?  how could he have gauged it?
        Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory to test various scientific hypotheses.  But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.
        It was with these thoughts in mind that he opened the door to his flat.  Karenin made the homecoming easier by jumping up on him and licking his face.  The desire to fall into Tereza's arms (he could still feel it while getting into his car in Zurich) had completely disintegrated.  He fancied himself standing opposite her in the midst of a snowy plain, the two of them shivering from the cold.

17

        From the very beginning of the occupation, Russian military airplanes had flown over Prague all night long.  Tomas, no longer accustomed to the noise, was unable to fall asleep.
        Twisting and turning beside the slumbering Tereza, he recalled something she had told him a long time before in the course of an insignificant conversation.  They had been talking about his friend Z. when she announced, "If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him."
        Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy, and now he realized it was only a matter of chance that Tereza loved him and not his friend Z.  Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of possibility, an infinite number of unconsummated loves for other men.
        We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the "Es muss sein!" to our own great love.
        Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not "Es muss sein!" (It must be so), but rather "Es könnte auch anders sein" (It could just as well be otherwise).
        Seven years earlier, a complex neurological case happened to have been discovered at the hospital in Tereza's town.  They called in the chief surgeon of Tomas's hospital in Prague for consultation, but the chief surgeon of Tomas's hospital happened to be suffering from sciatica, and because he could not move he sent Tomas to the provincial hospital in his place.  The town had several hotels, but Tomas happened to be given a room in the one where Tereza was employed.  He happened to have had enough free time before his train left to stop at the hotel restaurant.  Tereza happened to be on duty, and happened to be serving Tomas's table.  it had taken six chance happenings to push Tomas towards Tereza, as if he had little inclination to go to her on his own.
        He had gone back to Prague because of her.  So fateful a decision resting on so fortuitous a love, a love that would not even have existed had it not been for the chief surgeon's sciatica seven years earlier.  And that woman, that personification of absolute fortuity, now again lay asleep beside him, breathing deeply.
        It was late at night.  His stomach started acting up as it tended to do in times of psychic stress.
        Once or twice her breathing turned into mild snores.  Tomas felt no compassion.  All he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned.

I thought I'd whet your appetite some more for this great book by Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" with another quote:  (some wonderful and lyrical descriptions of music abound)

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9

        After Tomas had returned to Prague from Zurich, he began to feel uneasy at the thought that his acquaintance with Tereza was the result of six improbable fortuities.
        But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?
        Chance and chance alone has a message for us.  Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute.  Only chance can speak to us.  We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.
        Tomas appeared to Tereza in the hotel restaurant as chance in the absolute.  There he sat, poring over an open book, when suddenly he raised his eyes to her, smiled, and said, "A cognac, please."
        At that moment, the radio happened to be playing music.  On her way behind the counter to pour the cognac, Tereza turned the volume up.  She recognized Beethoven.  She had known his music from the time a string quartet from Prague had visited their town.  Tereza (who, as we know, yearned for "something higher") went to the concert.  The hall was nearly empty.  The only other people in the audience were the local pharmacist and his wife.  And although the quartet of musicians on stage faced only a trio of spectators down below, they were kind enough not to cancel the concert, and gave a private performance of the last three Beethoven quartets.
        Then the pharmacist invited the musicians to dinner and asked the girl in the audience to come along with them.  From then on, Beethoven became her image of the world on the other side, the world she yearned for.  Rounding the counter with Tomas's cognac, she tried to read chance's message:  How was it possible that at the very moment she was taking an order of cognac to a stranger she found attractive, at that very moment she heard Beethoven?
        Necessity knows no magic formulae-they are all left to chance.  If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

10

        He called her back to pay for the cognac.  He closed his book (the emblem of the secret brotherhood), and she thought of asking him what he was reading.
        "Can you have it charged to my room?" he asked.
        "Yes," she said.  "What number are you in?"
        He showed her his key, which was attached to a piece of wood with a red six drawn on it.
        "That's odd," she said.  "Six."
        "What's so odd about that?" he asked.
        She had suddenly recalled that the house where they had lived in Prague before her parents were divorced was number six.  But she answered something else (which we may credit to her wiles):  "You're in room six and my shift ends at six."
        "Well, my train leaves at seven," said the stranger.
        She did not know how to respond, so she gave him the bill for his signature and took it over to the reception desk.  When she finished work, the stranger was no longer at his table.  Had he understood her discreet message?  She left the restaurant in a state of excitement.
        Opposite the hotel was a barren little park, as wretched as only the park of a dirty little town can be, but for Tereza it had always been an island of beauty:  it had grass, four poplars, benches, a weeping willow, and a few forsythia bushes.
        He was sitting on a yellow bench that afforded a clear view of the restaurant entrance.  The very same bench she had sat on the day before with a book in her lap!  She knew then (the birds of fortuity had begun alighting on her shoulders) that this stranger was her fate.  He called out to her, invited her to sit next to him.  (The crew of her soul rushed up to the deck of her body.)  Then she walked him to the station, and he gave her his card as a farewell gesture.  "If ever you should happen to come to Prague . . ."

11

        Much more than the card he slipped her at the last minute, it was the call of all those fortuities (the book, Beethoven, the number six, the yellow park bench) which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate.  It may well be those few fortuities (quite modest, by the way, even drab, just what one would expect from so lackluster a town) which set her love in motion and provided her with a source of energy she had not yet exhausted at the end of her days.
        Our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidences.  "Co-incidence" means that two events unexpectedly happen at the same time, they meet:  Tomas appears in the hotel restaurant at the same time the radio is playing Beethoven.  We do not even notice the great majority of such coincidences.  If the seat Tomas occupied had been occupied instead by the local butcher, Tereza never would have noticed that the radio was playing Beethoven (though the meeting of Beethoven and the butcher would also have been an interesting coincidence).  But her nascent love inflamed her sense of beauty, and she would never forget that music.  Whenever she heard it, she would be touched.  Everything going on around her at the moment would be haloed by the music and take on its beauty.
        Early in the novel that Tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit Tomas, Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances:  they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train.  At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train.  This symmetrical composition-the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end-may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" in the word "novelistic."  Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.
        They are composed like music.  Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life.  Anna could have chosen another way to take her life.  But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty.  Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.
        It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway station, and death or the meeting of Beethoven, Tomas, Tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life.  For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

Another pertinent musical quote from "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera:

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3

A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words

. . .

MUSIC

        For Franz music was the art that comes closest to Dionysian beauty in the sense of intoxication.  No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's Ninth, Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Beatles' White Album?  Franz made no distinction between "classical" music and "pop."  He found the distinction old-fashioned and hypocritical.  He loved rock as much as Mozart.
        He considered music a liberating force:  it liberated him from loneliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of his body and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends.  He loved to dance and regretted that Sabina did not share his passion.
        They were sitting together at a restaurant, and loud music with a heavy beat poured out of a nearby speaker as they ate.
        "It's a vicious circle," Sabina said.  "People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder.  But because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still."
        "Don't you like music?" Franz asked.
        "No," said Sabina, and then added, "though in a different era . . ."  She was thinking of the days of Johann Sebastian Bach, when music was like a rose blooming on a boundless snow-covered plain of silence.
        Noise masked as music had pursued her since early childhood.  During her years at the Academy of Fine Arts, students had been required to spend whole summer vacations at a youth camp.  They lived in common quarters and worked together on a steelworks construction site.  Music roared out of loudspeakers on the site from five in the morning to nine at night.  She felt like crying, but the music was cheerful, and there was nowhere to hide, not in the latrine or under the bedclothes:  everything was in range of the speakers.  The music was like a pack of hounds that had been sicked on her.
        At the time, she had thought that only in the Communist world could such musical barbarism reign supreme.  Abroad, she discovered that the transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the historical phase of total ugliness.  The total ugliness to come had made itself felt first as omnipresent acoustical ugliness:  cars, motorcycles, electric guitars, drills, loudspeakers, sirens.  The omnipresence of visual ugliness would soon follow.
        After dinner, they went upstairs to their room and made love, and as Franz fell asleep his thoughts began to lose coherence.  He recalled the noisy music at dinner and said to himself, "Noise has one advantage.  It drowns out words."  And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head, they were his insomnia, his illness.  And what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely but with all his might, was unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy all-encompassing, overpowering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words.  Music was the negation of sentences, music was the anti-word!  He yearned for one long embrace with Sabina, yearned never to say another sentence, another word, to let his orgasm fuse with the orgiastic thunder of music.  And lulled by that blissful imaginary uproar, he fell asleep.

On 3/5/2024 at 11:13 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu recommended me a fictional novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera

You owe me a HUGE favour for this 😈😈. Probably people find the heaviness of BEEing unbearable too.

Here's another quote from Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being":

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8

        Even though he came to love Beethoven through Tereza, Tomas was not particularly knowledgeable about music, and I doubt that he knew the true story behind Beethoven's famous "Muss es sein?  Es muss sein!" motif.
        This is how it goes:  A certain Dembscher owed Beethoven fifty florins, and when the composer, who was chronically short of funds, reminded him of the debt, Dembscher heaved a mournful sigh and said, "Muss es sein!"   To which Beethoven replied, with a hearty laugh, "Es muss sein!" and immediately jotted down these words and their melody.  On this realistic motif he then composed a canon for four voices:  three voices sing "Es muss sein, es muss sein, ja, ja, ja, ja!" (It must be, it must be, yes, yes, yes, yes!), and the fourth voice chimes in with "Heraus mit dem Beutel!" (Out with the purse!).
        A year later, the same motif showed up as the basis for the fourth movement of the last quartet, Opus 135.  By that time, Beethoven had forgotten about Dembscher's purse.  The words "Es muss sein!" had acquired a much more solemn ring; they seemed to issue directly from the lips of Fate.  In Kant's language, even "Good morning," suitably pronounced, can take the shape of a metaphysical thesis.  German is a language of heavy words.  "Es muss sein!" was no longer a joke; it had become "der schwer gefasste Entschluss" (the difficult or weighty resolution).
        So Beethoven turned a frivolous inspiration into a serious quartet, a joke into a metaphysical truth.  It is an interesting tale of light going to heavy or, as Parmenides would have it, positive going to negative.  Yet oddly enough, the transformation fails to surprise us.  We would have been shocked, on the other hand, if Beethoven had transformed the seriousness of his quartet into the trifling joke of a four-voice canon about Dembscher's purse.  Had he done so, however, he would have been in the spirit of Parmenides and made heavy go to light, that is, negative to positive!  First (as an unfinished sketch) would have come the great metaphysical truth and last (as a finished masterpiece)-the most frivolous of jokes!  But we no longer know how to think as Parmenides thought.

. . .

I do wonder if this story of how Beethoven's "Es muss sein!" motif was conceived is true.  If his supposed exchange with Dembscher occurred a year before he wrote his Op. 135 quartet, then he couldn't have heard Debscher's complaint, since by then he had already been deaf!

I've been reading Kent Kennan's Counterpoint book.  But besides that I decided to re-read "The Music Lesson - A Spritual Search for Growth through Music" by Victor L. Wooten.  Victor Wooten is hailed as "the Carlos Castaneda of music."  Here are a few fragments from the beginning of the book:

Quote

        Having an opinion without being opinionated was a gift of his.  How to do that remains a mystery to me.  I know now that he just wanted me to think, to use my brain.
        Answering my questions with a question was an important part of his teaching method.  That frustrated me many times, but it made me think for myself.  I'm sure that's all he wanted.  I'm not sure if he ever outright lied to me, but I know that he frequently stretched the truth.  Whenever I questioned him about it, he would answer with, "Truth?  What is truth?  And tell me, what importance does truth have anyway?  Did you learn from the experience?  Now, that is important.  And by the way, if I always tell you the truth, you might start to believe me."
        That confused me, as I always thought I was supposed to believe my teachers.  I guess I was wrong.  I can still see the sly smile on his face every time he knew he was totally confusing me.
        Confusion seemed to be my natural state when I was with him, especially in the beginning.  I recall him saying "Music, like Life, and like you, is one entity expressing itself through its differences."  My puzzled look let him know that I didn't understand.  "Music is one thing," he continued, "but it wouldn't exist without its parts.  You couldn't play a chord without different notes.  Change a note, change the chord.  Life is not different, and neither are you.  You are expressing yourself in Life by choosing different notes all the time.  Learn to be conscious of your note choices and Life will respond with the proper chord or, in other words, Life will respond accordingly."  I didn't know what to say.  He just smiled.
         He loved to laugh.  I remember telling him about an invention I once saw called The Lick Blocker.  It was a flat piece of board that attached to your wrist while you played guitar.  It was supposed to block the audience from being able to view your hand, thus keeping them from being able to steal your licks.  He laughed for a full ten minutes when I told him about that one.  "I'm glad I ain't normal," he would often say.
        "Sharing is one of the most important tools needed for personal growth," he once told me, also stating that many people never come to understand that point.  He said that many of us try to hoard our knowledge in order to stay ahead of everyone else.  I understand that completely because I used to use the same method.  Somehow, I think he knew that.
        It didn't take long for me to realize that I was learning more than just music.  We rarely talked about it, but in the few days that we were together, he taught me more about life than anyone else ever has.  "Music, Life, Life, Music:  What's the difference?"  I could hear him saying.
        I remember criticizing him for leaving my car door unlocked.  He asked me if I believed my mother whenever she would tell me that "all things happen for a reason."  I told him that I did.  "Listen to her, then," he responded.  "Change your vibes.  Stop creating reasons for your car to get broken into."  I had to think about that one for a while.
        Vibrations were an important concept to him.  I guess 'concept' is not the best word to use.  I could tell that vibrations were important to him because he talked about them as if they were alive.  His approach to music was the same, and he came alive whenever he talked about it.  He seemed to think that all things were made up of vibrations, especially music.
         "All things are in motion," he once told me, "and although a thing may appear to be stationary, it is always moving.  This motion may change, but it will never cease.  All Music ever played is still playing."  I'd never thought of it like that.  Whenever he mentioned the word "Music," he said it with a specific clarity I didn't have.  It was as if I could feel the truth of the word vibrate whenever he spoke it.
        He even told me that thoughts were vibrations.  I had to think about that one for a long time too.  I had no way of disproving him, and believe me, I would've if I could've, but when I thought about the way a lie detector works, measuring subtle changes in vibrations from the mind and body, I figured that he might have a point.  He always had a point.

. . .

"How'd you get in here?" I asked, startled, half asleep, and wondering why I wasn't angry at his intrusion.
        "You asked me to come."
        "I did?"
        "Yes."
        "But how'd you get in here?  Who let you in?"
        "You did."
        "Oh really!  Did I give you a key?"
        "I don't need a key."
        "Who are you?"
        "I am your teacher."
        "My teacher?"
        "Yes."
        "My teacher of what?"
        "Nothing."
        "Nothing?  Well, then, what are you supposed to teach me?"
        "What do you want to learn?"
        "Lots of things.  What can you teach me?"
        "Nothing!"
        "What do you mean 'nothing'?"
        "Exactly that, nothing."
        This was typical of conversations to come, but at that time, I didn't know what to make of him and I needed a straightforward answer.
        "You have to do better than that.  You showed up in my house unannounced; I think I deserve some kind of explanation."
        Tilting his head, he looked at me through the face shield of his helmet and replied, "I teach nothing because there is nothing to be taught.  You already know everything you need to know, but you asked me to come, so here I am."
        "But you said that you're my teacher."
        "Yes, I did, but try to understand.  'Teacher' is just a title.  I cannot teach you because no one can teach another person anything."
        "What do you mean by that?"
        "You can only teach yourself.  Until we live in a day when I can physically implant knowledge into your head, I can teach you nothing.  I can only show you things."
        "What can you 'show' me?"
        "Anything."
        "Show me everything then," I replied.
        "That would take a while.  It might be easier if we pick a subject."
        "Okay, how about music?"
        "Perfect!  Music!  Shall we begin?"
        I didn't know if I was ready to begin anything with this character.  I already told you he was wearing a blue jumpsuit and a black motorcycle helmet (yes, he was still wearing the helmet), but did I mention that he was carrying a skateboard under his left arm and burlap bag over his shoulder?  I imagine him riding his skateboard down the street, through the rain, in his getup.
        I didn't know what I was getting myself into.  I also couldn't tell if he was really serious or not.  For all I knew, he could've been there to rob me.  But I didn't think so.  There was a lot I didn't know, but I decided to play along anyway.  There was an intriguing quality about him, and I wanted to know more.
        "Wait a minute.  If you're not a teacher, what are you?  What should I call you?"
        "Micheal.  Call me Micheal," he answered as he removed his helmet and offered me his hand.
        I remember his bright blue eyes as hypnotic.  They had an immediate effect on me.  Somehow, I sensed they could see beneath the surface, and I was fearful of what he might uncover.  I struggled to stay in control.
        Not bothering to move from my reclined position on the couch, I allowed his hand to dangle in the air.  Asserting what I thought was dominance, I responded in a cocky tone, "Okay, Micheal, what can you teach me about music?"
        "Nothing.  I already told you that," he answered, retracting his hand.  "I tried teaching many times before.  Once as an Apache medicine man in New Jersey and twice as a Yogi in India.  I even tried teaching while flying biplanes in Illinois.  This time around, I am living the laws of Music."

. . .

        Neither my mom nor my dad played a musical instrument, but they were very musical, more musical than some musicians I know.  They sang in church and there was always a record playing on their stereo at home.  They also helped spark my interest by taking me to concerts when I was young and supported my musical interest by offering to pay for lessons if I wanted them.  I can't say they taught me how to play music, but they surely supported my decision to play.  Hearing it around the house was such a major part of my childhood that it was like a second language to me.
        "Language, that's good."  Micheal spoke out of the blue, as if reading my thoughts.
        "What?" I replied in disbelief.
        "Language, that's a good one."
        "Wait a minute!  Can you read--"
        "Music?" he interrupted with a sly smile.  "Of course I can.  Can't you?"
        "That's not what I was gonna say," I muttered.
        Knowing where I was heading, he steered the conversation by asking, "Is Music a language?"
        "I would say so."
        "Then why don't you treat it like one?"
        "What do you mean?"
        "What language do you speak the best?" he asked.
        "English," I answered.
        "Are you better at English than you are at Music?"
        "Much!" I answered, not knowing where he was headed.
        "At what age did you get really good at English?
        "I would say by about age four or five I was fluent."
        "And at what age did you get really good at Music?"
        "I'm still working on it," I answered in total seriousness.
        "So it took you only four or five years to get really good at English, but even though you've been speaking Music for almost four times as long, you're still not really good at it yet?"
        "Well, I guess not," I answered, finally realizing his point.  I hadn't looked at it from that perspective.
        "Why not?" Micheal asked.
        "I don't know why.  Maybe I just haven't practiced enough."  I was frustrated by the question.
        "How much did you practice English?"
        "All the time," I answered, but then I thought about it.  "Well, I didn't really practice English; I just spoke it a lot."
        "Bingo!" he replied, "That is why you speak that language naturally."
        "So, are you saying that I should stop practicing music?" I asked sarcastically, trying to regain some ground.
        "I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't do anything.  I'm just comparing the two languages and your processes of learning them.  If Music and English are both languages, then why not apply the process used to get good at one of them to the other?"
        Realizing I'd totally lost my ability to direct the conversation, I finally relaxed and gave in.
        "How do I do that?"  I asked.
        "How do you do that?" was his reply.
        I had to think for a minute, but I soon came up with an answer.
        "Well, when I was young, I was surrounded by people who spoke English.  I was probably hearing it even before I was born.  So, since I've heard people speaking English everyday of my life, it was easy for me to pick up because it was always around.  How's that?"
        "It's a start; keep going."
        "Okay.  Because I heard English every day, speaking it came naturally to me."  I was talking more quickly and with more confidence.  "It wasn't something I ever thought about.  It wasn't something I ever really practiced.  I just did it.  I just listened to it and spoke it.  And the more I spoke it, the better I got."
        "That's brilliant!  See, you do understand.  I like the part about it coming naturally to you.  I must be a good teacher," he said smiling.
        "Comedian?  Yes!  Teacher?  I'm not so sure," I retorted, joining in the fun.
        "How can we apply this approach to Music?"  Micheal inquired.
        "I'm not so sure," I answered.  "I am around music most of the time.  It's hard to go anywhere without hearing some type of music playing in the background.  So that part of it is similar to English, but I know that there's still something missing.  There has to be something else that keeps me from being just as good at music as I am at English."
        I thought for a moment.
        "Oh, I know.  I speak English every day.  I'm always talking, but I'm not always playing.  I don't play music every day.  If I played my bass every day, I'd be just as good.  Is that it?"
        "Did you speak English every day when you were a baby?" he asked.
        "Well, not exactly."  Apparently there was more.
        "Do you need to speak English every day to get better at it?" he asked.
        "No, I don't."
        "Then what's missing?"
        "I don't know."  My frustration grew.  "Just tell me."
        "Jamming!" he stated with a slight nod of his head.
        "What?"
        "Jamming," he repeated.  "That is the missing element.  When you were a baby, you were allowed to jam with the English language.  From day one, not only were you allowed to jam, you were encouraged to.  And better yet, you didn't just jam; you jammed with professionals.  Just about everyone you communicated with when you were a baby was already a master of the English language.  And because of that, you are now a master."
        "A master?"  I inquired.
        "A genuine master," he confirmed.  "The only reason you are not called a master is that everyone else is just as good at it as you are.  Everyone is a master.  Think about it.  If you were as good at Music as you are at English, you would surely be considered a master.  Would you not?"
        "Oh my God!  You're right!"  Another unintended outburst.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!