253Technique is a net for catching idea fish.
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254Body loop--Neural path that emotions travel for "mind/brain to body and back to mind brain (?)"
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255Recommendation: Antonio Damasio: Descartes Error
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256For a composer, the question of inspiration can pose similar issues. Does one have a feeling that is then transformed into notes and rhythms, or does one improvise music which gives rise to feelings? Both can happen. The same loop of memory and metaphor may be approached from either direction.
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257Ravel commented that "if a composer has nothing to say, he would 'do well to repeat what has been well said.'" He added that if a composer does have something to say, it will emerge from his "unwilling infidelity to the model." In other words, "originality" in music (or any art) is like the fiction of memory that results when we attempt to construct an exact replica...
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258But the best musicians and listeners understand that in music, as in life, "everything" matters.
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259The ricercar was a single-minded, uncompromising process. A rigorous exploration of a single motet--more like a pinecone than a graduate student.
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260To me, the procedures of sonata form strongly resemble a courtroom trial. The opening themes (especially if the work is in a minor key) may be heard as arguments of the prosecution and defense; the development tends to sound like arguments, objections, cross-examinations, and frequently, the presentation of new evidence; the recapitulation is the summing up and final statements; the coda is the announcement of the verdict and sentencing. As in real life, this outline is very compelling and it's a powerful way to get to the heart (or truth) of an infinity of human dramas.
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261Perhaps Adorno had something when he said "every work of art is an un-committed crime."
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262Musical structures are the shapes of our memories.
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263Many excellent composers have insisted that their works mean nothing beyond the notes, but this only confirms that they are better off writing the notes themselves than about notes.
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264Meaning is the cross-referencing of the various symbols--music, words, images,--causing the mind to light up with recognition. Meaning is bridge building, connecting memories and symbols through metaphor. The metaphors excited by artistic triggers are deep-grooved; they are the very networks formed during early learning.
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273Takemitsu, Confronting Silence.
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265If a key is a country, then we may call the chromatic notes foreigners (extended metaphor)
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266The more _things_ change, the more things change. But we remain the same.
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267Shostakovich used to tell a story which can shed some light on this discussion. The story is not about music at all, but about how an artist survives in a repressive regime. Et seq.
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268Was Hamlet mad, pretending to be mad, or pretending to be pretending to be mad?
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269Adolphe references Poincare
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270The word fugue is derived from fuir, to flee (like fugitive)
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271Debussy insisted "Pleasure is the law!" Ravel might have said "There is pleasure in the law."
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272Creativity is the natural enemy of suffering and death.
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274The Germans have a saying--Who has choice, has torment.
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275A painting, if rectangular, has four endings. It may have a frame around it, which further completes the concept of endings. Certainly the wall around the frame is an overwhelming irrelevance that must be blocked out by the viewer, like extraneous sounds during a concert.
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276Much of the great music of the past endures because it gives form and voice to human dramas--dramas that are played out again and again in every generation. The dramatic principle of the sonata provides a set of boundaries within which an infinity of stories may unfold. The stories may have little in common, and yet the sonata principal will provide structre, much as the way rules of order in a courtroom can a(??)--and at best help illuminate--an endless parade of ?? contents from traffic arguments to murder.
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277Those who want to compose usually shoot first and ask questions later
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278As he (Mozart) matured, there was no question of his individual voice, but rather the opposite was valued: the ability to do things properly. An individual voice would naturally arise, of course, but it would be the inevitable result of talent, and was not considered an end in itself.
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279Debussy's famous proclamation that there is no theory, only pleasure, and that pleasure it he law, was fine and true for a rebel composing in the restrictive atmosphere of the Paris conservatoire...(et seq).
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