There are those rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. Out in the real world there exist detailed plans, visionary projects for peaceable realms, all conflicts resolved, happiness for everyone, for ever - mirages for which people are prepared to die and kill. Christ's kingdom on earth, the workers' paradise, the ideal Islamic state. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually lift on this dream of community, and it's tantalisingly conjured, before fading away with the last notes.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Literature for this day
This is from Ian McEwan's SATURDAY (published by Vintage Books):
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2 comments:
Hmm, those are pretty bizarre words. "Christ's kingdom on earth... the ideal Islamic state [sic, State]...only in music..." If that's the case then musicians, eg Daniel Barenboim, can never work towards a better world, because music is so self-contained and unperformative. ??
I don't think that's what he's saying at all. I think he's simply pointing to the way music can make ideals real when few others succeed.
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