Merriam Webster Online Dictionary.
a: the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.
b: vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.
Rachmaninov
“What is music? How can one define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, a rustling of summer foliage. Music is the distant peal of bells at eventide! Music is born only in the heart and it appeals only to the heart; it is Love! The sister of Music is Poetry, and its mother is Sorrow!”
The difference between a musician and an academic.
The difference between identity and reason.
The difference between heart and mind.
The difference between the soul and a filing cabinet.
The difference between language as poetic meaning and language as equations.
Two definitions of music. I know which I prefer.
Rachmaninov must have thought this way in life, not just in music. I say this because of an encounter with him recalled by Charlie Chaplain which demonstrates the difference between religion understood as doctrine and religion understood as emotion, Chaplain writes,
“Rachmaninov was a strange-looking man, with something aesthetic and cloistral about him … Someone brought the topic around to religion and I confessed that I was not a believer. Rachmaninov quickly interposed: “But how can you have art without religion?” I was stumped for a moment. “I don’t think we are talking about the same thing”, I said. “My concept of religion is a belief about dogma—and art is a feeling more than a belief.” “So is religion”, he answered. After that I shut up.”
I wish I had been there just to watch and listen to these two emperors of the imagination.
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