Category: Music

In Praise of Fairuz

While on my walk The soft, tender voice of Fairuz was borne to me on the breeze As if coming from an ethereal howdah: “One day we shall return to our neighborhood….” Fairuz’s voice, in…

Practice

An awed interviewer once exclaimed To the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, “You do amazing things on the saxophone, Mr. Parker.” The musician replied, “I don’t know about amazing— I practiced for fifteen hours a day…

A State of Wonder

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity. — Glenn Gould

Bach/Gould/Said

Bach’s music was for [Glenn] Gould an archetype for the emergence of a rational system whose  intrinsic power was that it was, as it were, crafted resolutely against the negation and disorder that surround us…