Just Striving for Greater Joy
The Freedom of the Interpreter
Safe Musical Paths of Cognition for the Listener
Music is not Music
The Music-Creating Philosophers
The Status Quo of the Cognition of Truth in Musical Education
The Declared Will of the Great Classical Composers
The Musical Act beyond Rhetorics
The Listener Turns Poet
The
Totality
of All Happiness of Life in Mind
In
its comprehensiveness, this process of development may not have been the original
intention of the listener; he may have listened to the music because he was
quite simply and naturally striving for greater joy.
The classical composer, however, has in mind the totality of all the joy of
life for his listener, and with his musical work he paves passable ways for
the listener – by himself pacing them out in advance.
It would certainly be worthwhile if the interpreter shared this conscious intention of the musical creator – which would quite naturally result in the same modest serving attitude and the corresponding loving, unheroic appearance of the interpreter which the composer possesses at his creative height.
Fortunately, however, such a high, noble attitude of the interpreter is not necessarily the prerequisite for the success of the musical work, for the musical statement to reach the listener, and for the intention, which the composer had, to be fulfilled.
It may even happen, and it is almost the rule today, that on the one hand a performer shines in the glory of his outer pseudo-success – without a true experience of music of his own – whereas on the other hand a listener simultaneously attains to the almighty creative force in all silence and thus makes the true musical experience.
Now,
as we all know, music is not music, and unfortunately it is hardly ever being
produced to bring those who love truth closer to their goal.
And by its structure, the largest portion of music, that is entertainment
music, describes in its musical statement not more than does a book on physics
or chemistry. Sometimes entertainment music also touches – in the form
of acoustical eruptions of emotions – the field of biology classes, or
it turns into a superficial psychological description of mostly shallow and
agitated emotions – without ever striving for knowledge, neither of a
lower nor of a higher order.
But then the largest part of music does not share this goal anyway and justly, it is therefore incomparably more subjected to decay than classical music.
In terms of the great composers, classical music claims to impart knowledge, and it gives ample evidence that the great composers of all times have outstanding knowledge and insights, and also that they are able to communicate them through their music.
However, the music business of today, and unfortunately the music-educational institutions, too, do not cater for such a claim; for in the educational system, a systematic knowledge of finding truth in music is not available to the music teachers and, therefore, not to the musicians or the music students either.
And still, the phenomenon of cognition of truth and the declared will of communicating truth through music are present in our great classical composers; and for the listener and certainly also for the musician – for the interpreter, but for the music teacher, too – they account for the great charm and the great attraction of this language of sound fraught with truth.
The act of the musical creator is not so much aimed at explaining what truth actually is; for truth is what it is anyway – with or without the musical creator or the listener.
The
composer mainly focusses on guiding his listener like a somnambulant or a
dreamer, but also like a knower, to the source of wisdom and there to let
him drink from the immortal nectar.
So the composer concentrates on the path and sees to it that, when treading
this path together, the trust and the confidence of his listener grows.
And here the composer takes no risk; he employs all the means of his art to systematically increase the poetic capability of his listener, and unobtrusively and discreetly he eliminates any doubt.