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Symons, Arthur, 1865-1945

"Plays, Acting and Music A Book Of Theory"

Music can never wholly be detached
from mystery, can never wholly become articulate, and it is in our
ignorance of its true nature that we would tame it to humanity and teach
it to express human emotions, not its own.
Pachmann gives you pure music, not states of soul or of temperament, not
interpretations, but echoes. He gives you the notes in their own
atmosphere, where they live for him an individual life, which has
nothing to do with emotions or ideas. Thus he does not need to translate
out of two languages: first, from sound to emotion, temperament, what
you will; then from that back again to sound. The notes exist; it is
enough that they exist. They mean for him just the sound and nothing
else. You see his fingers feeling after it, his face calling to it, his
whole body imploring it. Sometimes it comes upon him in such a burst of
light that he has to cry aloud, in order that he may endure the ecstasy.
You see him speaking to the music; he lifts his finger, that you may
listen for it not less attentively. But it is always the thing itself
that he evokes for you, as it rises flower-like out of silence, and
comes to exist in the world.


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