Comments on: Release

By: Norman Livergood

Norman Livergood — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:09:04 +0000

You’ve managed to create a marvelous retrospective of a mystical experience . . .

You and your readers may find these of interest:

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/music_dialectic.htm

http://www.hermes-press.com/perennialist_art.htm

By: The New Yorker’s Arts Issue » The litter in littérateur.

The New Yorker’s Arts Issue » The litter in littérateur. — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:41:32 +0000

[...] really struck me in the article is a passage Ross quotes from the blog of pianist Jeremy Denk about the experience of playing Oliver Messaien’s “Quartet for the End of Time”: [...]

By: Gratitude at think denk

Gratitude at think denk — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:02:26 +0000

[...] Release [...]

By: Steve Hicken

Steve Hicken — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:46:47 +0000

Jeremy--

I'd like your permission to quote this post in my book on 20th century music. Feel free to e-mail me. Thanks.

Steve Hciekn

By: Molly

Molly — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 01:26:04 +0000

Reading through the archives of your blog, I begin to connect strange threads into this post, an e-Ariadne drawing thin cotton conclusions through and out of your entries. Specifically, your thoughts regarding the similarities between metaphor and music (metaphor as a sort of meta-metaphor for a passage?) reminded me a bit of Messiaen’s program notes for the piece. While of course they don’t begin to compare to the music itself, I do find them uncommonly appealing for program notes.

“Outpourings of blue-orange lava,” he writes, and somehow the juxtaposition of the antithetical colors underscores the score, its aching beauty, its contrast with the circumstances of its composition. So many pieces sort of transcend their historical context, but with this Messiaen the piece both transcends and is intimately entangled with its history (another melding of opposites!). His descriptions are secondary, and upon hearing the music they burn away like a flambe, but leave a trace of flavor beneath the repast of the performance. Somehow, these concrete layers (history, the composer’s own preface) in addition to the abstract layers usually present in a wonderful piece give Quartet for the End of Time – an unbelievably moving piece at any rate – an extra sort of weight and inertia that never fails to involve me so thoroughly it’s almost unsettling.

In any case, I’m sorry to invade your blog with my verbose and amateurish descriptions of ol’ Olivier, but thank you for your thoughts; I find them lovely.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 03:30:03 +0000

This entire blog is an exercise in narcissistic pretense.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 21:44:43 +0000

Audiences are also “therapized” by music. I cannot hear that Shubert piece (forgive me, I always forget the proper name for it)or the slaves’ chorus from the opera Nabuco (?sp) or the slow movement from Brahms second concert without having all the nitty-gritty stuff take its rightful place–in the back seat of life–for a wonderful, albeit sometimes short, period of time.

“Affectionately”, your steadfast, biggest fan.

By: Joe Denk

Joe Denk — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 18:50:25 +0000

In an art form hardly of the level of Messiaen, the play I am doing, I have had trouble emotionally performing stories such as the
Wandering Jew looking in the fence at Buchenwald. Nice to feel that this is not a unique instability but maybe even a sensitivity we share. Great entry on June 3! Inspiring and a joy to us in NM.

By: David Rothenberg

David Rothenberg — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:56:04 +0000

True, one of the greatest pieces of recent music, one of the finest works of art conceived in war out of listening to birds. And you have written beautifully about the experience of playing such sublime music.

Few composers have understood the what birds can teach us as well as Messiaen. For more on that side of him, see: http://www.whybirdssing.com

By: Scott D. Strader

Scott D. Strader — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 17:46:40 +0000

What a wonderful piece of music. I love the simplicity and breadth of those chords! They have a spirituality, distinctly Messiaen’s, similar to the opening movement of Vingt Regards performed by Serkin: echoes within an infinite space.

I appreciated your reflections on the piece.