Monday, September 22, 2008

Albert Fuller, in memoriam
7/21/1926 - 9/22/2007

A year goes by. Life converts experience into memory and emotion, substance scatters, seeds sprout, and the cycle of seasons reminds us that "no man ever steps in the same river twice; it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

"We build a house,
but it is the empty space inside
that makes it livable."

----Tao Te Ching

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Love or music

"Love or music—which power can uplift man to the sublimest heights? It is a large question; yet it seems to me that one should answer it in this way: Love cannot give an idea of music; music can give an idea of love. But why separate them? They are two wings of the soul."

—Hector Berlioz

Monday, September 15, 2008

Chamber Music

The chamber music composer is like "the painter who shades and colors a picture destined to be viewed at close range much more delicately than, for example, a ceiling painting, which is far removed from the eye, and in which these details would not only be lost, but might even weaken the effect of the whole."

—Heinrich Christoph Koch (1749-1816) German theorist and violinist.


Chamber music "was not intended for a large public, but actually only for connoisseurs and amateurs. . . . it was more finely worked out, more difficult and more artistic . . . composers who wrote for the chamber could presume more accomplishment and experience in listening among their audience."

—Gustav Schilling
(1805-1880) German writer on music, who died in Nebraska.